Where did that six months go....

Its been six months since my last confessions, and for that I apologise. The last thing I said that I’d try and do was to be a bit more regular, however I haven’t, I am almost certain its down to a lack of time, and more importantly inspiration.

So what has happened to me then? Its a good question, its been an eventful time, there is loads to tell you and loads that I am still totally unsure of! It started pretty much immediately after the last post, it was New Years Eve and I was out for a party. Due to staffing and other issues, it was my first new years party in what felt like forever. Definitely one year, more than likely two, my memory isn’t that good! So there I was, ready for a big night out. I was smart, jumper, shirt, trousers and shoes, and with my trusty PA Greg at my side, ready for a night of quality music and drinking at the Custard Factory in Birmingham. We arrived fairly early and found our way in, on the way meeting Kev. The first memorable incident of the night was an observation I made. The Custard Factory is many little rooms and bars surrounding a central courtyard. On the night in question there had been a three sided tent built over the pond, it was the main dance tent and where the headliners for the night would be playing. It was however outside, and to allow access quickly and easily from all of the surrounding bars and things, every single door was open! This meant that it was very cold, and there was no real warmth anywhere to escape to. This led to one of the funniest sights I have seen for a while. Lots of attractive girls were arriving down the stairs that led into the courtyard, and were leaving their coats in the cloakroom. They were looking amazing in an array of small and lightweight clubbing dresses, you can imagine the site, more skin than material on show. They made it to the outside, saw the dance tent and looked excited, then realised they were soon going to die of hypothermia, it was about -3c at the time. They then turned around, headed back to the cloakroom and donned a variety of less than sexy coats. Spoiling, what I assume to be, many hours of preening and co-ordinating the perfect New Year’s outfit. Being the kind of guy that I am, I couldn’t help having a small chuckle to myself at the irony. I saw loads of good djs that night, but the one moment I remember above all was 2ManyDJs playing a remix they did of MGMT’s Kids. The tune played over the turn of 2009, there was hugging, kissing and dancing as the line from the song “enjoy yourself, take only what you need from it’, ingrained itself on my soul. As much of a cliché as it might sound, I was caught up in some euphoric moment of belonging to something bigger. As the crowd, and I sang along I knew that the message contained in that line was something to try and live by for the year, it also felt like the beginning of something special, 2009 was going to be great.

The beginning of the year was fairly uneventful, and not really worth blogging about, except for the arrival of four kittens, which all ended up re-homed. After the awesome experience of the Custard Factory evening I had a day or two to settle down again before ploughing headlong into a new year of work. January was just another month at Widgit and Hereward, the only addition to the working week being the new photography lessons for the Adult Education Services. I told you it wasn’t an exciting month.

February on the other hand had a small Widgit jolly that needed attending, which actually turned out to be very enjoyable indeed. The first part of it involved a 5 hour journey down to the Eden Project. I won’t bore you with the technicalities of the visit, as it was a business trip. However I would like to tell you about a strange psychological phenomenon I found myself experiencing. It was highly strange to be somewhere that I considered to be a ‘holiday’ destination without actually being on holiday. The last time that I was at the Eden Project was with my family, strangely enough on holiday! Yet here I was with my PA and boss, and we were at Eden. It was almost as if it was somehow a dream, I kept expecting to see my family somewhere, and it was especially odd playing on the magnet fridge doors, as last time I had been there it was with my little brother. Its strange how memory and emotions are connected, and then come back to bug you when you revisit certain locations.

The second day of the trip was far more fun however. We visited a play park that had been especially designed to include children that used wheelchairs. My job at the event was to take photographs of the signs and symbols that our company had designed for the project. I also thought it might be a good idea to get some shots of the proceedings and opening of the park. I saw an ideal vantage point at the top of the wheelchair accessible climbing frame. So off I went, up a wooden ramp to the top, and then needed to turn round to get the shot of the mayor cutting the ribbon. I decided to turn around, I got most of the way round then had an awful feeling of despair and then panic! I was stuck, right there on top of an accessible climbing frame, that was about to be opened, and which about 100 people were going to turn around and admire. I could literally feel my pulse getting faster as the mayor neared the end of his speech, however much to my relief my boss came over and released me from the coconut mat’s grasp! I managed to get to the bottom of the ramp just as the first wave of children came charging up. After a few more snaps it was time for tea and cake in a local pub, then the long drive home. We arrived home safe and sound, it was a long but uneventful journey. So that was February, it wasn’t the most exciting of times, except for one other thing....

