It has felt very strange at home as our youngest daugther started a new job on Monday working away from home.

I spent a night away for work. Another project is coming my way and we are working on getting funding for all the other work we have next year.
Rather than have a 6am start in sub zero conditions and run the risk of problems on the road, I travelled the night before and stayed overnight at a hotel.

While at the hotel I needed to iron some trousers, so I borrowed an iron and ironing board.
(No Corby trouser press).

As instructed, I placed the ironing board outside the room, only to have the door slam shut on me.

Fortunately I had been ironing a different pair of trousers or this could have been me.

This morning I took the Father-in-law to the doctors for an appointment with the Nurse, I dropped him off and he tells me the waiting area is round to the right.

I parked the car, enter the centre and head around to the right to find myself surrounded by pregnant ladies.

It reminded me of spending 40 minutes trying to find Cardiff hospital, with him providing directions.
We had problems with left and right then.
Me: “Do we turn left here?” Father-in-Law: “Right” (meaning yes).
I did wonder wether he would appreciate a loan of my socks with Left and right on them?

Final thought for the week.  Tonight’s Newsnight program was thought provoking – they discussed this  news item  about how loneliness can kill people.

And tomorrow we get a visit from Liz

I have had an email from a service provider. They have noticed I am not using a box/service they provided a while back. The good news is that they are offering to provide help get it working again.

The down side is that they have not bothered to ask why the service is not being used.

A reply email fails because they do not monitor the email address. They direct you to a “Contact Us” page, but on that page they have already assumed what you want to contact them about.

I can assume with a fair degree of confidence that all of us who tried contacting organisations find that they have assumed what you want to contact them about.

• Pick what your enquiry is about from the following list.
• Press 1 for a long wait listening to music….
• Press 2 and we will pass your call to a completely unrelated system….

Interestingly when we try and contact God about something, we can get through direct and say what we want or need to say.

This is pretty cool because He already does know what our enquiry is about.

Isaiah 65:24

The idea of issuing guidelines or summaries to people was suggested, which sparked a debate as to whether guidelines were  “legal”.

The problem here is that perceptions of what words and phrases mean have changed.

e.g. “quite good” or “satisfactory” are seen as less than good, when “quite good” actually means completely good and “satisfactory” means all criteria are met.

The perception is that guidelines are guidance – but these words do not mean the same thing.

There are thousands of pages of Health and Safety laws and legislation. An impossible amount for the average person just doing a job to memorise or understand.

A situation made worse by conflicting rules and degree of interpretation needed – e.g. how would you define “reasonable”.

In the minefield that is Health and Safety law and legislation, some kind people have marked out a path to keep you safe – these are “guidelines”.

Stay inside the lines and you will be safe.  Treat them as optional guidance and you run the risk of it blowing up.

This has now been taken over by the Harris Corporation.

There IS a Family connection. Jim Leitch, the now deceased company founder was my Uncle.

Some photos from our holiday in October 2011 in Corfu.

It was the last week of the season and we were staying in Agios Gordios.

Taken Autumn 2011 near Broadway

September 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of when I started work with BT.

BT chose to recognise this with a modest presentation in a meeting room in Coventry, where I received a certificate and letter from the Managing Director and a £500 gift voucher.

A glass clock followed a few weeks later.

Originally posted October 18, 2011

I read the story of someone’s final days this morning in a discussion forum while listening on YouTube to the song that was played at his funeral.

This was someone I had never met but we had interacted via the forums as we discussed the programs we were testing and using.
I was moved to hear of his passing and also by all the comments from others in the forums, words of support and offers of prayers.

There are those who say that on-line friends are not “real” friends, perhaps because there are those who boast of having thousands of on-line “friends”.
After what I read this morning I disagree.

One of the dictionary definitions that I like is “A friend is someone who is on your side”.

Through the media of Facebook and other internet forums we get to interact with people who we may never ever actually meet.
There is no reason that we cannot be real friends with those we interact with regularly, simply by being on their side, by being encouraging, by being supportive, by taking a genuine interest and sharing a bit about ourselves.

It is also a reminder that we are not just interacting with forum or website but with real people, most of whom deserve our respect.

Originally posted August 26, 2011

I had a migraine so I went and had a lie down on my bed.

I dozed off for a bit and woke up to find I was not alone.
Arnold our dog was snuggled up to my back.
Meta, one of our cats, was snuggled up to my front.

I thought to myself “what’s going on?”

Instantly the clear answer came to me – “you are loved”.

At the risk of sounding strange and the men in white coats coming for me, I believe this was God speaking* to me.
While being loved is a basic human need, in this context it was about having confidence in my relationship with God.

We all need to personally be sure in our position because out of our relationship with God flows all that we do as Christians and not the other way round.

*how does God speak to us is a big subject – the bible refers to God speaking through “a small still voice” as well as in dreams, visions and even through talking donkeys.

One of the first times I tried on-line shopping, I ordered rabbit food and a large 56lb bag of rabbit flavoured dog food turned up instead. Our dog Arnold thought it was christmas!

We got the dog food free, but it proved costly as we could not get him back on to the cheaper food he had been happily eating before then.

There was the time time a large 5 kg bag of pasta arrived from Tesco instead of the expected 0.5 kg bag.

So I have not really persisted with on-line groceries, prefering to see the goods being bought first hand, albeit at the risk of succumbing to the BOGOFs.

Because Deborah has been unwell, I have needed to shop for groceries on-line again.

I had a discount voucher for Tesco. The order was mostly fine, except I ended up with a 2kg bag of sugar instead of a 1Kg one. (When I was growing up, sugar came in 2lb bags).

So more recently I have tried Occado – tempted in by a special offer voucher.
(Each order so far has come with a voucher for a bottle of wine).

So far so good, however the cheese and onion quiche I ordered was a disappointment.

I thought it was a bargain until it arrived – it was only a single portion quiche!!
In my defence, there was no way to tell the size from the photo!

So the point of this post is that life comes with surprises, both good and bad.

Originally Posted June 20, 2011