Busy busy busy, apologies for the vanishing act! But I am here (sort of) for now.
It was my works Christmas Party earlier in the week and whilst boogying the night away with the girls I work with I made a surprising realisation. No matter what MrHalf's other irritating habits he is quite possibly the least clingy, insecure partner I have ever enjoyed bullying.
He isn't the most social of creatures, in fact he hates parties, doesn't drink and isn't chatty - it's fair to say he is fairly close to my polar opposite at this time of year. So when I demanded (and yes to my shame I did demand it of him) that he attend my work party with me this year I knew I was in for either a short night or a quiet sober one. In actual fact my lovely Mr decided that after being at said party for a couple of hours he was tired and wanted to go to bed, and promptly dragged me out of the venue and up to his block - naturally I was disappointed because I was enjoying myself. Arriving in his room the Mr handed over his room and block keys and told me to bugger off back to the party. I spent the rest of the night thoroughly enjoying myself, at one point singing 'Wham' down a phone with a chef in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.
Comparing MrHalf's reaction to being told about this by a giggling drunken mess to the reaction I would have gotten from at the very least the previous military mr.....lets just say the previous mr is the type not likely to have left a party before the booze ran out, and even if he had I wouldn't have dared to get within 10ft of another man on the dance floor because it would have resulted in an almighty row and the very real possibility of us slinging things at one another - in the course of arguments we have lobbed plates (very much the trick of my mother according to her partner), assorted electrical chargers, bottles of toiletries and on one memorable for all the wrong reasons occasion a laptop. It would be more than fair to describe him as incredibly jealous and insecure, as it turned out less because of anything in my behaviour and everything to do with his feeling guilty at sleeping with near enough everything female, with a pulse who showed an interest.
As it was Mr Half's reaction was to help me remove my boots - lovely but impractical - tights, unzip my dress (because I couldn't grip the zip - did I mention I was a shade towards the absolutely wasted level of drunk) and then go back to sleep, waking me in the morning with a mirror to show me the stains where the red wine had dribbled down my chin.
I am never going to hear the last of that one.......god help me if any photos emerge!
Thursday, 23 December 2010
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
On the futility of my trying to get things done
Well I finally managed to get those boots returned to the shop in R, such a shame that the store in my local shopping centre has been closed down for at least 6 months or it would have been done weeks ago. But regardless thats £20 winging its way back on to my credit card....one day I might even get the card fully paid off, lol. That particular trip took almost exactly two hours thanks to the train journeys, and yet it feels like it took mere minutes..,ahh the simple joy of getting stuck in to a 'good' book on the train, currently appearing on my Kindle screen is Wives and Daughters, in an attempt to read at least some of the various classics which ought to appear on everyones reading list but never do as they simply don't look interesting enough.
On my return the intention was to check my notes and print the questionnaires for some mystery shops then set off to complete them, that was two hours ago, instead I got home and started checking my emails, decided I needed to get some washing done, so popped that in an decided to have a coffee and spend the 40 minutes of the wash cycle sorting the notes.....then decided that I really really can't face the shops and cancelled all four jobs. So instead I started working down the email in my surveys inbox, all of which should at some point result in my having more pennies to spend on household goods next year.
I've another two hours to go before I'm due to get to work, in which time I need to put my washing on the airer in my room, and wrap my works secret santa pressie - though that means retrieving the gift from somewhere in the back of my car.
Meh, it's nearly Christmas....roll on arguing with my family over dinner again.
On my return the intention was to check my notes and print the questionnaires for some mystery shops then set off to complete them, that was two hours ago, instead I got home and started checking my emails, decided I needed to get some washing done, so popped that in an decided to have a coffee and spend the 40 minutes of the wash cycle sorting the notes.....then decided that I really really can't face the shops and cancelled all four jobs. So instead I started working down the email in my surveys inbox, all of which should at some point result in my having more pennies to spend on household goods next year.
I've another two hours to go before I'm due to get to work, in which time I need to put my washing on the airer in my room, and wrap my works secret santa pressie - though that means retrieving the gift from somewhere in the back of my car.
Meh, it's nearly Christmas....roll on arguing with my family over dinner again.
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Has the weekend started yet?
Yup I'm fairly well aware that it's actually Sunday evening as I type but quite honestly I think this weekend has been busier than most 5 day traditional working weeks!
On top of my normal close shifts I volunteered myself for an extra long very late shift working the bar at a Sgts Mess do on Saturday night, now normally the prospect of crawling in to bed at 5am seems vaguely ridiculous if sober, but for some reason it seemed a great plan to decide I fancied a weekend where I never got to get out of my uniform(s) and spend little to no time in my beloved bed.
