Well, it's been a month of changes and no mistake.

Mum and I have been talking about her selling her flat and moving up here with me since last year, when she realised she was going to have to sell up due to her lack of earnings while she was looking after Grandma.

She received an offer on her flat just before Christmas, but there have been really ridiculous delays on the completion, mainly because the solictor for the buyer at the bottom of the chain was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

The week after Grandma's funeral, we finally got notice that the sale was going through, but without much notice: completion date was just 5 days' time!

So whilst Mum was in a frenzy of packing, I went into work the next day and gave my notice in, the plan being for Mum to support me for a couple of months with the leftover money from her sale, until I get something a lot more to my taste.

My boss, being eager to get rid of me, agreed to release me that Friday, which was very handy with Mum arriving the following Monday!

There were, of course, last minute unpleasantnesses with my unpleasant boss, including her spitefully removing my systems access completely on the Thursday - which meant that I arrived on the Friday, having caught two buses to work (since my car was being fixed) to find I had nothing I could do, and that of course I couldn't salvage any of my spreadsheets which I'd produced and send them to myself at home for future use. (All resource planners do this when quitting a job. When you've spent nigh on 15 hours crafting a macro or pivot table from scratch, believe you me, you want to get all of the use out of it that you can!)

Anyway, nuts to all that, I'm free, free, free! Goodbye Otto with your stupid, stuck-in-the-seventies ideas about call centre management! Goodbye Evil BitchBoss, with your witless shoe-and-handbag fetish! Hahahaha!

Anyway, as I was saying, Mum arrived on the following Monday, and for the last two weeks, we've been settling in nicely, getting all Mum's stuff unpacked (well, most of it - we haven't got room to unpack it all.) We've had to go pretty slowly, because Mum had a really dreadful cough and cold when she arrived, which of course she then passed on to me, so we've both been hacking and sneezing and using masses of tissues, cough sweets and Night Nurse.

Mum tried to persuade me to sell all my comics as a job lot, but I refused, so we managed to find some better storage options for them, and at present I'm re-cataloging and indexing them, and will be listing a goodly bulk on eBay again, but definitely retaining a good number that I just refuse to ever sell. I suppose in some ways I'm a bit silly, because (for example) all of the Sandman comics, I've got in trade paperback collections. But at the same time, I can't bear the thought of letting them go, and not just because the value's going up, either. They're part of me, part of the person I was then, on my way to who I am now.

I've had a few nice surprises as I've gone through, too. A few older first editions, nothing spectacular, but certainly worth a few quid. And some things I'd completely forgotten about: an old copy of Sandman 23 which Simon Smith and I, in a fit of boredom one evening, decided to edit with our own wording for every other character but Morpheus. (The cover had got ripped, and we both already had another pristine copy.) I might have to upload some scans of some of the more inspired pages; I reckon the Fair Use clause on satire should allow me to print a few panels without enraging the copyright gods.

It's been nice having Mum here - it's horrible being on your own when you're ill. Although of course she gave me the bloody thing in the first place, so perhaps that evens out, LOL. But it IS nice having her here; I know she will push me to get out and get some exercise more, which should help with the weightloss thing (which is still going well; 15lbs lost now.)

The cats have definitely got used to Mum and are enjoying having someone around who sits on the sofa more often, although neither of them are really lap cats.

Mum has given both me and our Lucy a bit of money as a present, so I have blown mine (and some of me own money) on a new PC, which should arrive next week. It's a custom job, with 4gb RAM, a dual-core 2.3ghz processor, two HDDs, a lightscribe DVD writer, a TV card, internal card reader, AND a new TFT widescreen monitor. GEEKGASM!

So last Wednesday it was time to say goodbye to Grandma.

I drove down on Tuesday via Wales (in order to pick Simon up.) This made my entire journey approx 900 miles in three days, ouch.

We had a cremation at T.Wells crem at 12, and then a memorial service at Hartfield church at 1pm, followed by a wake at The Anchor afterwards.

There was a bit of a panic mid-morning, as 

lucy_pointycat and rhandolph were catching the bus up to Mum's, and the damn thing never showed up. Thankfully they were able to get one to Lewes, so I drove down and picked them up there. Not the most auspicious start to the day.

