Dump, Donate or Redeploy.

I am a clutterbug, my beloved is a clutterbug ( although a tidier one) so are my 3 daughters. Our home is groaning with the weight of "stuff" we have accumulated in the 3 years we have been living here. It's easy for me to get rid of things that don't belong to me, but I struggle to deal with my own bulging drawers, shelves and cupboards.

This isn't a particularly bad one....

For those of you who have Facebook, the "Timehop" app will greet you each morning with the posts that you were sharing this day last year and all previous years you were on Facebook. Mostly they don't make any sense and are not worth reading, much less sharing, but the odd time they trigger a memory and raise a smile. A few weeks ago my Timehop shared my post from the same day in May 2009. It stated " I've got a skip and I know how to use it". I remember that time well. I felt like I do now, that my life needed a shake up, that I was bogged down in stuff. I was single, living with my daughter and felt like I needed a new start.

I ordered a skip and proceeded to shake up my life. I am a great believer in "cosmic gestures". I believe you need to physically and mentally make room in your life for a new friend, new relationship, new baby or new job before it comes to you. My skip was me telling the universe  "off with the old, bring on the new" Within 6 months I had a new relationship, was pregnant with our daughter, and had moved house and jobs- Whoosh!

I am in the same zone right now. My eldest daughter is finishing school and  starting University after the summer, my middle one starting school in September. It's time for me to shake up my life , to tug all the old stuff from under the beds, off the top of the wardrobes and the back of the cupboards and show the universe that I am ready. Ready for a new challenge, a new start and hopefully a tidier home.

My Manifesto

Let's face it , the current league of over privileged gentlemen in power  in London , and the rabble of bigots, hypocrites ex-cons and fanatics who hold the reins in Northern Ireland are less than inspiring. I am utterly bored with the tit for tat sniping and one-up-man-ship that seems to be politics these days.

I have a solution, let me rule the country! It's already in a mess, most people are deeply unhappy about at least one thing they have no control over and none of the current options are remotely inspiring.  What's the worst that could happen? Here's what I would do if I could.

Education

Introduce further compulsory subjects in school to GCSE-
at least one one language ,
cookery including nutrition
running a home, including financial planning,
driving and maintaining a car,
 parenting .

Shorter school holidays-
seriously 8/9 weeks in the summer, who needs that?
Young people who leave school at 16  would need to work, do an apprenticeship or  go into further education , no benefits.
All 18 year-olds would do 1 years national service, either in the military the Police service or in the community.
Free University or further education for all, providing they can hold down a part-time job and keep their grades over a C average.

Crime
All  of those found guilty of a crime should perform some sort of recompense to their victims.
Automatic rehab for drug and alcohol related offenders.
Custodial criminals to live in basic but comfortable conditions.
No TV computer or phone access unless it is earned by rehabilitation and recompense to society.
All prisoners to have a library, access to education and exercise, as well as good nutrition.

State Benefits
I don't believe that our current benefit system is working. Those who are capable of work should work."Jobseekers" need to be looking for work, not watching TV and taking kids to school still in their pyjamas. I would pay benefits for a couple of months if someone loses their job, after that they would need to be doing something to improve society to earn their keep. Making dinner for old people, painting park benches, clearing litter and grafitti, cutting grass. This would spur those who want a job back into work and those who are too lazy would realise life is not a free ride.

Immigration
I'm all for it. Northern Ireland is infinitely richer and with a greatly improved gene pool since the arrival of  immigrants from the EU and beyond. In my experience immigrants do a lot more to integrate into our culture than we do to try and understand theirs. They work, pay taxes, bring up their children well and bilingual. What's not to like?
I do not believe in an open door for the poor and disenfranchised of the world to come and claim benefits and free healthcare however. People who wish to benefit from living in the UK need to be contributing to the UK through taxes and labour.
Refugees of all nations need to be helped by us, and all the wealthy nations. It's partly our fault the world is in such a mess, our government needs to use it's influence on the other  G20 members and think about the people who are victims through no fault of their own.

Football
This is an important one. I am not crazy about the game, but I know a few who are. Football, to me, says a lot about what is wrong with our society. It is expensive, elitist and unfair.
Young men are paid countless millions to kick a ball about when children in our country are living below the breadline.
Cap the wages, take sponsorship, and opportunities away from those who commit serious crimes. Punish thuggish behaviour with proper fines. Fining a premier league footballer £100,000 is like fining you or me £10. It means nothing.

This is my best idea, only let those who were born within 50 miles of a club to play for them. Geordies for Newcastle, Scousers for Liverpool. Can you imagine a team getting to the top of the league because of talent, drive and training rather than  Italians?
Imagine going to St James' Park on a saturday afternoon to watch the Newcastle Derby with only Geordies and Mackams playing. Spending £10 on a ticket and getting a pie in the interval. Wonderful. Bring back the beautiful game.

Art is Dead, Long Live Art.

