N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o theyve run out of Gin-ger-bread latte :o(

I went into Starbucks this morning to have gingerbread latte # 32 and was told that they have no gingerbread syrup left...

...to say I was distraught was an understatement, it was weird, everything started going in s-l-o-w motion, and then I had an OOBE and saw myself lying on the floor sobbing :o( From up above I spotted a half filled tub of toffee nut latte sprinkles (which they had managed to "acquire" from the other store) which soon reunited my body with my soul, I awoke just as James was spoon feeding me a toffee nut latte, whilst gently rubbing eggnog latte into my temples! ;o)

Christmas was good, this was down (in no small part) to buying the stuff for dinner ready prepared (yes I know its cheating), although I did make some Yorkshire pudding but admittedly it was as thick as a brick where I didnt make it in a large enough tin - it was still really nice though ;o)

It was blooming typical...

...I came down with a cold last Sunday, I had the Monday off anyway and ended up having the Tuesday off sick and missed the Christmas lunch, I had a blocked up "dose" and really wouldnt have enjoyed myself. I made it in Wednesday and Thursday was only working until lunchtime anyway.

Christmas Eve was good at work (apart from finishing at lunchtime) as we had mince pies and bucks fizz (I had three glasses ;o)).

Between Christmas and New Year NXEA have their usual Engineering Works terminating all trains at Stratford meaning that I have to get the London Underground around to Liverpool Street. As usual it will be easy enough to get there in the morning, its just the getting home in the evening which is always more tricky! Oh well, if nothing else it will make a good post ;o).

for gorgeous surprises we have given you a less cheap room*

When I booked our afternoon tea James suggested staying somewhere the night (perhaps even the hotel where the afternoon tea was). I thought the price would be well out of our league but had a look anyway. Blow me they had a festive shopping offer knocking around £100.00 off of the price of a room. Knowing this would be our only real chance of staying somewhere so posh at a half decent price after lots of umming and ahhing we decided to go for it.

The receptionist actually took us upto our room (as opposed to the usual "the lift is to the left" I normally get). Our room actually had a hall way (weve never been in a room THAT nice) and the bathroom boasted the deepest bath in London (it was pretty deep). The only downside (but a big one in our opinion) was that there was no tea or coffee making facilities! James even rang down to ask and was told matter of factly that "one can order tea or coffee through room service" I dont think so!

Another thing they didnt do there (or rather their bar didnt) was Guinness but haha I found as some Aspall Cider instead (which was also nice). We even had the whole upstairs part to ourselves, it was like having our own private area ;o)

The afternoon tea was really nice and thankfully the finger sandwiches didnt contain any fingers - I inspected them thoroughly before eating them ;o). They could have been minced up I guess ;o), we were actually offered more sandwiches too before we started on our scones and pastries. We were also offered the extra sandwiches before the other people too (perhaps this was because we looked unrefined enough to cause a scene if werent seen to first) who says that being common is bad? ;o).

Thanks to staying the night there I now know how to walk from Regent Street to Knightsbridge I would have just normally got the underground around. Im turning very cosmopolitan! Is that the right word? who knows!

We were walking down Piccadilly toward Fortnum & Mason, and we saw someone about to cross the road and James said that guy looks remarkably like Danny Wallace, and sure enough it was. He seemed friendly enough and James shook him by the hand and asked him if he had anything in the "pipeline" and he said he was working on a collection of his columns. We will be on the lookout for that ;o).

On Thursday we had snow (or rather we still have snow from Thursday)...

* some dialect may have been over exaggerated for comedic effect **

** ok I admit it the guy spoke really good English ;o).

one day week

This is going to be a good week, because I am only working on Monday ;o)

The only thing we have planned so far is a festive afternoon tea, I even got a phone call today asking if we had any dietary requirements (how cool is that?) perhaps I should have mentioned that were not too keen on having "finger sandwiches" as my mum would say "you dont know where theyve been" ;o)

One of my bosses has been in Australia on business for the past couple of weeks, and he came back on Thursday and said that the toys I had sent out went down really well.

On Monday I sent the last four toys out to Australia, and spent the remainder of the week taking the presents around to our brokers in London, and taking my camera with me to take some photos along the way ;o). I managed to keep my work friends amused with my sense of direction or rather the lack of it...

...one place I asked about someone said "do you know where the Hung Drawn & Quartered is?" I said "yes, I saw that when I got lost trying to find the post office" ;o).

Needless to say I took my phone with me just in case! I only needed to phone once as I couldnt find the office i was looking for and then realised the road continued after the junction, the road then lead onto London Bridge. At least I now know how to get to London Bridge should the need arise ;o).

On Thursday I managed to avoid some train troubles...

...just as I was getting off the train at Chelmsford, an announcement came over that all trains to and from London were now going to be subject to delays. I then got a text message saying that a person had been hit by a train at Ilford, I was so glad I missed that.

39 parcels later

What an eventful week its been...

The week started out really wet (by really wet I mean I was soaked through before I even got into work on Monday morning). My feet were really wet and I was whinging & whining before eventually trudging down to Next to buy some new socks. I was much nicer after putting on some dry socks. I was even walking about (not just sticking to the confines of our office) in just my socks to allow my shoes to dry out ;o)

I have been down to the post office so much this week (10 times - one day going three times), that not only did the staff start recognising, but they were asking exactly what was I posting ;o).

On Fridays we have our fire alarm tested, this Friday the fire alarm went off but didnt stop, so we went down the fire exit and the doors were locked! So we walked through to go out of the main doors. Anyhow we were standing there in the cold waiting to be allowed back in and we heard sirens (someone said that they saw a reflection of a fire engine) so i said "do you think its for us?" and 5 minutes later the fire engine complete with crew pull up outside our building, then a few minutes after that we were allowed back in.