 

My Aunty Val (who is a florist) did all the flowers, and they were lovely. Grandma would have loved them.

I think most of us were in tears at the crem. I lost it halfway through singing Psalm 23. By the time we got to the church, we were pretty much cried out, and Mum and I managed to give our two-part eulogy without breaking down, which was good, and by all accounts we did a good job.

The wake was extremely subdued - as our Lucy remarked, "Our family don't really know how to have fun, do they?" I suppose having several alcoholics in the family tree does tend somewhat to put the dampers on.

Walked down to the village with Lucy, Rhandolph and Simon. Went into Pooh Corner, where Grandma worked for several years. It's expanded quite considerably since those days. Chatted with the owner, Mike, for a while, but had to leave before having an unfortunate wallet accident. Everyone knows what a sucker I am for Pooh memorabilia. When Grandma was working there, every Xmas and birthday would bring me a present that was Pooh-related :-)

Walked up to the rec (recreation ground aka playground) with Simon and Rhandolph, where they both had a go on the slide and swings. Rhandolph got muddy trousers, and I got muddy boots.

Everyone left by about 5pm, so we went back to Mum's for a cuppa, and then I drove L&R back to Brighton, where we played with their incredibly cute kittens for a bit. 

Wednesday I drove back, via Wales. Simon was very clingy and did not want to go back at all, so we had one of those sessions just before I dropped him off. Very exhausting, especially on top of a funeral. Still, he was very very well-behaved the whole time we were there, and it was such a short visit, I can't ask for more, really. 

I was so exhausted on Friday that I called in to my boss to ask for an extra day's holiday, or alternatively I'd have to take it as sick since I was waaaay too tired to work. There has now been a fuss over that since she was on holiday (which I didn't know since she'd said to me on Monday "see you Friday") and didn't pick up her voicemail. More on that later in the week, probably.

I haven't written in a while, I know.

( White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise )

Quick catch up of the last few days...

Went out to town last Friday with lots of the old resource planning gang from Crapita, including those of us who have moved on, and new boy Kieran, who disappeared halfway through the evening but seems a nice fella.

We started off in East 1 noodle bar off West Street, where we were served such enormous portions that none of us could finish (except Owen, who scoffed the lot!) and the quality was good, but the seating was that kind of wooden bench refectory-style which seems to be in fashion right now and plays merry hell with my back.

To our ever-lasting shame, nobody could work out how to split the bill equally nine ways, without using the calculator function of their mobiles. EXCEPT ME! Hahaha :-)

We then went on for drinks at a couple of pubs and then ended up back at Rhys' for a nightcap and an intellectual discussion about the merits of Shakira's videos. No, really. OK, it wasn't that intellectual, LOL. And once more I had terrible trouble getting a cab until I phoned Mercury, who have now moved to number one slot on my list. 

Had to go into work on Sunday and Monday morning to run the [insert appropriate epithet here] reports in preparation for my holiday due to Mum coming to visit. The damn MI didn't turn up on Sunday, so that was a complete waste of a journey to work, although I did spend the four hours before I gave up productively updating Facebook, which I am now favouring over MySpace since it has far less spammers and security holes.

So Mum arrived on Monday afternoon, and then spent the next 24 hours cleaning my house. No lie. To be fair, I hadn't been able to clean properly for some time due to my back pain, but also (as all the world knows) I fucking hate cleaning anyway. So I was quite happy to get a free cleaning service! She even bought her own equipment! 

So that took care of most of Tuesday, and on Wednesday we went out to Castleton with the intention of having a good walk, but unfortunately it started pissing down with rain, so after poking through the village for a bit (where i nearly had a wallet accident in a secondhand bookshop) and visiting the church, we decamped to the Plough at Hathersage for some lunch. 

Waved Mum goodbye on Thursday morning and then into the bank for a review with my "personal account manager", a very nice lady called Helen who has managed to save me nearly £80 a month on my loan repayments by renegotiating it in the face of complete indifference from head office. Hooray! On a similar note, I got my Xmas bonus from Renderosity, and very nice it was too.

