Aces

Well colour me purple and call me Barney.  This is the first post I've written from that marvellous piece of new Amazon tech called the Kindle.

Memories, like the corners of my mind (Part 1)

I've been in payroll 23 odd years, and it's bizarre that, as I look about and consider whether to maybe have a career change, or at least, modification, because there are too many ghosts, memories, echoes, some good, some bad, some hysterical, some devastating.

It's easy to forget, even in Front Line payroll, that I am paying real people (it is very common to completely forget in Back End) .  This might sound odd, but payroll has a production line mentality so that you don't realise how crucial that commission, bonus, overtime or sickness payment is to an employee.  And although some payslips may make you shriek in fake horror, because they pay more tax than you get net earnings in a year, or the dreaded 'I don't understand my payslip' and you are looking at a statement that would make Einstein consider his career pathway, you either love or hate payroll.  I've seen colleagues come and go, a lot stay in payroll (though there are a few here that are saying they won't go back into payroll again, but that's because most of them have never had the inspiration to try anything else until they are forced to, as they will be), but a few go, and I've heard a lot of bizarre reasons.

"This was just a stop gap until I found a proper career"  (Like payroll is not a career.  Everyone has to get paid some time.  Try telling that to the IPP.)

"It's too easy, I want to try something else" (Read: I am no bloody good at this job and I should leave before the boss realises)

"It's boring." (You've never tried to find the entertainment in your work, have you?)

Actually - the last?  Well, yes, payroll can be mighty dull, but you find your entertainment, particularly in a payroll of the size I work on, which has all the colours of human society, and some of them can speak proper English.  When someone throws a girly tantrum on the phone, you do have a laugh about it afterwards with your colleagues, because that is what keeps you sane.  Boring?  The majority of the actual work, maybe.  The flavours and the satisfaction of doing the crucial and interesting tasks, making "friends" with people over the phone (due to the frequency of your telephone conversations) but sadly you will probably never meet.  Boring? On the whole, no, I love my job, and I will probably cry buckets when I leave.

Home?

The provisional agreement of how much we will get on leaving next year has been made. Course, this starts dreams of how to spend it, but mine started incredibly practical; pay off all annual bills, any debts outstanding, new puta, washing machine (rather than renting it) so that I can probably survive, for at least a year, on the likely lower salary.

However, a new thought came into my head, or the old home sickness if you like, dreaming of my old home. I think I have memories of what it was, not what it became and was growing to hate. There are old ghosts that I need to lay to rest, and people I should see, in case that it is a long, long time before I go back again. So, next spring, I'm going back to the borough in which I was born, for a week maybe, confront the ghosts and come back...home...and maybe free of the doubts, and rid of some of the fears.

Planning

It is maybe 10 months to R-day, although it may be that it could be as long as a year.  This means I have to undergo something totally alien to me - Planning.

I have never been a good planner.  True, I sorta 'planned' our move from London to N Wales, and sorta 'planned' my wedding 20 odd years ago, but it still needed nagging from various parties or even physical manhandling (oo er) for me to get done what needed to be done.

There are some plans in my head, including the practical stuff I could do soon after the dread day (although I am not sure if that is an accurate description) but whether I will actually do them, well, that just remains to be seen.  I know me too well.

There are lots and lots of stuff I have 'in progress'.  I mean, you name it, training on general workplace stuff (what my colleague calls 'clipboard management training'); training on technical stuff such as Java, CSS; training in Knowledge Management, short stories started, not finished; Welsh language learning in progress...actually there is shed loads more that I could state but could never remember.  Oh yeah, thatangellook and SHOTS reviews.  Oh, and keeping the job I've got going, and my sanity, for up to a year.  Oh and yeah, keeping the other half happy.  And...

You get the picture.

Actually, this is me all over.  I Am Work In Progress.  Wouldn't have it any other way.

The Nick N Dave show

Am I alone in my optimism for the new government?  I remember that some people thought, given the age gap, my marriage wouldn't last 6 months.  Here I am, twenty years later, still married to the same guy, and although there is hardly a parallel with politics, the principle is the same.  The apathy and cynicism amongst other bloggers just disgusts me.

I think some people are forgetting that if this all goes belly up, the few that were voting for the LibDems probably never will again.  They could have said no, sat back as the Tories tried to form a minority government, joined with Labour in a vote of no confidence a few months down the line and started again.  Probably getting similar, or maybe more, votes at the next General Election.

You could say what they have just done is potentially political suicide.

On the other side of the swing, you have Cameron, probably desperate since a babe to become PM, willing to take a job on that is a poisoned chalice.  Is this a guy who stopped at nothing just to get power, or does he really want to make a difference?  At the end of it, he could be hero or...um...zero.  And everyone will go back to voting Labour, who spent the last 13 years spending money we didn't have.

So it seems a lot of people, including those idiots shouting 'Tory Scum' at the end of Downing Street want the wars abroad to continue, want their money going in one pocket and out of the other, want no growth in this country, and want a voting system where no party will get a majority and therefore major reform in anything will be impossible.

I vote for change.  Yeah, it's gonna hurt.  But it can't hurt more than the last few years of someone who was not capable of running the country.  Why don't you give them a chance before saying it is all going to fail?  Why not do something radical, such as support them, or if that sticks in the craw, sit back and let them get on with it?  They might surprise you.  Yeah, it might go belly up.  But I for one am impressed that they are willing to try.