Feeling Unappreciated?

A friend forwarded me an email with the subject heading ‘Feeling Unappreciated Lately?’ this week. Before opening it I thought it might be one of those ‘lovey-dovey’ emails with huge lists of reasons why the sender is your friend and they are really sorry that they don’t tell you this often enough. I couldn’t be more wrong…

In it was a newspaper cutting describing how a man had been left dead at his desk for a whole 5 days and no had realised that he had passed away. This happened despite the fact that he worked in an open plan office.

His boss said no one had noticed his death because he was a conscientious worker so ‘no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn’t say anything’.

Not saying anything is one thing but the poor guy hadn’t been breathing for a week. In fact it wasn’t even his fellow colleagues who realised he was no longer of this world – but a cleaner who asked him why he was working on a Saturday and got no response.

I work in an open plan office and always make a point of saying hello and goodbye to people, even if I am sinking fast under a pile of work so I find this report completely baffling.

However, I can’t work out what is more depressing – actually dying at your desk surrounded by mountains of work or the lack of manners that was demonstrated in this particular office?

We spend the majority of day working so it would make sense to be courteous enough to at least pass the time of day with each other and notice when people’s hearts have stopped beating. I may not be the fastest thing on two legs but I’d like to think people would realise that I hadn’t moved an inch for the past 120 hours.

But it got me thinking about how appreciated we are: not just in our work relationships but also in our personal relationships.

I can’t enter into a discussion about appreciation without referring to depreciation (the curse of being a qualified accountant).

An interesting way to look at relationships is to compare them with cars. Cars depreciate in value when they are not looked after properly and get damaged. If things are really bad they may have to be written off and scrapped because they are not worth keeping and have no value left in them.

 A car which is looked after, however, can actually appreciate in value. Now, while this is a rare occurrence and only happens when a car becomes vintage or classic. This can only happen when a painstaking amount of time is put into to realise a investment.

So cars are a lot like relationships: sometimes we have to take care and have patience to realise the true worth of a relationship and other times we have to know when to cut our losses and invest in another one.

As Mary Kay Ash, founder of May Kay Cosmetics said ‘Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don't keep it a secret.’ I think it’s time we all shared some secrets and show our appreciation when we can.

 On the plus side though what I have always suspected is true – don’t worry about working too hard, no one notices what you do at work anyway!

Plenty more fish in the sea?

People are always telling me that ‘there’s plenty more fish in the sea’. But is there really? I am literally at a loss about where to do my ‘fishing’, so to speak.

Everyone seems to be quick to offer suggestions to young, single people of where to go and what to do to find a partner. One person told me recently the best way to meet someone was grocery shopping on a Friday night (apparently this is the time when singletons do their shopping because, obviously, they don't have anything better to do on a Friday night). Not one to dismiss something completely off hand without giving it a go and seeing if it works, I popped down to my local supermarket to see if there were masses of single men swarming the aisles, as I had been lead to believe by my friend.

All I can say is I'm glad I didn't spend more time getting ready before I went as it would have been a huge waste of effort. I did find some male attention but, unfortunately, it was from a grey-haired gentleman who asked me if I could reach him a tin from the top shelf. He then winked at me suggestively and I spent the rest of the shopping trip trying to hide in the aisles from him.

This isn't the only thing I have tried, like I say 'don't knock it until you've tried it'. But here are my conclusions:

Internet dating - guaranted that you will only find one of these three things: men who are only looking for one thing, weirdos and weirdos who are only looking for one thing.

Blind dates - they say that 'Love is Blind' but I wouldn't buy a car without giving it a good look and I take the same attitude towards potential dates.

Set ups by friends - always ended in disaster and left me feeling that my friends mustn't really know me that well or like me that much because I never have anything remotely in common with the date.

So I was wondering if the metaphor 'there's plenty more fish in the sea' needs to be adapted to the modern day. Just as the stock levels of fish around the world are dwindling due to over fishing, are the stock levels of suitable men also dwindling to the point where perfectly lovely women cannot find a decent man through want of trying? If the Government are trying to protect fish stocks, why aren't they doing anything to protect me and other women like me? After all I do pay my taxes... and plenty of them!

Which is why I'm putting down my rod for a while to let the stocks top back up. In a few months, I will be getting my net out.

New Year, New Leaf

Two weeks into the New Year and how many of us have already broken our New Year's Resolution? Every year we try to convince ourselves that this is definitely the year, OUR year even. It's always a case of 'This year I will get fit/ lose weight / stop smoking / drink less* (Delete as appropriate).

Because of this I was thinking about the phrase 'to turn over a new leaf'. I had a quick look on the internet to see if I could find the origin of the phrase but nothing comes up. The phrase refers to turning a page of a book and making a fresh start on a new chapter. But the age that we are living in today I wonder how long phrases like this will remain relevant and comprehensible.