Do you remember in the last post I mentioned that one of my PAs was not performing quite as expected, and I told you to watch this space? Well unfortunately it came to a head in February. I was mid decorating and needed some things from Birmingham, she had told me that she needed to do a lot of studying, so I said to her if she wanted to stay home it would be ok, I wouldn’t be long. She said that she’d like to come, as she wanted a break and to look round the shops. That was fine, I thought it might be good to have an outing with her, we hadn’t been getting along that well and I thought the neutral territory might be good for us to chat and have a nice afternoon together. Off we went to the Bullring and I went to the three or four shops that I needed to go to. As we were walking round I mentioned to her that when we got back I needed to get her to move a small stereo to the bedroom now that the desk had been built to put it on. Its a tiny stereo, a main body piece and two speakers. It takes about 5 minutes to move, as it is one mains plug and two speaker cables, it really is not a big job, but anyway, I told her it needed moving and she said that it was fine and that we could do it when we got back. So after I had been to the shops that I needed to go to, it was my turn to follow her around the clothes shops, shoe shops and makeup shops. It was nothing out of the ordinary to be waiting for a girl PA outside of one of the aforementioned shops, I had worked with Rach for four years after all! So there we were about 5 hours later and on our way home, both of us had survived the afternoon in each other’s company and nothing particularly untoward had happened. I naively thought that it might be the start of a new calmer more peaceful chapter between us, oh how I was mistaken...

We arrived home and decided to have a cuppa, and I said that we still needed to move the stereo at some point, as we were both out the next day and I needed to get it done before the next part of the decorating could be done. Now from the tirade that followed you may have thought that I had asked her to do a far more mammoth task. It started with me being yelled at for not appreciating that she had ‘supported me shopping all afternoon’ and that she was tired and I should understand what it is like to be a girl. This irritated me a tiny bit, as I had not needed her to come with me, and for the entire afternoon she had not actually ‘supported’ me in any way. I am capable of choosing and paying for things in the Apple shop! I had waited for her for a lot of the afternoon in various shops, then had her shopping hung on the back of my chair. So in reality and if I was to be pedantic I would say that it was far more of a case for me to claim that I was supporting her. However after she had let off some steam and cooled down a little bit we started to move the stereo. The shelf that it sits on is one of those clever little floating shelves. They work by mounting two horizontal poles on the wall, then sliding the shelf onto them. The shelf had been there for a while, with the wires for the stereo pushed down behind it, so we needed to pull it forward on the posts to get the mains plug out. Obviously as it had been there for a while and things had settled it was a bit stiff on the posts. After giving it a half hearted tug, I was informed that the shelf wouldn’t move, and that it was impossible to complete the task. It was told to me in a sort of triumphant way, between the lines was the hidden message of “ha, I can’t be arsed”. I, being the kind of guy that I am when irritated and because of the need to actually get the job done so the next ones could be completed, I said that if she put a screwdriver down between the shelf and the wall that it could be levered off slightly, just to loosen it up. This suggestion was met with more argumentation, huffing and puffing. However the anger from a bit of bickering spurred her on to take her aggression out on the shelf, which made it move! There was a kind of sense of personal victory as it moved, because she had insisted that it wouldn’t. Maybe looking back on it I was wrong to say “there you go, its moving now”, as that comment started the sequence of events that led to a very unfortunate end. I can’t remember exactly what was said, it came in a very angry, fast burst of broken English. What I can remember was that it was shouted at me from a very close face to face PA, who had mascara running, tears flowing and a red face of anger. There was also the 8 inch screwdriver used for prying the shelf still in her right hand, and this hand was becoming more animated by the second. I did for a moment or two have a concern that I might be leaving this exchange with the screwdriver sticking out of a bit of me. After a good few minutes of absorbing ranting, which seemed much longer, I decided that it needed to end and both of us needed to calm down. However logical rational calm from my side of the debate was not working. I only had one option left. Now bearing in mind that I am a placid calm person, who very rarely shouts or gets angry the option left to me could have gone scarily wrong, I needed to shout. I’ve not shouted in a very long time, it isn’t me, I don’t really like confrontation and aggression, but there I was and now was the time for a shout. It came very naturally after she had called me pathetic, I hadn’t planned or expected it at this point, but from my mouth boomed “DON”T CALL ME PATHETIC”. I am sure if you were a third party watching the unfolding proceedings this would have been a hilarious moment. Her face was a picture and it cut her ranting off instantly. I imagine that my face also must have been a comedic sight as I was very surprised at the power and volume behind my words. I had not expected it to be that loud! It served a purpose though and diffused the situation immediately. She decided that she was going to go to her room and calm down, and I stayed in mine and did the same. I remember waiting for the heartbeat in my throat to travel back down to my chest before I did anything else. After about half an hour or so, we both got back together and decided to discuss things on a more calm and passive level. It transpired that she did not like me, did not think that I was a nice person and would never call me a friend. She also told me that she hated jobs where she had to deal with people and that this was not a good job for her and that she was not enjoying it. It made me wonder why she had applied to work for me, as it was a job that solely involved working with people. Perhaps it was the only job that was available at the time, who knows. We mutually decided that it was not appropriate for her to continue in my employment and that I’d give her a month to look for another job. By rights, ranting and waving a screwdriver at me is grounds for instant dismissal, but I am not that harsh, I knew that it would take her a while to herself and more employment out. A few days after that I was relaying the story back to Rach. She was outraged and said that she would come back to work for me until I found someone more appropriate. That was the best news that I had heard in a long time. She came back and did eight weeks in total, she only dropped one bombshell, she is pregnant and as such can’t come to Glastonbury. This was minor on the grand scale of things though, I was just please to have a reliable person back, and it was also nice to spend some time with a friend again. The eight weeks passed far too quickly and without notable event. We did a lot of window shopping for baby things, and I learned all about her trials and tribulations with her current employer. It wasn’t going well with her employer and she was strongly considering coming back to me whilst she sued her employer. However the technicalities of following that course of action meant that it was impossible. This was a bit sad as it would have been great to have Rach back for longer. Sometimes in life though things like that just aren’t meant to be, or they happen for a reason. When it was approaching the last few weeks of Rach working for me I started to seriously look for the next person to work for me. I had the usual raft of inappropriate, useless and pathetic applications that I have mentioned in previous posts. The best one I got this time in terms of a talking point was an ex Romanian Secret Services soldier, who wanted a change of career. He had a lot of very interesting training, counter terrorism, explosives, all sorts of interrogation methods and the like. He was a full on Romanian SAS equivalent, I am sure that he is a lovely guy and that he would have been perfectly capable of doing the job. I was just more concerned that he might have some hidden flashbacks or something equally disturbing that I might have to deal with later on. I decided to discount him as all I wanted was an easy life. That left me with two applicants in the running, a girl called Amy and one called Emma. I started chatting to them both on MSN, last thing I said to Emma was can you come to an interview on Saturday, to which she replied that it was the day after she had buried her baby, and that she thought she might be a mess, and she’d be in touch. She hasn’t been back since, but that is a good thing, as at the same time I was chatting to Amy, who made me laugh so much I knew she was at least getting an interview. To give you an idea of the sort of girl she is, I asked her, “Do you have an pet hates”? A perfectly valid question considering we would be living together for a portion of the weekend. The response I got literally did make me laugh out loud, she said “yeah, I am not a fan of big dogs”. Priceless. She was definitely getting an interview and we met the next Saturday for a coffee at the Bullring. It was like a typical interview, she was a little nervous and I was using all of my people reading skills to hopefully make the right judgement as to whether to employ her or not. There was something about her that felt right, the actual talking was all the standard interview and getting to know each other fodder, it was the vibe that she gave off that clinched it for her. I left knowing that I had potentially employed another great PA. To be honest I had pretty much decided to employ her based on our conversations on MSN, but I wanted to check that we could get on, and when I met her the deal was sealed.

