Stage 1: Sanding – this took AGES!

1st coat of paint!!  WOOOOOP!

<rant> I don’t understand quite how the postal service employees are allowed to strike.  It is all very well for them to not bother turning up for work, but how any other businesses would you get away with taking money from people to deliver a service within a timescale and then just not bothering to do it?

If I pay to have something sent first class, I do not expect it to take five days to arrive.  It is absolutely pathetic.  I have not received regular post for nearly a year now, because our postman seems to deliver completely sporadically and at different times every day (on the days where he comes at all).  The other day I got some post (hooray!)  It consisted of two charity bags (I am all for giving stuff to charity shops but I just get far too many bags – they do make excellent bin liners though!), a load of junk mail (about seven pieces, half of which he’s thrown around the doorstep and not actually bothered to put through that marvellous little hole known as a letter box) and a few important pieces of mail.

The postal service make a complete mockery of people.  If you don’t want the jobs posties, get the sack, because there are plenty of people out there who are desperately in need of jobs.</rant>

I have just got into the office to catch up on a little admin after a rather busy week.  It feels so peaceful sitting here before life has emerged in the town centre on a Sunday morning.  It makes such a change from walking round town yesterday where I could barely move through the stream of traffic crossing the road and piling into Primark, Cheltenham’s finest jumble sale.  I feel so sorry for the Primark staff, who must spend their entire life piling clothes onto stands, let alone having time to fold them.  It was so busy in there that I was being shoved around and barged past (people seem to have forgotten the words “excuse me please”) whilst climbing over discarded vest tops and lonesome shoes.

There was the usual array of ‘garments’ (if you can call them that), some so hideous that you could not discern whether they sat on your top or your bottom and others, perfectly acceptable (if you like neon orange with gold embellishments).  There are many things that Primark do very well.  I had just wandered in to get some plain tees and things, but I actually couldn’t get to the till.

After this I thought I would try Peacocks, where, believe it or not, they just didn’t have any plain T-shirts(?!) We then took a trip to Wilko, to get some paint for my dressing table, which is always an experience.  I nearly got run over by a small boy with a stud earring pushing a small trolley at huge speed through a crowd of people. Excellent.  No parents in sight.

I purchase my antique gold and cream paints as I have finally almost finished sanding the dressing table and removing the thick layers of gloss paint.  It is going to be very pretty (I hope!!)

Today Simon wrote me a cheque for £1 000 000.  shame I can’t cash it!!

The effect caused by having a really awesome sticker and no appropriate place to use it. General symptoms include keeping the sticker in a drawer and never actually using it.

From the Urban Dictionary – love it!! I have this problem ALL THE TIME!

You know it’s Friday when….

Found this brilliant old lady in Bristol yesterday!!  Hahaha.  I have decided that she was a failed Miss World candidate 70 years ago and is now on a serious rebellion.

My Mum has just reminded me of a blinder of a text that she sent me once….

“Hello! How are you? Enjoying coffee and acid in moomoo on Bath Road”

Excellent!!  She was actually eating a bagel.  I think I am quite relieved.

Typos can be fatal.  It is amazing which keys, simply by being located next to one another, can get you into serious trouble.

One such example was when I was emailing a client recently and realised (too late unfortunately) how close the letters ‘t’ and ‘g’ are to one another.  never again will I attempt to sign off an important email with the word “regards”!

My friend Lucy informed me that she had managed to end an email (luckily she DID notice in time) with “Breast regards” after informing another participant that she had been rather “busty” of late!!  Brilliant.

Other classics of my time:

Predictive text.  ALWAYS gets me.  Every time.  Mobile phones should be banned.

Certain words that should be checked are:

Any friends you might have called Amy.  “Boy, Any, Box, Cow” are some of the options offered, none of them very complimentary.

“me”/”of” – always muddled.

Now that I try to think of them my mind has gone blank – I will record more as I recall them.  However, my all time epic was the following text sent to a friend after a friend’s party…

“Hi mate, how are you?  I have had a good night thanks, helped bonk a Mexican for my friend’s 27th, it was yummy!”

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.  Replace “bonk” for “cook” and you get a very different (and correct) story.  Again, if it was pizza that had been cooked, I might have been in less trouble.

We had an excellent preacher at church last night from the US of A.  It was great, he sounded just like Jessica Fletcher from ‘Murder She Wrote’.  He delivered a great sermon and somehow Americans have this knack of sounding really profound, whatever they say.

There was one point he made though which has got me thinking.  He said that sin will not be your downfall/nemesis/something or other, but doubt will be.  I am just not sure about this although I totally understood what he was saying.

His point was, that you will constantly be held back by doubt.  If you doubt that God will heal someone then maybe you won’t ask him to.  If you doubt that God exists then your faith could be on the rocks.  If you doubt that you are good enough then you will never use the gifts God has given you.  He reminded us that every time God speaks, the enemy lies (not in those words).  Every time you are certain of something, doubt is right behind you, creeping in to ruin you.

The above is absolutely true.  However I do not think that we should underestimate the detrimental effects of sin.  The whole of the fall was based around sin and disobedience.  The whole reason that Jesus had to die on the cross was because of sin and the whole reason that we got separated from God was because of sin.  It is quite a big deal.

Doubting Thomas got a rap on the knuckles, but sinful Adam and Eve got banished from the garden of Eden.  Ouch.

Sin is not a popular subject, mostly because we are all rather partial to it, but would not like anyone else to know!  I wish I could twist the Bible verse that says “do not let you left hand know what your right hand is doing” and make it relate to sin and interpret that you can brush it under the carpet, but actually this verse relates to blessing other people and doing it secretly rather than on show!  Ah well.

Sin…  Not to be taken lightly.