In particular what worries me is the use of technology and how it is slowly taking over our lives. How long will it be before kindles replace books completely? Maybe the next generations will think that 'to turn over a new leaf' has something to do with trees or gardening as they will have never experienced turning over a leaf of a page a physical book. What a strange world that will be.

I actually don't understand the point of a kindle. It's solving a problem that doesn't exist. What is wrong with manually turning the pages of a book as you get to the end of each page. It seems a little bit like the height of laziness. I have honestly never got half way through a book and decided to stop because turning the pages has become too much of a chore. The saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' has never been more applicable. Plus the advantage that a physical book has over a kindle is when you put the bookmark in and you realise that you are over half way, you feel really intelligent.

People have commented that having a kindle is so convenient. Reading isn't meant to be convenient: it's meant to be educational, pleasureable and a means of escape from the mundane routine of ordinary like.

I mustn't be on my own in thinking this, as there is actually a word to describe people who have a dislike of kindles. It's guttenbourgios. And for the record I do dislike kindles. The only thing that kindle is good for is lighting fires!

So what is my New Leaf for this New Year? I actually have several which I am more than sure I will write about on this blog (in fact to write more and post on this blog is one of them). At the moment, the list of things that I want to achieve this year seems to be more than challenging and I'm not sure how I will get through it (a bit like how I felt 2 months into my A Levels) but I have a feeling it is going to be a Great Year!

Nostalgia

Every so often, I get nostalgic. The past week and a half I have been very nostalgic. This didn’t happen all on its own; it was self-inflicted. Last Saturday I was sorting through a shoe box full of cards, photos, letters, all sort of stuff from the not so distant past that was guaranteed to trigger an acute case of nostalgia.

This triggered a monumental bout of introspection which lasted the majority of the weekend. I think one of the reasons we start to get nostalgic is because we start to wonder whether things were better in the past than they are in the present. For example, the photos made me wonder if I have dramatically changed. And, if I have, is this a change for the good or the bad? Obviously the goal with photos is to have not changed a bit.

The cards and letters that I uncovered had messages inside. Some of the message explicitly stated qualities that the sender had seen in me which I didn’t realise I had. This made me wonder if I still have those qualities that people had seen in me or, as I was taken aback by the suggested traits from many moons ago, that I had lost these qualities and wouldn’t be able to regain them.

A trip down memory lane never stops with a few years previously but for me continues on right back to childhood; when I didn’t realise how easy life was when you don’t have to work and fend for yourself in the big bad world.

A lot of my childhood memories involve my brother. My relationship with my brother is one of the longest relationships I have ever had. There is no one else who has known me longer than him. Some of the memories of us make me smile and others laugh. But the memories aren’t always positive.

One of the most memorable times I can recall was when my brother and I were playing cricket in the back garden one summer. We had a rule that if you hit the ball over into any of the next door neighbours’ gardens you were deemed to have scored six runs but you were also out.

This particular day I was intent on making sure that I completely annihilated my brother by clocking up as many runs as possible and then bowling him out very quickly. Very soon I scoring runs left, right and centre but then I made the mistake of smashing the ball over the neighbours’ fence. My brother was ready to take the bat off me because of the rule that we had agreed before. I flatly refused and said I won’t take the six runs but I’ll still be in.

My brother took particular offence to the idea of my refusal to vacate the crease and promptly picked up one of the cricket wickets and threw it in anger at my shin. To this day I can still see the look of utter anger in his face. It was a look that I can only imagine a murder would have on his face moments before a frenzied knife attack on his victim. He was almost foaming at the mouth as he drew back his arm to gain the momentum to throw the wicket at me. From the second he let go, everything became slow motion until the second the piece of wood struck my shin. Pain? I’ve never felt pain like it before or since.

You would think that the competitive nature of our relationship would mean that all sporting activity would be off limits. Not so. We have started playing squash once a week and I have learnt my lesson so I stick to the rules. Not because my competitive streak has faded but because I don’t think a squash racket wrapped around my face would be helpful.

I found out this week that it wasn’t just my brother who was mean to be during childhood. One of my friends declined a hot cross bun from me yesterday, stating that he can’t eat anything with currants in because his younger brother once told him that they were dead bees.

Ok, my brother caused me physical pain but bruises and scratches heal with time. At least he didn’t tell me currants were the corpses of insects. Imagine life without hot cross buns, tea cakes and Eccles cakes. Plus, bread and butter pudding would basically be stale bread with some milk splashed on top of it. It’s enough to make you lose your appetite.

Baz Luhrmann’s song Everyone’s Free to Wear Sunscreen is a favourite of mine. In it is the lyric “Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future”.