Imagine with me a future where painters can only buy two colours, actors spend their whole working lives playing the same part, dancers only "street dance" and musicians only play songs written for them and do not compose. Sounds horrendous, no? Yet this is exactly what seems to be happening in fiction publishing.

 Large scale publishing is killing literature. I get that it needs to be profitable , but at what cost?  If you write you will one day look into publishing your work. What you get from publishers , online writer's resources and agents is a long list of what they do not want. Publishers do not want , wizards, vampires, rhymes, short romantic heroes,  too long, too short, too many or too few chapters. They want a cover letter, biography and synopsis, correct spelling, punctuation and grammar and they want to be grabbed from the first sentence. No pressure then. If you choose to write for children the list of do's and don't's is even longer. Publishers expect you to research your audience, to craft your writing to fit in to a particular genre, age group and educational stage and to still be original ,entertaining and most importantly sale-able.  

If you have written a bestseller however, all of that goes out the window. They will publish any old dross you pump out. They will send you on book tours, into schools and expect to find yourself on the sofa with Ruth and Eamon; not to mention fighting off all of those Hollywood film offers. Publishers are not interested in good books, they are interested on marketable writers and best selling books.

The music industry  is going the same way. You only have to think of the previous winners of shows like the X-Factor to see the industry is eating itself. It is so busy giving us what it thinks we want that it is dying on it's feet. The moguls cry no one is buying music anymore, but why is that? Could it be because when a record company gets hold of a young artist they push them to produce, to tour to appear at the opening of all the envelopes. They tell them what to perform , what to wear, who to be. Is it any wonder they burn out, drop out and lose their muse? Creativity is an organic thing , it needs to be fed and nurtured. The best way to kill creativity in my humble opinion is to try to make it into a formula.

I used to think self -publishing through companies like Blurb and Createspace from Amazon was just a vanity project for those who refuse to believe their work isn't good enough to be published, but I have changed my mind. I think it's the future. If you have any talent and you put the work in sooner or later people will take notice. Why whore yourself out to publishers and agents who's primary interest is frankly, their own advancement and profit? 

.

Hire Me!

I am on the hunt again. Domestic drudgery and full time child care is really not my bag so I need to work. I do have a job, the managers and my colleagues are great, but it's not a good fit for me. I am BORED!

I dread the over complicated and repetitive applications I am forced to write, especially those who want a "full employment history"
here are some of the jobs I have had since I left school

Junior in a hairdressers- hair is surprisingly smelly.
Running the family B&B( mostly turning the hoover on and lying on the beds)
Housekeeping supervisor in a London Hotel ( see above)
Bar maid in Yorkshire "Let's have a real Guinness poured by the Irish barmaid" cue my blushes as they watch me pour two measured half pints into a glass by pressing a button.
Waitress
Child minder ( disaster)
Cafe Manager
Restaurant Manager
Restaurant supervisor
Receptionist in sunbed place. I had a good tan back then.
Drinks waiter in one of Belfast's first gay clubs (where I was viciously attacked by a crazy lesbian because I turned my back on her )
Beauty therapist
Aromatherapist and Reflexologist ( I am fully qualified)
Salon Manager
Self employed recruiter for beauty staff
Self employed domestic ironer/ cleaner with small team.
Telemarketer
Telemarketing team leader
Door to door and phone survey monkey
Sales administrator
Tour guide, people rounder upper and mover-alonger, Titanic fact aficionado
Enquiries officer medical company
Receptionist medical company
Firewarden walkie-talkie killjoy ( current position).

I am sure there are more I have long forgotten, most of them I enjoyed for a time , but boredom is a problem for me. That and years and years of being a bottom rung employee. There is nothing wrong with being at the bottom, after all someone has to do the work. Unfortunately even in this day and age employers see employees as a number, dispensable, disposable and fairly worthless. Apart from the very smallest companies who generally realise the value of a good employee and seek to keep those  they have trained.

I think I should be an employee consultant. A manager of mine told me once I was a great advocate for the staff, every company needs me!

This is what I would tell employers,

Hire staff well before you expect to be busy, so they are trained to cope when you are.

Employ young people and retirees, great for a balance of enthusiasm and experience

Don't ask stupid interview questions ( "who is your favourite Lion King character"- I was asked this once; or "what do you know about the company", "er whatever I have read on your website.")

Have a good staff room. Keep it stocked up and have  a cleaner. A large table in the middle of the room is best for staff relations. all staff should use it including managers. occasionally buy lunch/ fruit/ cakes for everyone.

Know everyone's names. Have social events regularly- not always alcohol related.

Provide proper training- not "shadowing."  Real training by someone who is accountable should that training be unsuccessful or incomplete.

After 3 months in the job ask your new recruits what they love about the job and what they hate. Aim to give them more of  what they love and  less of what they hate. There will be other employees who are their polar opposites.

If the company is doing great, tell your staff. The same if it is doing badly. Ask your staff what to do to get more sales/ footfall/members, or how to save on outgoings.