Caz came up this weekend for a girly night (well, as girly as you can get with us two, i.e. not very) which was great, as we haven't seen each other for at least two years. Went out and ate at Sheikhs, and made a fair dent in a bottle of Kahlua,  and stayed up til after 4am yattering away about everything under the sun, and then carried on in the morning. Which explains why I had a sore throat the next day, LOL. We both said that we mustn't leave it so long next time!

And now I am at work, and it's just indescribably meh. The night out last Friday made me realise how much I miss having colleagues that I actually get on with. I even miss Owen's sarcasm and scathing remarks! I've just got nothing in common with the people I work with here. Well, the bloke I sit next to is a good laugh, but everyone else is just on another planet. 

Nick said he missed my evil cackle, hahaha. And Liz said it's no fun in the morning there any more because they can't listen to my team fielding ridiculous excuses on the absence line!

Oh well better go, as Totalview has FINALLY generated the skill plan...

Well, Grandma went into care last Wednesday. Mum said it was very gruelling, as they decided to tell her the previous night. As predicted, Grandma was very panicked and upset, not really understanding what was going on, and kept accusing Mum and Sally of "stealing" her home (where she got the idea that she owns it I've no idea, because it's rented and always has been...)

Spoke to Mum at the weekend and she said that she'd been in to see Grandma on the Friday and Grandma was in a right state, still crying and distressed. She also told Mum that she had been too upset to eat anything since the previous day, but when Mum took her down to the dining hall she repeated this and one of the nurses said No, she had breakfast this morning and ate the lot!

The trouble is, she is so confused in her mind that you end up not believing anything she says, which is what makes the elderly so vulnerable to abuse. I mean, if she tripped over and bruised her knee, for example, and then she told Mum or Sally that one of the care staff pushed her or hit her, we just wouldn't know what to believe. But thankfully this facility has an excellent reputation and Mum and Sally both feel very confident in the level of care she will get. 

Anyways, Mum has decided that me and her deserve a holiday, so we will be going away next year in the Spring, after Mum's sale completes. We could both really use one earlier, but so much stuff is not open until April, and Easter falls early next year, so we'd have to contend with school holidays. Also our Lucy is away through the middle of April on her charity trek, and if we're away during that then Mum will be fretting that we're incommunicado. So we're looking at the last week of April/first week of May.

So I've been looking around for nice holiday destinations and have been producing one of my famous shortlists (usually famous for being LONG, not short!) Our ideal destination will be somewhere that has nice sunny beaches, a pool, and sufficient shops, bars and restaurants without being overrun with sweaty English chavs. And we need to be within easy walking distance of both the beach and the restaurants/shops/etc. And we'd like there to be some local things of interest we can go see, like historical sites. Also, we want at least an apartment rather than just a hotel room, or for preference, a private villa. 

I suppose that sounds like we want the moon on a stick! But even with my exhausting requirements, I've so far got 32 strong contenders spread across Cyprus, the Algarve, Menorca and Mallorca. I'm also considering Crete, but I'm having difficulty finding affordable flights. And I still haven't looked into Turkey, Malta, Italy or mainland Spain. 

Feeling very bouncy and happy at the thought of sunshine, sea, sand and sangria! Realistically, I haven't had a good holiday since my honeymoon with Pat in 2002. 2006 - Mallorca with Pat and Simon, very stressful as we were at the point of breaking up; 2003 - Corfu with Pat, Simon and Eddie, and we all know how that one turned out. So I think both Mum and I deserve a good break!

In other unrelated news, I managed to completely destroy my beloved Bagpuss alarm clock. This was through total fuckwittery on my part which I am too embarassed to relate fully, but suffice to say Bagpuss ended up falling onto a hard surface, the display broke and the alarm was impossible to actually turn off once it had started going. Alas! So I have replaced him with a cheap and cheerful travel alarm, which I'm sure is far more adult and mature, but is much less friendly than Bagpuss waking me with his "*YAWN* It's time to wake up! And when Bagpuss wakes up, all his friends wake up too. It's time to wake up, you saggy old baggy old cat-person, it's time to wake up!"

Perhaps that will teach me not to be such a clumsy fuckwit in future, although I somehow doubt it, LOL.