Despite having spent much of the last 4 years (my god is it really that long!?!) of my life around the military some things never fail to amuse me, the chest poking which occurs at every single Mess Doo I've attended - as the bar staff this amusement was magnified given I was quite possibly the only person in the room who on one occasion actually knew what the disagreement had been about - what brand of Port was preferred by the RSM, and was settled in the traditional manner with the pokee offering to 'go outside and settle it like men' with the poker...shortly before both were taken away by their respective partners to have a coffee and sober up.
Also the surprise with which the singlies in attendance express when you explain that despite their best efforts no you won't be going up to their rooms with them as you peel them off your shoulder and on to the shoulder of someone else sporting their favourite port stained drinking suit, before they make you drop the tray of dirty glasses you had been attempting to return to the bar.
And the number of female staff who are quite open about their intention for the evening to be to 'bag' a squaddie for the night so that they don't need to walk/drive themselves home. Now in days of yore in the UK it was nice and simple to class these as 'NAAFI Slappers' but nowadays with the numerous different companies having taken on the old 'NAAFI' contracts the phrase somehow doesn't work - Sodhexo Slapper is about the only one of the companies which had a name that fits, ESS and ISS are too much of a mouthful which is sad, truely it made me realise just how much has changed since I first ventured in to a NAAFI Jnr Ranks bar all those years ago.
Of course the most interesting observation was the ladies attending, the cliches about the backstabbing, bitchy world of the 'squaddie wife' really does exist. As an outsider to the Mess I was working at I suppose I only got to see the more overt rifts but there truly is something gratifying about watching one pair of ladies playing nicely while their partners were deep in conversation yet enjoying a complete and utter character assassination of one another when with other women.
That said by the end of the evening I was in the mood for a fair bit of chest poking myself, it seems that the waiting staff think that 'squaddie wives' think they are above themselves and a common comment heard at the bar as they delivered drink orders was that they wished the women would stop treating them like dirt, oddly enough this refrain was most often heard from the male members of staff, the same male members of staff who found it amusing to direct the ladies unfamiliar with the Mess towards the gents toilets, and as observed by one other female member of agency staff working the event - 'Talked about me as though I didn't exist, but blamed me when things weren't done I didn't know about'. Certainly through my evening in the Mess I found all the women I came in to contact with perfectly pleasant, friendly and down to earth - if a little tipsy by the end of the evening, all this without a single one of them trying to 'pull rank'.
Maybe I'm more sensitive about these things now that I am - in so much as I will ever be - a squaddie wife myself but I wonder why it is that as a type we seem to inspire such reactions from those both outside and inside our weird world?
On top of my normal close shifts I volunteered myself for an extra long very late shift working the bar at a Sgts Mess do on Saturday night, now normally the prospect of crawling in to bed at 5am seems vaguely ridiculous if sober, but for some reason it seemed a great plan to decide I fancied a weekend where I never got to get out of my uniform(s) and spend little to no time in my beloved bed.
Despite having spent much of the last 4 years (my god is it really that long!?!) of my life around the military some things never fail to amuse me, the chest poking which occurs at every single Mess Doo I've attended - as the bar staff this amusement was magnified given I was quite possibly the only person in the room who on one occasion actually knew what the disagreement had been about - what brand of Port was preferred by the RSM, and was settled in the traditional manner with the pokee offering to 'go outside and settle it like men' with the poker...shortly before both were taken away by their respective partners to have a coffee and sober up.
Also the surprise with which the singlies in attendance express when you explain that despite their best efforts no you won't be going up to their rooms with them as you peel them off your shoulder and on to the shoulder of someone else sporting their favourite port stained drinking suit, before they make you drop the tray of dirty glasses you had been attempting to return to the bar.
And the number of female staff who are quite open about their intention for the evening to be to 'bag' a squaddie for the night so that they don't need to walk/drive themselves home. Now in days of yore in the UK it was nice and simple to class these as 'NAAFI Slappers' but nowadays with the numerous different companies having taken on the old 'NAAFI' contracts the phrase somehow doesn't work - Sodhexo Slapper is about the only one of the companies which had a name that fits, ESS and ISS are too much of a mouthful which is sad, truely it made me realise just how much has changed since I first ventured in to a NAAFI Jnr Ranks bar all those years ago.
Of course the most interesting observation was the ladies attending, the cliches about the backstabbing, bitchy world of the 'squaddie wife' really does exist. As an outsider to the Mess I was working at I suppose I only got to see the more overt rifts but there truly is something gratifying about watching one pair of ladies playing nicely while their partners were deep in conversation yet enjoying a complete and utter character assassination of one another when with other women.