Do not excuse lateness, but always aim to give time off requested.

Reward a job well done, every time. If someone's performance is waning ask them why.

Job swap with your lowest paid staff at least once a year.

Always stick up for your staff in the face of public criticism, but get to the bottom of complaints.

Pass compliments on to your team.

So if you know of anyone who is looking for an employee who can tell them exactly where they are going wrong, gimme a call :-)

50 Shades of Hypocrisy.

For the record, I haven't seen "the" movie yet. I probably will for curiosity's sake. I am very happy for the handsome and charming Jamie Dornan. He is a local (to me) lad and deserves success as much as anyone.

what's not to like?

Now what am I trying to say here.
Any intelligent person who has read any of the "50 Shades" novels will realise they are about female sexual fantasy, and not domestic abuse. I have no desire to be stalked by a gorgeous billionaire, wait............ no really, it would be truly creepy; but I doubt there is an adult out there who hasn't fantasised at one time or another about what it would be like to have someone else dominate them. Now most of us wouldn't be in to the whole torture chamber, nipple clamp sensory deprivation bit, but a well timed slap of the buttock? or your lover telling you what to do in the bedroom, why the hell not?

The movie is a reaction to a phenomenally successful book series. They are cringingly badly written, with one dimensional characters and almost impossible sex scenes but they have  been published and are unbelievably popular We all know in reality most women would run screaming from Christian Grey, even if he was gorgeous. This however is fantasy, it is fun escapism nothing more. If teenage girls believe this is what love is we need to look at parenting, not blame it on EL James or Sam Taylor-Johnston.

Now to my point. a few weeks ago Facebook and Twitter were awash with "Je Suis Charlie" profile pictures as we were all devastated by the massacre of French journalists and cartoonists in Paris. We all condemned the violence and stated our right to freedom of speech and expression. Now, just a few weeks later , those same facebookers and twits are exclaiming we need to boycott 50 shades and donate to women's refuges instead. Hypocrite much? You can't have it both ways. either we have freedom to like what we like, or we are all robots obeying what big brother tells us to like.

I am a feminist, of course I do not condone violence against women ( or anyone else), but I defend mine, and your right to watch or read anything we damn well like.

I Am An Idiot

It's true, I am an idiot. I am 40 something , mother of 3, employed, in a long term relationship and people expect me to know stuff, and to not be an idiot, but I am.

I forget stuff all the time. I get into my car to go somewhere and  end up on my way to school or the supermarket when I intended to go to the park. I look at a recipe to make something new for dinner and go to the shops immediately forgetting what I need to buy. I have put a trolley load through the supermarket checkout only to realise I don't have a purse with me. I have filled my car with petrol and had to leave my phone with the cashier and zoom home to get money to pay.
I lose my car in a car park at least once a month, it's a miracle I have never left the children behind
(so far).

I was reminded of a majorly idiotic episode in my past today. At a cafe I asked the server for two red fruit shoot. She put everything I ordered on my tray and as she turned to get the kids drinks she repeated "two red fruit shoot" as she picked up two purple fruit shoot. It reminded me of a time  when I was working in a hotel bistro. I was having a lovely time serving and chatting to  a gay couple. one of them had severe allergies so throughout  their meal I made several trips to the kitchen checking ingredients and suppliers with the chef. After their meal , during a lengthy discussion they decided they would like ice cream as we couldn't guarantee no nut residue in any of the puddings. I duly went off and made them two lovely sundaes.You can just imagine  the look on their faces as I set the dishes on the table in front of them, ice cream of various flavours, fresh fruit, sauce a parasol and all topped off with some delicious chopped nuts. Doh

I have no doubt that I will have plenty of chances to show off my idiot calibre tomorrow putting my car through the MOT. "Indicator!" cue wipers "Break!" cue clutch "Fog Lights! " "What?" can't wait.

School Run Style

I had a little smirk to myself earlier this week when  the papers unveiled Colleen Rooney's new collection for Littlewoods with the strap line "perfect for  the school run".

What is this magical "school run"? Is it like a weekend in a country house where you have 17 separate outfits and accessories to suit every activity?

Is it a special social event that only parents  and child carers are privy to and that requires a specific and stylish outfit?

Remember Trinny and Suzanna? They were all over the school run back in the 90's encouraging mothers to accesorise in beige and Navy. There are entire blogs dedicated to this mythical event.

For most of us the school run is less fashion event and more frantic 30 minutes early in the day where you try to get 1 or more child out of your possession for a few hours. You leave  the house with kids, book bags, satchels,wellies scarves and hats( because they won't wear them) money in different labelled envelopes for  the 40 different events taking place each week and try to remember your own bag.

If I can get my two safely dispatched within 10 minutes of  the bell ringing wearing two matching shoes and having remembered to wipe the snot/ porridge residue off my top I consider that a successful "school run". If I have forgotten to put on my gingham belly top/shorts combo with matching pump and an easy and practical "up-do" to compliment my sunglasses maybe I am normal after all.