Oh baby,
you make my heart go crazy,
you are so mayonnaisey
Askew, they do, go all my words and phrasey,
I am in some new-found daze-y,
for you are so mayonnaisey
The other girls, they may be hollandaisey
sometimes even bolognesey,
but not like my mayonnaisey
That movie, not by M Scorsese,
But by the Mr Patrick Swayze,
For dirty dancing I am just too lazy,
so in closing, it is time to says-me,
that you are the sweetest daisy
and of course, so very mayonnaisey.
5.15am. A strange dream. I found myself (in a train station, again) talking to someone I didn't know. Either they or I needed to go off to do something, but would come back. Worried that we might get separated, and also not knowing who this other person was, I thought I would offer them my business card. (After all, this might cause them to reciprocate and hand over their own card which would yield details of their identity.)
So I reached into my pocket full of business cards.. and every one I pulled out wasn't mine. Or it was mine but had been written all over (which is something I do).. but mostly, the cards weren't mine.
Of course, dreams are stupid and don't mean anything. Still interesting, though.
I am inspired! I'm not sure if this is your average mid-life crisis, or whether I am reaching a great turning point in my life, but just recently, something has occured to me.
1) Nobody is going to give me my dream job. I'm going to have to make it for myself.
Inspired by the whole idea of (1), this evening I have listened to the audiobook version of "Anyone Can Do It", by noted Scottish Dragon, Mr Duncan Ballantyne. Having heard his inspirational tales of how he made millions by selling ice cream and building care homes, I have now progressed to a second realisation!
2) Working for a living is altogether far too much hassle.
From this, 1+2 leads on to the inevitability of my final conclusion:
3) I want to retire. Right now.
At last I have a life plan! "What do you want from your life?" is a question asked by all good self-help books. And several bad ones too. Up until now, I was not entirely sure. Now I am. I want to retire! So at least I now have a plan. How to get there is another matter entirely.
P.S. Also bought some more premium bonds.
I've got nine whole days to myself before I'm "back at work". OK, I'm probably going to be checking my email every so often during that time, but the point is I still have a week off work (plus two weekends at either side) - and I can't help but think that I should use the time well.
I'm not sure how my tidying project measures up, I seem to have come to a bit of a standstill on that at the moment. I'm trying to gee myself up to throw out a few hundred videotapes that are really perfectly OK but aren't any use to me (or, seemingly, anyone else). That'll make a small amount of space which I can tidy other things into. Plus I've got two storage boxes full of things that I really need to take photos of and put on eBay.
I'd really quite like to find ten million pounds from somewhere. Not just because having ten million pounds is probably quite nice, but I want to make great art, and stuff, and that kind of thing tends to be quite expensive. Ten million is probably what I'd need. In any case, while I'm sure that I still have plenty of bits and pieces that I could sell on eBay, I'm not sure that it's quite THAT valuable. But every little helps, I'm sure.
Nine days. I have been somewhat inactive these past few weeks. I really should do something. How to get in the mood... I wonder. It would be a shame not to spend the time productively...
I wasn't at work today. I am having a four-day weekend, the first of many leave days which I will be taking off this month and next month.
Today I did no work at all. Well, not much, anyway. A little. I kind of made the mistake of reading my email first thing in the morning, with the best of intentions, just to let my colleagues know what to be getting on with while I was out. Unfortunately while doing so I caught sight of someone in another department trying to cause a huge stink about what a crisis it would be if I was out of the office and could not do anything that they might need me to do.
So I kind of felt the need to respond to that, with some robustness. And then another one. And then another one as someone else from another department (but managed by the same person who looks after the first troublemaker's department) also got in on the act, having heard that I was on holiday and therefore taking their chance to cause a stink as well. How on earth can the business survive if Ant is not here to do these crucial things? (They ignore that even on holiday I'm always contactable and can sort stuff out quite easily.) Apparently it only strengthens their case (already stated in the past) that they need a "more reliable" solution "which does not rely on Ant". So I had to respond fairly robustly to that one, too.
I only really check my email when I'm out of the office just to make sure that no fires have broken out - so I don't really appreciate witnessing such obvious attempts at arson. It's not paranoia when everyone really is out to get you. :-)
The head of both troublemaker's departments is very disappointed that I cannot attend a face-to-face meeting next Thursday, which apparently is so important that they cannot take advantage of my considerable availability to do it via a conference call. Again I have had to be forceful. I am - or am intending to be - on holiday next Thursday as well, and I do not wish to have it portrayed as some kind of selfish act that I am taking an entitlement of my employment at a time which is otherwise the most convenient for the company as a whole.
Great people I seem to work with these days.
But all that aside, I did almost no work and instead did much relaxing, watching a few DVDs (including Die Hard 4.0, which is reasonably watchable) and not much else. And on Monday I shall try even harder still not to check my email at all.
I realise today that I still have lots of holiday which I have not taken. If I don't take it before the end of the year, I lose it all - and this year, I'm determined to take it all. It'll be the first of (thinks.. nine.. ten.. eleven...) twelve years where I've taken all my leave - not bad considering that for the first nine years or so, I didn't take any at all.
So it looks like I'm going to have quite a lot of spare time during November and almost all of December. This might be what getting fired feels like, except with email.
So, the plan. There is no time to lose. I must immediately take leave next Friday, and also the Monday following, to return on the Tuesday, working a blissful four day week until I take one whole entire week off - yes, that's five whole days, ladies and gentlemen - before returning for another four days, and off again on the Friday.
December kicks off with an all-day lie-in on Monday, then a three day week before a four day weekend. Three more days at work, then I'm taking the Friday, and the next week, and the next week, and the next week! By the time I'm back, it'll be the new year.
What on earth am I going to do with myself? Of course I guess I could just not take all those days off and work just for the sheer gosh-darned pleasure of it all. Ha ha. Maybe once. But not this year.
Expect hourly blogging over the Christmas period if I get too bored!
