Talisman

It's always nice to spend time with family. I am feeling sooo tired at the moment - I don't think I am the only one though as everyone I know seems to be feeling this. It has been quite a week one way or the other. Our CEO left today and it was also the AGM - her leaving was timed to coincide with this deliberately. Every department banded together to get her a book of photographs depicting pictures from her time working here which was really nicely done - and of course there were some other gifts as well - and lots of cuddles. A few of the clients got quite emotional which I guess is to be expected. I must admit that I had a few tears in my eyes when I said my own goodbyes this morning. She is off on a big adventure now though, going sailing with her husband on their newly acquired boat. We have a new CEO who will taking over the reins soon and will no doubt be keen to continue where she has left off and put his own mark on the place. It's all good.

It took me a few days to get used to varifocals when I first got them a few years ago - mostly when walking down stairs and things like that, but I soon got used to them. They don't suit everyone though and some people just can't get used to them no matter what they do, in which case I suppose you have to use 2 different kinds of specs - one for reading and one for everyday use. Opticians are of course only human like the rest of us and can and do make mistakes, so if you are having problems it is always worth getting things checked again. If the prescription is right though I would definitely go and see your doctor just to rule anything else out and put your mind at rest.

I like this time of year as well - September is often one of the warmest months and I hear we are in for a good one this year. Coran and I had a quiet weekend with not much happening. Coran had to attend the AGM for one of the websites she designed on Sunday which left me with a free afternoon to go out for coffee and a rather indulgent cake. Not much else really happened though. This is in contract to the week ahead, which will be mega busy. My lady cleaner finally came back to work today after her recent surgery, which everyone (especially her) is delighted about, so I had to do her back to work interview and make sure she was all okay. She is doing a phased return whereby she gradually builds her hours back to full time over a period of 4 weeks. This is perfect timing as the week she returns to full time coincides with the week I go to Croatia. Our sales rep for the cleaning products we use also came today to take my order for the month, which will be delivered tomorrow. I will be busy tomorrow then sorting all that out. Then on Thursday our CEO is leaving. We have known it was coming for a while, as of course she had to give several months notice, and a lot of people are sad about it, as she is just brilliant and such a lovely person. She certainly helped sort out my work problems when I needed it this time last year and after I spoke to her things changed pretty quickly! Thursday is also the day of our AGM, which means that all the board of trustees will be there and a lot of our clients families as well. After the AGM has finished they are planning a big presentation for her and of course to introduce the new CEO, whom I as an employee forum rep helped to choose. He will be here all this week getting ready for the final handover anyway. We are not sure when his proper starting date will be, but I expect we will be told on Thursday. He seems very nice though and I am sure will do a great job.

A bit cooler than it has been of late and cloudy - but still warm enough to wear my shorts to work!

I am currently about halfway through book no. 64. Should be on track then to reach my target of 90 books.

I sympathise, but I guess it's like I said, supply and demand and the need to cover production and marketing costs. Are any of the books you need available perhaps second hand?

Oh my God, that actor is sooo sexy - it's the Icelandic accent you understand. I just love Icelandic men. In fact, I love anything Icelandic - especially their chocolate! As for the dragon - being full of holes and rotting away doesn't seem to have stopped the rest of the white walkers, so I suspect it may keep flying for a while yet. I don't think I would take my chances though. It will certainly be interesting to see which way this one goes. Will he stay loyal to his sister especially now that she is pregnant again. Will her jealousy get the better of her and she does something to harm him, or will Jaimie end up changing sides? As for the relationship between Jon and Dany - this sort of blood relationship may not preclude marriage and/or children. Her own parents were after all brother and sister and this was quite common in the ancient world, as is cousin marriage even today in Asian communities. Of course it does carry an increased risk of birth defects, but this being GOT anything is possible. I have to remind myself sometimes that it isn't actually real!

I hope your family in Texas are okay Virginia - and any other members out there at the moment. We have just had our last Bank Holiday of the year here in the UK until Christmas, which is guaranteed to cheer everyone up. It was beautiful weather, with temperatures as high as 26 degrees in places. Coran and I had a lazy Saturday doing the food shop and generally lounging around, then on Sunday we went into Guildford for some shopping and for a belated anniversary lunch in Pizza Express. I tried their new vegan pizza (gluten free as well!) which is really very nice, followed by some absolutely delicious dairy free coconut ice cream. On Monday we went on a tour of our local vineyard which was also very interesting - even though neither of us are really wine drinkers. We go there quite often to visit the coffee shop and have often seen the little train that takes people around and thought that it looked fun, so when I saw an offer on Travelzoo for just £9 for 2 adults with a free glass of wine it was too good to pass up. We had a nice lunch beforehand with some more ice cream and then afterwards sat out in the sun reading. Altogether that wasn't a bad weekend then. It is nice to have a shorter working week to go back to, and won't be long now until I go to Croatia. We have a Sigur Ros concert in London to look forward to first though on 21st and of course I am also seeking them in Reykjavik after Christmas. I am really looking forward to that.

We are having jacket potatoes tonight with posh baked beans (the mixed ones with various types of bean) and a nice big salad.

Me neither - and I don't think I would want to try! Cheerleading has always seemed a strange sort of sport to me anyway - I just don't really see the point of it. There is no excuse though for treating anyone like this, and I am glad they got rid of that coach.

I want to be the white walker who was riding that dragon! It was brilliant to finally see Baelish get his comeuppance. The ending though, although not unexpected but was still very dramatic. I am very happy to see Jon and Daenerys finally get it together. It will be interesting to see what happens next when they both find out who he really is. I wonder if next season will see more than 1 Queen pregnant?