I sometimes wish that this song was released while I was growing up rather than in my late-teens; it may have saved me some injuries my brother inflicted on me! (The cricket wicket wasn't an isolated incident - there was the time he pushed me through a window and the time he burst the blisters on my arms on holiday)

Dead bees and cricket wickets aside, I can honestly say without hesitation or reservation, that my link to my past makes me happier than it does sad and long may it continue into the future.

To Text Or Not To Text?

Communication has been revolutionised in many ways, not least by texting. Texting is defined as “the exchange of brief written messages between mobile phones over cellular networks”. It provides a cheap, instantaneous ways of getting and keeping in touch with people. What’s the problem, I hear you cry? Lol. And that stands for lots and lots.

Firstly, written words can be interpreted differently by different people and all at different times. When words are written down all intonation and tone is lost and the reader is free to interpret the words without the sender being on hand to clarify their meaning. Text me the question “What’s wrong?” and, get me on a good day, and you may get a perfectly sane and reasonable answer. However, on a morning when I’ve got out of bed on the wrong side, I may interpret it with an accusatory tone and before you know if I’ll be running off in floods of tears in the opposite direction, complaining that no one understands me.

It’s not just words or phrases that can be interpreted in different way than they are intended. Letters can be too, in particular the letter ‘x’. When the end of a text is signed off with an ‘x’ by a member of the opposite sex, things can get complicated. You start to wonder, what does this mean? Does he mean the same thing that you would mean if you had sent it to him? What’s that? He sent you a double ‘x’! It must be love. All of a sudden you are fantasising about your wedding dress, you can hear the wedding march playing in your head and you can see your best friend catching the bouquet. When in actual fact there may be a logical explanation - his thumb may have caught the 9 key before he hit send because he had gloves on.

Then there’s the problem with grammar and spelling. Now I’m not a pureist as such but I text exactly as I write. Full sentences, words written out in long hand, not an apostrophe out of place; this is where the confusion arises. Other people have wantonly abandoned the rules of the English language for the sake of saving nano-seconds. For example, one of my friends and I were going to a birthday party and she told me that she would text me if she couldn’t get a chocolate cake from the shop she was going to so that I could go and buy one as a back up plan. I read the text from her in a hurry and read the word ‘no’ and hurriedly went to the shops to find the elusive cake. We both turn up at the party with identical huge, fattening chocolate cakes. Upon re-reading the text I realised I was in the wrong but my friend’s grammar certainly contributed to our bulging waistlines.

It’s not just spelling and grammar that can go wrong. The main flaw is how instant it is. There’s your mobile, in its lovely pink case, nestled snuggly in your bag, waiting patiently for you to pick it up and use it. In fact, you can use it at anytime, like when you’re on the bus, sat watching TV or are out drinking. Actually, forget that last one. Texting whilst inebriated is not advised. I repeat, not advised. The worst part of the morning after is not the blinding headache and the room still spinning, it’s looking into your sent box and seeing exactly what you sent to whom. Ever had that I can’t believe I drunk- texted him last night? I admit I have once or twice. Okay, it was 116 times at the last count.

Even if you haven’t been drinking, you can still send something to someone that you really didn’t mean them to see it. I mean, who invents something in this day and age that doesn’t have a recall button? My ex was alphabetically next to ‘Mum’ in my contacts – yes this one has danger written all over it. One slip of the thumb and before you know it, you’re fabricating an explanation to your dearest mother about how your brother brought your three-year-old niece round to visit and she must have got into your bag, dextrously removed the cover and managed to send a detailed and graphic description about what happens to naughty boys to her by mistake without anyone noticing at all.

Just when you think that your lie-by-toddler has worked, it falls flat on its face when your mother helpfully reminds you that your brother is currently holidaying in Turkey for a fortnight and he doesn’t have a daughter.

The moral of this particular story is not to date anyone whose name begins with ‘N’, ‘M’ or ‘O’.

So to answer the question: to text or not to text? Perhaps the best advice is to proceed with caution. Be careful who you text and what you text them because you never know what you might end up regretting.

A day in the life of a mortal WAG

I have an interesting theory about WAGs. All we hear in the papers are about the glamorous lifestyles that the wives and girlfriends of sport stars lead which are typified by their apparent lack of responsibility and constant, extravagant shopping trips. Have you noticed that the life of a WAG is only open to a select few?

Being a mere mortal I always thought that WAG stood for 'Widowed and Grieving' where sportsmen were concerned. Whenever I've been out with a bloke who was an amateur sportsman (let's face it all of them like to think they are) I've always ended up feeling like a grieving widow rather than a girlfriend.