Well, the server here at work has gone down, so I may as well get on with posting this!

The remainder of my journey passed uneventfully save for the complimentary drinks and biscuits, and I met up with 

lucy_pointycat at about 12.15 in Victoria. We had a brief sit down then toddled off to our very posh hotel, the Park Plaza. Extremely upmarket and swanky, this is a relatively new build with lots of art "installations" and very nice rooms. We had a very large room with the nicest bathroom I have ever been in (hotel or otherwise) - a huge bath (with separate handheld shower attachment - an absolute godsend for me and so rarely seen in hotels), separate wet room shower, all glass fittings and for some reason, a phone by the toilet. WTF? I could understand having a phone by the bath, but who wants to make a call while they're having a shit? 

I'd asked for early check-in, so we were able to dump our overnight bags before setting off to the shop where we intended to buy Lucy's outfit. She already had the top half (corset) so we were looking for a skirt to match. We got the Tube over to Camden and after a few tryings on, Lucy had picked her ideal skirt out. Being advised by the staff that the employees at the other branch in Spitalfields were total thickies, we decided to order the skirt in the relevant material right there rather than trekking across town on what might be a wild goose chase to find one in stock. This also meant that we wouldn't have to then drag the skirt (which I can say is a very full affair, without giving too much detail since Lucy doesn't want rhandolph seeing the ensemble until the day) all the way back to our hotel and then back to Brighton on the Megabus with Lucy. 

So we stopped for a spot of lunch, which was marred only by being accosted by a drunk Dutch punk asking us for money (I assertively told him to go away) then spent the rest of the afternoon poking around the shops and stalls in Camden market. I had never been there before and had no idea there was so much of it. It's very much the alternative hangout and I encountered some slightly strange looks as I stood there dressed from head to foot in Matalan, haha. 

We stopped for a drink since we didn't fancy our chances on the tube at 5pm, but even at 6.30 the tube was still heaving. We made it back to the hotel where we investigated the Executive Lounge where we got free booze and snacks, and I had an unfortunate glass-breaking accident. Then upstairs to our too, where I had a lazy bath while Lucy virtuously went to the hotel gym and sauna. 

I'd booked us a table at Chez Gerard for 9pm, which is just around the corner from our hotel. We skipped starters and went straight on to the main course - medallions of beef for me, and a tomato and mustard tart for Lucy. They were both absolutely spot on, and well washed down with a bottle of rosé. We shared dessert - a fruit sorbet with crushed meringue and raspberry coulis, and paid the very reasonable bill, then meandered back to the hotel, where were brought back down to each with a bang after ordering a large glass of wine and one bottle of Woodpecker and being charged over £18. Outrageous! It suddenly become clear how the hotel can offer such great rooms at such a reasonable rate - by making up for it in the bar, where the majority of customers will be on expenses and won't begrudge paying such a price!

The following morning we went down for breakfast, where we stuffed ourselves silly, before catching the tube over to St Paul's. Our intention was to go to the Tate, but we decided to take in St Paul's Cathedral on the way, since neither of us had seen it before. It's massive! Honestly, the sheer scale of the thing quite takes your breath away. We were going to go in and see the interior, but on discovering the entry fee of £9.50 each, we cried "Fuck that!" and went off to find the Tate, where they may ask you for a voluntary donation, but don't actually make you pay it.

We walked over the Millennium Bridge (which is quite impressive) and took in one exhibition, which was all we had time for. Well... I'm not one of these "I may not know much about art, but I know what I like" types, but frankly, there were only 3 pieces from the whole exhibition (over 40 pieces) which I would have wanted to own. And only in a "Hmm, I wouldn't mind that" way - there was nothing that made me want to steal it. There were another couple of pieces in which I could see the artistic value without in any way wanting to own them, but the remainder was just... well, it wasn't the pieces so much that annoyed me as the pompous plaques next to them, drivelling on about "the juxtaposition of the fragility of modern life and the erosion of traditional values creates a paradigm of shifting consciousness" and other such bullshit. There were loads of art students earnestly taking notes and studying the pieces with something approaching religious veneration, and I had to restrain myself from shouting, "Oh for god's sake, it's all a load of bollocks! Stick a paintbrush up my arse and it could produce something equal to that pile of rubbish!" (In fact the Tate would probably eagerly display such a piece and call it a "ground-breaking hommage to coprophilia" without even a trace of irony.)

