Interview

Yes, I know I look a bit weird, but I was looking into the sun!

The other day as I was driving back from PE to school, the girls in the front wanted to do an interview with me. Well, that was fine with me and I even decided to answer truthfully (I have been known to tell children I was related to Santa Claus and that I was 734 years old). The first few questions were asked by one girl and were about my name and my age. And then she didn't know what to ask anymore. Fortunately there were several other little girls who did. So, here are some of the questions I got:

What is your name? Mara

How old are you? 39

Do you have a husband? No (even in this day and age, that is usually one of the first questions children ask)

What is your favourite colour? Pink for a car, yellow for flowers, blue for sweaters

What is your favourite music? Dolly Parton (they didn't know who it was, but the teacher was going to show them later)

What do you do when you are not working? I watch television or films or I spend time on the internet

What is your favourite film? Well, anything Christmassy

Do you watch Christmas films in the summer? Of course, if it is really hot, a nice wintery film might help cool me down

When we had arrived at school, I asked them whether I would now be in the school paper and they said no! Hm...

Well, hello there!

No, my little computer still serves as a stable for the trojan horse and my big computer is still slow, although I did manage to make it a bit faster by defragmentatingating(?) it yesterday. Which was very necessary!

Anyway, my week has been quite busy and I didn't find any time to get my little one to Kyhan (which is my local computer shop), but today it's quiet at work and before leaving for my afternoon shift I will take it on a little trip to town and drop it off.

My week was busy with school trips and such like. On Monday I killed a mirror, so I am probably looking at seven years of bad luck (oopsie), but I also did buy a lovely catty ornament by Villeroy and Boch. I know it's not Belleek (my favourite china/porcelain), but it's still quite nice. On Tuesday five busloads full of four and five year olds went to a large playground, where we found about twenty other buses as well, all loaded to the rooftop with four and five year olds! It was nice however, since I managed to speak to a colleague who I get on with really well.

Then on Wednesday I had a group on board who made so much noise it was incredible. And the teacher didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary! There are times when I am quite jealous of those people who need hearing aids: I would have loved to just turn them off! Yesterday was another quite easy day which nearly landed me with half a case of beer. With the emphasis on the nearly, since one of the passengers was already busy getting all the beers out of the fridge again. Sigh.

Today is the quietest day of the week. For me anyway, since I had to do a school run. And when I arrived this morning in the village where we start, there was nobody left, so I drove back home again and got my cats some fresh kitty litter.

Right now I am enjoying all the songs of this year's Eurovision (I bought the cd, mmm) and I have just finished some of the financial things I needed to do. And I am pleased to say I am within reach of the money I need to make the move: 91% of the total needed. Two more months and a lot of selling more and I will be over. Lovely!

I will be by shortly (either today or tomorrow) to visit all your blogs, but since my big one is still on the slow side, it might take a bit, so please do excuse me!

Horse

A while ago I was away for a week without access to the www. Then a few weeks ago I was ill and couldn't really bear the www. And this week it's the turn of my little computer to be trojan horsed and I dare not use it.

So, please bear with me while I work on my large laptop that is soooooooooo slow! My small laptop will be going to the shop tomorrow (if I make it back on time) and otherwise next week.

"Sigh"

Family

Today was the day my family met again. Out of the 52 possible family members, 49 showed up. From the oldest who is nearly 70 to the youngest who is only one month old. The last time we had a big family reunion was four years ago and babies from then were now actual children! We've also had some additions in the form of new babies and partners, which is always nice.

All week the weather had threatened to throw a massive spanner in the works. After weeks of dry warm weather, this week the weather changed and more and more rain was coming in. But apart from the one big shower which lasted all of two minutes, we had a lovely sunny and dry day. There was a lot of room both inside and out, there were footballs, bubble makers and pavement chalk for the children and enough food and drink to feed a small army. And I should know, since I went shopping for it all yesterday! Two shopping trolleys that were overflowing!

The grown-ups all chatted to each other, talking about jobs, my emigration plans, the new baby, the new baby that is still on the way. There was laughter and of course there were also some tears. I had organised a relay which failed spectacularly (everybody started at the same time) and in the afternoon there was a serious game of football (the proper version with a round ball) going on between several of my cousins with a few children in it as well.