No you don't Virginia - you are just you, and I am the same, although I don't mind flying. In fact I like flying. It's long distance busses more than anything that do my head in - being stuck in traffic with no way out of it because you have follow a set route, other people's loud music and irritating behaviour, toilets that don't work and nothing whatsoever for anyone who eats neither meat nor wheat! Give me my own car any day.

I can see the point that you are trying to make Raven about car ownership being a luxury and for some it is, but it depends very much on where you live and the hours that you work. If you live in a large town and work 9-5 or thereabouts then you probably don't need one, but very few people do that these days. When you live in a rural area like I do with a very limited bus service and the nearest train station 5 miles away there is no viable alternative to using your own car. It takes me 20 minutes to drive the 8 miles to where I work, but if I had to do that same journey by public transport if would take more like an hour and a half. That would mean leaving home at about 6am in order to get to work by 7.30am and then getting home again at 5pm after finishing at 3.30pm. That is neither practical nor desirable, given how tiring my work can be. Using my own car is probably cheaper as well given the high cost of bus fares in my area. One of the cleaners who used to work for me used to pay £65 a month in bus fares for travelling less than half the distance I would have to. That is roughly the same amount that I spend on petrol each month. Yes there are other costs associated with running a car like road tax and so on, but how much freedom does that give me compared to using public transport. What price can you put on the amount of time it saves? To me that time is priceless.

I just read of a similar attack in Russia as well where 8 people were stabbed. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/19/surgut-stabbing-siberia-moscow-knife-attack

Nothing at the moment, but I have a bottle of strawberry and mint Pimms that needs using up, and an unopened bottle of lemonade in the fridge.

Thankfully it has now pretty much dried out - we have lovely sunshine and blue skies at the moment and yesterday was good too. We even managed to cut our grass. We are going out to lunch later on to Polesden Lacey, one of the nearby National Trust estates. They have live jazz on Sunday afternoons during the summer, and I am reading a rather good book at the moment, so I like the idea of a lazy afternoon sitting in the sun with a good book (or Kindle) and some good company. It has been a busy week at work for me. My lady cleaner was due back at work on Wednesday after her shoulder surgery, but she has been signed off for a further 2 weeks. I am not surprised, as she did indicate that she was still in a lot of pain. It looks like it may be a phased return to work during the first week of September, where for the first week at least she does the mornings only. At the same time, my male Polish cleaner has had his family visiting from Poland and so has been working for just 4 hours each day so he can take them out in the afternoons. He only works 26 hours a week for us anyway, as he has a second job in a pub, but while the other lady has been away has been doing about 32 hours to keep things ticking over. He bought his family to see where he works after he finished work on Friday so they could have a look around the site, and I managed to meet them which was nice. The kids didn't speak much English, but his ex wife spoke a little. The chef was cooking for the staff that day and they all sat out in the garden having lunch together which was nice. There do seem to be some very strange energies around at the moment, with a lot of people I know getting irritable and short with each other. Coran is still very concerned about her best friend, whose health is deteriorating, and who has major problems with her housing. At least I have the trip to Croatia to look forward to, which will soon come round. I need to think about booking the bus from Split to Dubrovnik soon. I have 7 more days of holiday left to take before the end of March (not including the days that we have to take at Christmas, which happily coincide with a concert by a certain Icelandic rock band who I am flying out to see - I have a long held dream to see them on home turf). We are going to see the same band in London a week before I go to Croatia and so I have a half day holiday for that too and the day off afterwards so that we can stay overnight near the venue. I am not sure what I will do with the remaining days, but have been thinking about Granada in Spain, where much of the current series of Game of Thrones was filmed. EasyJet have just started a direct route from Gatwick and there are some good deals at the moment.

My thoughts exactly.

I don't blame you Virginia - I read about it in one of the better British news sources and am as horrified as you are.

Congratulations to you and your granddaughter Muggle - I am sure you are all very proud of her. I hope you enjoyed your bread as well Athena. It has hardly stopped raining here all day today - I never knew so much rain even existed. I got soaked to the skin just walking across the garden at work. The shorts I was wearing just about dried out at lunch time before I had to go out there again!

Coran and I decided to go to Portsmouth for the day as the forecast was so good, with blue skies and a very slight breeze. We had a nice lunch and then walked down the beach for a mile or so before sitting down to read for an hour or so. It was a great day out and did us both the power of good. Back to work though tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see how they do this - especially the Gestalt character. As to whether it really will be available on a TV near me that depends on which network picks it up.

I hadn't heard of this either. I don't think it would be something I would be interested in anyway. I can see that it may be good for children's or even YA books, or possibly even travel books, but for me personally I would find it too distracting. For me at least the whole idea of reading is to read and not be distracted by all this other stuff.

We watched Selma on Netflix last night.

It was the annual Ride London cycling event this weekend, and as the one and only road in our village was closed we went out to watch it. It was a good day actually, apart from a few mad dashes across the road in between the 100,000 or so bikes. Coran's nephew was supposed to be riding, but as he is currently training to be a paramedic did not have the train. He was at the start line instead with his ambulance helping in other ways. We had a team of 7 riders though riding for the charity I work for, one of whom is a staff member, and between them they managed to raise £3500 which is brilliant. They are all much fitter than I am!

Yes, it was a good day. It would have been a lot better without the rain though. Even so the organisers said they had the biggest turnout in the events five year history, with more than 2500 people marching. Today in comparison has been a lot quieter. Coran had to take her best friend Sarah to hospital this morning as she had a fall and thought she may have dislocated her thumb. Sarah has a condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome which affects the collagen in the body and causes an awful lot of problems, as collagen of course is the thing that binds everything else together - both internal and external. Thankfully she was okay this time around.