Anyway, it was time to get back to the hotel, as Lucy's megabus was leaving at 12.40. We took the Jubilee line back, discovering that it was a lot "posher" than other tube lines; that Soutwark tube station is very attractive and was named "Building of the Year 2000" and that Westminster tube station is more artistic than anything we saw in the Tate.

Then a dash to Victoria coach station for Lucy and a leisurely checkout and joruney to St Pancras for me, followed by a thankfully non-eventful train journey back to Sheffield, although I did discover halfway home that I still had three pots of jam in my handbag that Lucy had asked me to appropriate at breakfast.

And back home to my kittens, who were less than impressed at having been left with the cat sitter, and mobbed me the moment I came in the door. Bless :-)

Well, I've said my last goodbyes at Capita/Dixons (although there are some annoyances that need sorting out, e.g. I still haven't received my redundancy pay despite my boss telling me it would be in with this month's pay, and my bonus is 5% instead of 7.5% so I may need to seek legal advice with that one.)

Went down to Brighton last Friday for an interview with Amex, but although they offered me the job (more or less immediately - the recruiter rang my phone as I was getting out of my car back at Mum's!) they weren't prepared to meet my salary needs, since they would have people on the team with more experience than me earning less. Which is fair enough really. But there's no way I can afford to move back down South on anything less than a £4k increase on my current salary (plus relocation allowance), so that's that for now.

So it's off to Freemans (Otto) on Monday, which I'm quite happy about. They have a gym and swimming pool onsite, and 30% discount off the catalogues after your 6 months probation. Only fly in the ointment is that I have to go to Bradford for the first day :-p Still, I'm to be there for 8am, so the traffic shouldn't be too horrendous at that time of day. Hopefully.

Dropped in on Grandma while I was down, as it was her birthday on Saturday. It's about 4 weeks now since she broke her wrist and she's not looking good at all. Obviously because I don't see her very often, any deterioration in her state is quite immediately apparent. That said, she doesn't seem too much worse than she was at Xmas. But Sally and Mum look absolutely KNACKERED and clearly can't carry on like this. Grandma now needs 24 hour care, and there's no way once the plaster comes off that she'll be able to go back to looking after herself again. She might be able to pull her own knickers up again but mentally she just isn't capable anymore of coping on her own.

Added to that, the fracture was displaced and probably won't heal right - they would have taken her for surgical pinning but apparently they decided she was too big a risk for anaesthesia.

Mum said that Grandma just wants to sit in her chair all day and do nothing. Mum keeps trying to persuade her out on walks and even managed to get her out on to the forest (with Sally's help) last week but Grandma clearly just didn't want to be there. Mum said, "Mmm, just get a breath of that fresh air, doesn't it smell great, Mum?" To which Grandma replied, "All I can smell is wet grass and dog turds!"

Joking aside, it's such an episode that really brings home how much she's just not there any more - she always loved the countryside, you couldn't have transplanted her from the village to the city. She loved being out in the garden, growing things, but this year, of course, her garden has just gone to seed. When I used to stay at Grandma's when I was tiny, we used to walk at least once a day across the fields into the village and get the day's shopping, stopping at the dairy on the way back so I could say hello to the cows. I suppose it was only about a mile each way, but because I was so little it used to take ages.

It seems clear to me that Grandma will have to go into residential care, but it's a question of getting everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, not to mention finding her a place somewhere that doesn't look like a prison camp

Took Simon down to my mum's for his 11th birthday at the weekend. Traffic was fucking awful and it took 6:30 hours to get there on Friday night. Note to self: never ever again try going widdershins round the M25 on a Friday night.