That said by the end of the evening I was in the mood for a fair bit of chest poking myself, it seems that the waiting staff think that 'squaddie wives' think they are above themselves and a common comment heard at the bar as they delivered drink orders was that they wished the women would stop treating them like dirt, oddly enough this refrain was most often heard from the male members of staff, the same male members of staff who found it amusing to direct the ladies unfamiliar with the Mess towards the gents toilets, and as observed by one other female member of agency staff working the event - 'Talked about me as though I didn't exist, but blamed me when things weren't done I didn't know about'. Certainly through my evening in the Mess I found all the women I came in to contact with perfectly pleasant, friendly and down to earth - if a little tipsy by the end of the evening, all this without a single one of them trying to 'pull rank'.
Maybe I'm more sensitive about these things now that I am - in so much as I will ever be - a squaddie wife myself but I wonder why it is that as a type we seem to inspire such reactions from those both outside and inside our weird world?
Friday, 10 December 2010
A fresh start, ish
Ohh look another thing to divert me from the things I ought to be doing....like filling in my mystery shopping reports, or looking for houses to rent and emailing to harass agencies about organizing viewings or answering yet more mindless surveys in hopes of reaching payout levels a little bit sooner, or even and this comes firmly under the category of 'more time wasting' completing the 'Rear Party Daily Quiz'
hmm well the quiz was a short time waste but none the less it's another ohh 50 seconds less to fill later.
I keep on writing my nice list of things 'wot want doing' and as usual the list is ever growing, there are things on there which I've been ignoring for at least 3 weeks, one of which is to return the 'spare' pair of lovely but impractical boots I bought on a trip in to R a couple of weeks ago, bought three pairs of the same style boot in different colours but decided I really don't like one of the colours so they have to go back soon - my attempts to return them so far have been somewhat hampered by my complete and utter laziness in getting up and walking to the train station - which in turn is hampered by the fact that I have yet to get off my bum and go to the nearest manned train station to renew my railcard, might see about sorting that out tomorrow.
In the mean time I'm sat gazing around the scene of devastation which passes itself off as my bedroom, the view from my sofa encompasses a bed hidden under a heap of clothes which are in need of washing, a pile of shoes covering the two lovely warm rugs, and a random assortment of storage boxes in front of the telly - the purpose of all this, I was looking for my USB phone charger earlier on and got distracted...then went looking for a DVD...and got side tracked in to trying on my latest set of uniform for tomorrow nights unusual shift - my conclusion I look like an idiot in a bow tie, I feel as though a shirt with a collar is strangling me and my arms are clearly too short for my body since my hands disappear in to the cuffs, and the least said about the waistcoat the better!
Still at least the binmen managed to trek all the way from the depot 4 miles away up to the house today so I can empty the box next to my door in to the recycling before the contents jump up and run away.
My point, well tonight I'm not too sure, prehaps to illustrate my utter inability to focus on any one thing at once, thus give some explanation of the posts to follow which are likely to follow the same pattern, random, disjointed and quite likely to give far more insight in the workings of my teeny tiny mind than I would ordinarily give away - actually I'm often described in real life as focused, industrious and hard working, not traits I recognise in myself in the slightest. Interesting really the way other people see us compared to how we see ourselves I suppose.
hmm well the quiz was a short time waste but none the less it's another ohh 50 seconds less to fill later.
I keep on writing my nice list of things 'wot want doing' and as usual the list is ever growing, there are things on there which I've been ignoring for at least 3 weeks, one of which is to return the 'spare' pair of lovely but impractical boots I bought on a trip in to R a couple of weeks ago, bought three pairs of the same style boot in different colours but decided I really don't like one of the colours so they have to go back soon - my attempts to return them so far have been somewhat hampered by my complete and utter laziness in getting up and walking to the train station - which in turn is hampered by the fact that I have yet to get off my bum and go to the nearest manned train station to renew my railcard, might see about sorting that out tomorrow.
In the mean time I'm sat gazing around the scene of devastation which passes itself off as my bedroom, the view from my sofa encompasses a bed hidden under a heap of clothes which are in need of washing, a pile of shoes covering the two lovely warm rugs, and a random assortment of storage boxes in front of the telly - the purpose of all this, I was looking for my USB phone charger earlier on and got distracted...then went looking for a DVD...and got side tracked in to trying on my latest set of uniform for tomorrow nights unusual shift - my conclusion I look like an idiot in a bow tie, I feel as though a shirt with a collar is strangling me and my arms are clearly too short for my body since my hands disappear in to the cuffs, and the least said about the waistcoat the better!
Still at least the binmen managed to trek all the way from the depot 4 miles away up to the house today so I can empty the box next to my door in to the recycling before the contents jump up and run away.
My point, well tonight I'm not too sure, prehaps to illustrate my utter inability to focus on any one thing at once, thus give some explanation of the posts to follow which are likely to follow the same pattern, random, disjointed and quite likely to give far more insight in the workings of my teeny tiny mind than I would ordinarily give away - actually I'm often described in real life as focused, industrious and hard working, not traits I recognise in myself in the slightest. Interesting really the way other people see us compared to how we see ourselves I suppose.
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