When it comes to the weekend they just disappear off and play their sport, probably very badly even though they'll tell you that they were so good that it won't be long before he gets his England call up, and you end up left with nothing in particular to do. Not because you have nothing better to do but because they don't give you any warning about their planned absence for the rest of the weekend. It's not even as if they can keep you amused by handing over thousands of pounds for you to spend on clothing that you're bound to wear only once and then decided that actually you probably won't have another occasion to wear it on.

Then you come to their end of season at the club and one of two things has happens. Either they don't invite you because 'You don't want to talk about fielding positions and get pissed with the lads'. Maybe not but it would make a nice change to be given the option. Or you get invited but the seating plan dictates that you are sitting next to a bottle-blonde, perma-tanned, fellow WAG who comes out with outrageous questions like 'I go on the sunbed for 30 minutes every day. Do you think I'll get skin cancer?' I swear to God that did happen and it was surely a miracle that I didn't choked on my starter.

I know what you're thinking I'm probably one of those women who complains every time Coronation Street is moved to 10.30pm because of Champions League football and, therefore, carries a bitter resentment towards any man who attempts to keep himself fit and healthy by dabbling in some sporting action once a week. You'd be wrong though. You probably couldn't be further from the truth. I love sport; can't get enough of it. In fact I have been know to participate in the less thrilling sports of cricket and golf. I'm not looking at this from a biased view. But being a WAG isn't what the media portrays it to be for normal women like me.

The annoying thing is that it doesn't even work the other way round. When I'm off playing hockey I know my other half won't be twiddling his thumbs, restless in anticipation of receiving my text informing him of the all-important final score. And don't get me started on the amount of times I've screamed back down the M56, my little Corsa trembling each time I put more pressure on the accelerator, in an attempt see my beloved only to discover that he's buggered off to play darts with the local village idiot at the pub.

My advice would be: never be a WAG. Unless, and this is the one exception, your other half is a bona fide England football international. In this case a significant proportion his £118,000-a-week wage could be donated to your quest to become the most successful female golfer ever by the UK. As the likelihood of this actually happening in the future is nearer to zero than one hundred per cent, I've decided to shelve my WAG dream. Besides it's much more fun being independent and single anyway.

Wax On, Wax (eventually) Off

Before my recent holiday I debated the merits of waxing over shaving. Shaving is pain-free but as waxing lasts longer I decided to ditch the razor blades in favour of a pot of hot wax.

Everyone I know who has ever waxed says how “fabulous it is darling” and there are plenty of adverts to back this up; most of them with annoying models who are positively thrilled at the prospect of being lost in the bathroom on a Thursday evening up to their you-know-whats in wax.

Forgive me then for thinking that my first experience of waxing was bound to be positive.

I read the instructions several times over in an attempt to find out exactly what the catch was. It all seemed far too easy: slap in on, whip it off was the general idea. So that’s what I did. I trowelled on the stuff, because I wanted to make sure that everything came off at once and I didn’t have to re-do odd patches.

And then… I didn’t have the bottle to whip it off! Suddenly I realised that all the females who had told me it’d be okay, all the adverts with the over-smiley girls, those simple bloody instructions were just propaganda. It worked in Nazi Germany and now it had happened all over western civilisation. I knew if I pulled this thing attached to my leg off it was going to hurt like no pain I’ve ever felt before.

For a grief stricken moment, I pondered the implications of just leaving it there. Maybe after a few years it would wear off a bit and I’d be able to go swimming again. That wouldn’t be so bad would it? I only really go swimming on holiday anyway.

Thought number two was to phone a friend. I could have a mate on the other end of the phone coaching me exactly what to do, what to expect. She’d convince me I was a fighter and that together we would become stronger people and get through this. But then who on earth wouldn’t find it laughable that you’ve phoned their mobile to be given waxing training?

Next I thought about calling the emergency services. They deal with bizarre situations every day and the thought had crossed my mind that it was reasonable to class this as an emergency. The only reason I didn’t do this was because I didn’t want to make it into the ‘Top 10 Ridiculous Calls to the Emergency Services in 2007’ in some tacky tabloid. I could almost see it: “A new entry at number 3: Moron from Macclesfield in Hot Wax Fiasco”

There was no other option. I had to bite the bullet (or a wooden cooking spoon to be precise) and just pull it off in the opposite direction to the hair growth, which took me ten minutes to figure out.

It finally came off but not before a searing shot of pain raced through my body. Had I let myself scream out loud I would have either raised the dead, set off all the car alarms in a five mile radius or, quite possibly, both.

The most astounding thing is some salons and beauty parlour have the audacity to advertise to women (and some men) these procedures as ‘treatments’. Surely a ‘treat’ is something pleasurable, like buying a £10 bottle of wine from Oddbins because you’ve had a really crappy week and think that this is the only way you’ll ever cheer yourself up.

I’m sure I've read about some forms of medieval torture are more humane than waxing. That’s why I’ll be sticking to my pain-free razor in the future.