He was most impressed with his Tardis cake (although it had somewhat melted in the car, unfortunately) and we took him to Hever Castle on the day and he had great fun in the water maze. However, although I'd brought a change of t-shirt and trousers, I hadn't brought any spare boxers for him. This shouldn't have been a problem as he could have just gone without, however in putting on the trousers over damp skin, he made what was a small hole in the seam into a massive gaping hole, whereupon his dangly bits were on display to the world. Disaster! We drove into Edenbridge to try to buy a pair of pants. Could we get any - anywhere? could we fuck. Clearly, Edenbridge's doughty citizens go commando! Eventually his blushes were spared by me holding his wet boxers out of the car window, using my hand as an impromptu clothes prop, and drying them in the breeze on the way to Grandma's house.

Grandma seemed a lot more with it than the last time I saw her, she never drifted off at all, which leads me to wonder if her confusion is partly a result of failing eyesight, since she has just had a cataract removal which has worked well. Also could it be seasonally affected? Actually on thinking about it, probably not, I have seen her go into one of her vague spells in the summer as well as the winter. Anyway she was great and we had a good time picking raspberries in her garden.

I had bought a DVD player to take with me to mum's - I will need one for when I move out, so I thought I might as well so that Simon could watch his birthday DVDs. So we watched Wallace & Gromit on Saturday night, and then Simon watched his Dr Who discs on Sunday while Mum and I had a discussion about my moving out, etc. Unfortunately Simon got the hump because a) I was talking to Mum and not him, b) he couldn't hear what we were saying as we were sat outside in the sun, and c) he thought Mum was trying to persuade me to come back down South. So he got a bit of a strop on as we left but he cheered up during the drive home (which was mercifully shorter than the drive down.)

Since then he has been a bit clingy and had a couple of crying fits and been waking in the night and calling for me, but on balance he is handling it not too badly. Well, it's never going to be easy when your parents get divorced, eh?

It's been a nice xmas this year, if a little spoiled by a) not having any time off apart from xmas eve and xmas day (i.e. the weekend) and b) not being able to get down to see mum and grandma.

Still, it was relatively stress-free, mainly due to being quite canny this year about shopping online for the vast majority of pressies and doing so early enough to not be panicking in case they didn't turn up or were sent wrongly. (In fact this did happen with one of James's present - I ordered, via Amazon Marketplace, Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory, and when it arrived, they'd sent Meteorea instead. Luckily, he doesn't have either album and was just as happy with that one, but I wasn't impressed by either the mistake, which would have been understandable, nor the vendor's completely ignoring my mails >:-[ Fie on you, market_plus!

Well, the day itself went well, both Simon and James were very happy with their goodies, and despite Pat's protests of "don't bother getting me anything" he was pleased with his Gladiator box set and YSL shirt. (Plus biccies and allsorts and things from the kids.)

But I was the most chuffed I think. I had asked Pat to get me a MP3 player which was compatible with Napster to Go (which are quite a bit more expensive than a run-of-the-mill player) but due to my motherboard and hard drive failing a couple of weeks ago, he'd said to me, look, we're not going to be able to afford it - maybe for your birthday or next Xmas. So I was like, yeah, I know, don't worry, and I'd just forgotten about it.

Well of course he'd only managed to get me one! A beautiful 6gb Rio Carbon which I spent most of last night transferring my tracks onto. w00t! So now I have no excuse not to join a gym in January. Which I desparately need to do since I am rapidly exploding out of my pants :-p

Pat cooked an extremely nice dinner, we decided to have a pork and a beef joint so as to keep everyone happy and give us all a choice. I bullied him into cooking about 4 more vegetables than he'd bargained for, but honestly, if I left it up to him we'd have had peas and carrots and that would be it, unless you count potatoes, which I don't. So we also got sweetcorn, broccoli, roast parsnips and roast onions. Oh, and Pat made a carrot-and-turnip mash, which I would never have thought of, but was actually very nice. As usually happens, we had tons left of some things and ran out of others, but we didn't have too much of an imbalance, and we're not cursing our idiocy today, so that's all good.

Had a pleasantly quiet evening watching Dr Who and then an early night for me due to working today. Bah! I did NOT want to get up this morning, not due to over-indulgence, just all-round "It's dark and cold and my man is still asleep in a warm and cosy bed, it's not far"-ishness.

OK enough rambling, I must go and see if I can scare up some work. There's really nothing doing here at all...