Amy has been with me for just over a month now, and its been great. She is the sort of person that you can get on with no matter what sort of mood you are in. I know that she is going to get me in trouble at some point, her sense of adventure is amazing! We are off to New York at the end of the month, which I know is not the most scary destination, but its a good start to our globe trotting. As a person I like to be fairly spontaneous, obviously as a disabled person there is a certain amount of extra planning that is needed, but I still like to do things on the spur of the moment. That is Amy’s ethic completely and its so nice to have a companion who will just dive in and go with it. I have no idea how everything we do will turn out, but as long as its fun and no one gets hurt, does it matter? There are too many disabled people being held back by the ‘what ifs’, just get yourself an Amy, get out there and do it! I have a feeling, again a bit of a cliché, but I think I am going to learn a lot about myself with her too, I can feel myself returning to who I think I actually am. Its not the case that I need to be on my guard and defensive most of the time now, and because of that the real me is starting to make a reappearance. I don’t dread the weekends anymore, and am not relieved that Monday has arrived! Its all very pleasing. I also know that I am going to have to raise my game a lot to keep up with her! She is very competitive, bright and witty. Its competition that I am not used to, although I thrive when challenged, so she better watch out. She doesn’t like it when I win either, deciding it was time to turn the Playstation off when I was making a comeback... Aside from the competition which I am loving, there is a real sense of partnership again, its nice, I’ve not had that for a while, and in fact there have only been a couple of PAs with whom I have shared the same sense of closeness and friendship. It may be perceptual rather than anything deep and meaningful as it has only been five weeks, but whatever it is long may it continue. I’ve also discovered she is an amazing cook, the meals she makes are ace, I am either going to be very healthy or put on loads of weight, either way its a winner! There is also the matter of travel, she wants to plan something but won’t tell me what it is, might give me something to write about though. The next adventure is New York, its been a bit of a quiz so far, with the accessible hotel having six steps up to the front door, and by their own admittance ‘no access for the handicapped’, so when that is all sorted and over I’ll fill you in. Its going to be a very hardcore fortnight I feel. Mainly due to the fact that I am flying out to New York the day after I drive back from Glastonbury! Why do things by half measures eh??

So apart from the new PA trials and tribulations and the upcoming trip to Glastonbury and New York, not a lot has happened in the in the last six months. That seems to be the trouble with being a grown up, I am now part of the rat race. I go to work, I come home and sleep then do this and that at the weekends. Its time for more adventures, and now that I have the means and the finances, I am sure the future will hold some blogworthy stories! So until next time, keep an eye out for a mong stuck in the mud at Glastonbury, then for one blocking something in New York, it’ll more than likely be me!!