Unfortunately I didn't see a lot, since I was one of the organisers and the word delegate doesn't seem to be in my vocabulary. Although there was plenty of help from the aunties and cousins and even if some were grumbling a bit, they did it in good nature. So, all in all, it was a great day.

For obvious reasons I will not place any photos of my family on here, although the photo at the top does show my cousin who helped me with the groceries.

ESC

My sister is here. And the main reason she's staying with me and not with my parents is the European Song Contest which was held yesterday. It might also have something to do with the amount of moving around to find a bed when she would stay with my parents due to my brother and his family also staying with them last night. All because of the Big Family Reunion today!

The Moldovan Entry

But I wanted to talk about the European Song Contest or ESC for short. Because yesterday, for the first time in years, it was finally about the music again and less about all the acts! Don't get me wrong, Moldova still sent garden gnomes on acid and a unicycle, Estonia was doing magic and the Ukraine had a good song, but an even better sand artist! France had sent a tenor who actually sang in (shock horror) Italian! And the Italians were back after a gap of 14 years and nearly did the biggest stunt of all by finishing in second place! Ireland sent two hyperactive twins who wore leggings (not a good move) and sang about lipstick and Sweden had a heart throb, including dimples in both cheeks, who ended up third.

The Irish entry

Of course this doesn't count all the numbers that didn't make it to the grand final and lost already in one of the two semifinals. The Netherlands of course (seven times in a row), Belgium with an awful a-capella song, Belarus sang about Belarus and the first semi final I didn't even see, so I don't know what atrocities didn't make it (Portugal was bound to have been one, judging by their dress sense).

But the winner in the end was Azerbaijan, a former Soviet Republic with a sort of forgettable ditty. They were happy to have won though and according to Graham Norton who commented for the BBC, they were one of the few who actually had the funds to organise the biggest party of the world next year due to their oil reserves!

I don't know

I hope you are not angry with me! Because I know for a fact more people had commented on my last post, than the two it says right now. I didn't delete them (I only delete from weirdos and I don't think you lot are that far yet), so they must have been lost in cyberspace!

Mind you, I couldn't get on the blogger all day yesterday due to something or other, so it might have to do with that!

Anyhoo, yesterday was spent doing a very early shift and a very late shift. I started at half past six in the morning and finished at nine in the morning. And then, some joker planner had decided that it would be fun to do make me start again at 8pm and finish at 1.30am! Of course I didn't agree with how 'well' that worked, but never mind, I did both shifts.

The early morning jobby was the school run and the late night one was a concert run. One of the Netherlands biggest Dutch singing stars is Marco Borsato (yes, of Italian descent) and he gave four sell-out concerts in Arnhem. We arrive with a load of buses to get all the concert goers back to the station or the parking lots within one hour. And indeed, after only two runs (and a little detour), the place was empty and I could go home again.

The song at the top is one of his songs and it was actually the first one I ever heard. It was already hugely popular at the time and I was amazed at how people reacted to it. So, for all you Dutchies out there reading this blog: enjoy!

Ah

This is the former rectory (now restaurant) at Wimpole Hall in England. And this house would be my dream home. Beautifully symmetric, not too large and certainly not too small. Because I would love to have a seperate room just for my books (and my dvd's), a large kitchen, a lovely living room and a couple of bedrooms so I can have guests to stay.

One day...

Might be a gross post. Scrap the might...

Yesterday Sophie introduced a new move: sliding along the floor on her bottom. It looked quite funny, but to her it was a necessity. Because her poop was stuck!

Cats tend to eat grass to make them vomit. Which they then seem to do indoors with abandon and not at all outdoors. But Sophie had decided that she might train to be a cow and had not vomited. So, the grass had travelled to her colon and needed to be pooped out. But grass is long and while half of it came out with the poop, the other half got stuck inside. Which in turn produced the new move, because she couldn't get rid of it.

I felt sorry for her though and got myself some tissues and went after her. I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and was able to get the blades out completely. Which was a stinky, smelly and dirty thing, but what can you do? I washed my hands thoroughly afterwards! I hope she has learned her lesson, but I doubt it somehow.

Told you it was gross...