In the meantime my boss went out to get us bacon sandwiches (he offered to get them before the fire alarm even went off). So I went to make us some drinks (it always seems to be me) and saw that the office next to the kitchen (which is currently empty) had the windows wide open (my guess is that someone may have been smoking in there - as it had that smell about it) no wonder we got a fire engine!

Next week I will trudging across London (well the square mile) this time to deliver packages to our brokers. I cant believe how much walking I will be doing ;o)

this would never have happened in the French Revolution!

Last week I mentioned that I had wrapped up 77 die cast drills to give as presents to our brokers...

During the week I started getting the presents ready to send out. I printed off the Merry Christmas message to go on the presents (printed on A4 paper), as they had to be trimmed I got the guillotine out of the cupboard to trim the paper, and the bloody thing wouldnt work, it wouldnt cut the paper at all! I have ordered a replacement blade, which is being delivered to the UK partner from Germany on Tuesday.

So I ended up cutting them by hand, needless to say my cutting abilities arent great but they will do ;o).

I have posted seven so far to Australia, and I have a whole lot more to send next week and for most of them the last posting date is this Friday. My feet were sore enough this week. James your on stand by for some foot rubbing ;o). Poor poor James... ;o)

I was queuing up in Starbucks this morning getting Gingerbread latte # 15 and there was a bloke behind me on his mobile (cell) phone to a mate saying "Im in Costa and they have ginger loaf cake" I cant believe he uttered the "C" word in my beloved Starbucks. If I was one of the Barristas I would have unceremoniously chucked him out (after he paid for his drink) for being so stupid!

It would have made me laugh if he was supposed to be meeting his friend for a gingerbread latte and ended up in the wrong coffee shop ;o).

I took the plunge and weighed myself this morning since our holiday, I was hoping against hope to have lost something since I last weighed myself, but no I put on five pounds FIVE POUNDS FIVE POUNDS FIVE POUNDS. Mind you I am pretty sure Ive lost something since I have come back as my work trousers do feel looser.

it feels a lot like Christmas

Wednesday saw the delivery of 78 die cast drills, that are presents for our brokers...

I spent Thursday and Friday in our meeting room (so I could have room to spread myself out type of thing) wrapping up the drills, I wanted to get them done before Monday, as we will have auditors in, and they will be in the meeting room. I ended up using 11 rolls of wrapping paper ;o).

Im so glad that the toys arrived early this year, as I have two whole weeks (yes thats 14 days) to sort out the ones to go overseas, as the last posting date is 4th December. You may remember that last year I was running around like a headless chicken! Only time will tell though ;o) or should that be a :o(.

Talking of all things Christmassy, me and James have decided to go for a festive afternoon tea on our week off, I will have to make sure that Im drinking my earl grey tea with my little finger cocked out ;o).

Oh I was in Sainsburys this morning doing our weekly shop, and I was calling James (or rather letting the phone ring twice and disconnecting the call - so he knows that Im about to pay), and I saw a nine year old girl with her Mother and Grandmother.

The girl was crying and the grandmother was saying "she did apologise" and the mother was saying she has to learn to be more respectful. I took this to mean that she had been rude to her Grandma. Suddenly this other woman storms up to them yelling "I have been a nanny for 30 years and the children that I have looked after have all had good manners", the mother than yells out at her "she apologised" and the woman shouts "no she didnt" and the mother yelled back "are you calling my daughter a liar" at which point the poor girl was in tears again.

All of this was happening at the front of the store (which incidentally is the only place you can get a phone signal since the store was refurbished a couple of years back).

We were In Starbucks this morning getting my 11th Gingerbread Latte, and their coffee machine had decided to breakdown. Its typical that these things will always breakdown at the busiest times. It looked like the coffee grinder (built into the machine) wasnt grinding the coffee as the baristas kept on removing the perspex bowl with the whole beans in and were "poking about" where the beans would be grounded. I do hope they disconnected the machine first - I dont want my next gingerbread latte being made by a nine fingered barista ;o)

Finally a goodbye to Als blog :o(. Me and James will both miss your musings...

It was spa-tastic

I had a great day on Tuesday (what with the not going to work and all ;o)). Me and two of my friends went to Greenwoods Spa for my friends 40th birthday (I still cant believe that my best friend is 40 or even worse that I will be that next year!).

I will have to start acting like a responsible adult soon (I just KNOW IT) :o(

I went for the same treatments (manicure, pedicure and facial) as the birthday girl and all three of our treatments were done at the same time.

You can tell that there is a recession on as they had special offers (slightly cheaper than if you had already booked them) for some of the more expensive treatments. I would have been well annoyed if I had booked something and saw that I could have got say £10.00 off!

Our facials and pedicures were done before lunch, I know my feet arent very nice, but I thought it was a bit insensitive of the girl to put safety goggles on (whilst yelling "I think I have won the £25.00 worst trotter sweepstake - with this one") ;o).

We then had a two course lunch, I went for the steak and guinness pie (which was quite small) and a small walnut torte with coffee ice cream for dessert. Considering it was mid week and there not being loads of people, the service was really slow. I even had to ask when we were going to get our desserts as by that point we were late for our manicures!

The treatment desk even rang to say that we would have to go up there that minute or to rebook our appointments! My friend (the birthday girl) who just had a smoothie went down and told them that I would be another 10 minutes. Needless to say we didnt leave the waitress a tip!

I then went for my manicure and it was really nice having someone rub handcream into my arms (I will definitely have to have another manicure and possibly even a pedicure again ;o)).

They even let us keep the nail varnish they used (for that extra (we are in a recession after all) value for money).

On Wednesday one of my bosses even remarked that my face was looking better following my facial ;o)