Friends and family

Last night my friends came over for a lovely chat and tea and scones (I provided the tea, C provided the scones). We don't see each other often enough and that's mainly due to, well our lives really. Pepperfly is a teacher, C is a ticket controller for the railways and I am a busdriver. So, finding some time where the three of us are off at the same time, is quite an undertaking. But we managed it last night. And it was nice as always. We chatted, drank tea, chatted some more and more and more and all of a sudden it was a quarter past ten. And then we chatted some more and it was twenty past eleven before they finally left!

And today gave another little plus, this time on the family side. I received an email from my brother who (as you may know) is a neurologist and his wife is a gp. He was quite surprised by the way I had been diagnosed with sinusitis and had sent me a long email with a lot of information about sinusitis and the proper way to diagnose.

On that topic: I am feeling better and I will start work again tomorrow. The fever has gone and the headache is barely there anymore. So, thank you all for your best wishes and your advice.

You are fired! And then what?

The Manor House Hotel, seen from the lawn

Since I told you all about my job as a receptionist at the Manor House Hotel in Castle Combe (England), I bet you would like to know what happened to me after I got fired.

First of all I need to set the scene of course: the manager of the hotel had called me into his office at the back of the hotel. Nothing glamourous at all, just a tiny little office guarded by his secretary. I was asked to sit down and then he told me about the complaints and how they could not keep me on at reception. I was of course shocked and also quite outraged: why had nobody said anything sooner so I could mend my ways? I never did receive a satisfactory answer to that, probably because he wasn't my biggest fan in the first place, but he did continue to say that: 'even though I don't feel that you would be suitable for reception over here, we would like to keep you working for this company. So, where would you like to work?'

Excuse me? Was he offering me a job in the hotel he just sacked me from? Well yes, he did! In retrospect I think it might have something to do with the fact that me working the front desk and him being out in the front so often and us meeting quite often wasn't something he wanted. However if I were anywhere else in the hotel he wouldn't be running into me every day (and before you ask, there was never anything more going on than mutual antipathy). I think he gave me a few days to think about it.

The restaurant

Needless to say I did some severe thinking. First of all: did I want to stay at the hotel? And that was a yes. And second: where did I want to work? I went over all the different departments in the hotel in my head. Housekeeping: nope, getting up early every morning and having to turn down the beds every night didn't appeal to me at all. Gardening? No need really, there were already three gardeners and they could handle their work with ease (although speaking of the gardeners, every Christmas I would be invited by the head gardener Tom to have dinner with him and the other two gardeners). Kitchen then and become a chef? Godfried of Bouillon no! Having to deal with the head chef from reception was bad enough, having to deal with him in the kitchen would be hell! Besides, I didn't want to be stuck on peeling potatoes and carrots every single day!

In the end I decided on the restaurant. Become a waitress. I would work from 10am to about 2pm and then again from 6pm until the last guest had left. I would set the tables, fold napkins, polish silver and glasses and serve food. I got into quite a few fights with the head chef, he made me blush even more often (and before you ask: no, there was never anything going on between us, apart from reluctant sympathy) and basically enjoyed my life as a waitress.

There were weddings, Japanese coach parties and the occasional VIP, the worst being Mr Orzabal from Tears for Fears. Not that he wasn't nice or friendly, his problem was he would arrive on a Sunday night at about a quarter to nine! And the kitchen would usually close at nine. Our one night where we might actually get off early and he had to spoil it!!

The uniform

The best thing about the job were the hours. You could have a lie-in in the morning and you were off during the afternoon, unless you were serving afternoon tea which was brilliant: nobody looking over your shoulder. The worst part was definitely the uniform. A black short sleeved dress and a white pinnafore with the bands crossed at the back. It looked nice and olde worlde, but the chamber maids wore the same uniform! It was extremely hot during the summer months, where tea would be served outside and so so cold during the winter when you had to take roomservice to the cottages on occasion (which had numbers by the way).

The restaurant team, the fourth person from the left is the restaurant manager

After a while I got a promotion which meant no more afternoon tea service for me and I was allowed to boss my colleagues about. Which was brilliant. But after a year and a half, the monotony got to me and I wanted to get out. I should have asked my boss to get me relocated to a different restaurant, but in the end I quit and went home to my parents.

By the way: when I went to ask the hotel manager for an advance on my wages, he refused. Until I told him I was leaving and he couldn't get the money out of the safe fast enough!