Wednesday 28 March 2007

Just another day at the office.....

I was going to begin this post by saying that my transition back into the UK has (although lacking in communication) been relatively smooth and pleasant. But the other day someone told me that I seem to attract and magnify crisis and that perhaps I should think about whether I set myself up to fail. Of course that's completely nonsense as a short survey of any area of my life will reveal.

Take the last two weeks for example:

Discover on Monday that I have royally pissed someone off who now is undertaking a process of attempting to remove my extremities and feed them to ill tempered badgers. Check.
Travel across Oxfordshire to attend totally frustrating staff meeting Tuesday morning, PIT session and then return to Oxford in time to head off for the ever promising youth event retreat. Check.
Arrive at retreat centre after getting lost due to directions being accurate only for someone travelling from the opposite compass direction and discover that despite being called 'The Abbey', said retreat centre is in fact a multi-faith organic vegan community with no hot water. Forget to turn on storage heater in my room and wake up to find penguins enjoying the temperature, decline a gracious offer of joining silent meditation (holding hands whilst sat in a circle), burst into someone else's meeting because 'I wanted to know what was behind this door', discover that something in the vegan food has set off my allergy and therefore have massively painful stomach cramps. Check.
Attend 3 dysfunctional meetings and receive no consolation from the post meeting trip to the pub due to student restrictions upon the consumption of alcohol (who wrote that stupid rule anyway?!). Check.
Miss meeting with church leader due to sickness, achieve approximately nothing for the rest of the week except to lose my phone, mp3 player, laptop, home internet connection and possibly sanity.
Take Saturday off to recover. By which I mean - attend youth cafe training day and try to lecture on team leadership whilst feeling sick. Check.
Lose watch.
Reclaim most of said items, suffer an entirely unproductive and very very weird Monday at the office (during which the temperature drops to approximately absolute zero). Go home and curl into a ball. Check.
Finally give in to my body and take Tuesday morning and Wednesday off. Actually do more in my day off than I probably have in the past week - very strange.
Thursday: Open my morning mail to find that my bank have very kindly closed my account for me (I don't recall asking them to do that but it's always possible....) Talk to a very kind lady who says that I owe them the remainder of the balance of my student loan (oh dear); but fortunately unlike most financial people she has not had her heart removed with a spoon and replaced with a chrome alternative so she's not really worried (hurray). Net result: no bank account, possibly black listed? Need to find a regular job to earn money/a multimillionaire to sponsor Fusion/lots of not quite multimillionaires to support my sponging lifestyle. Decide that a job is probably my most pro-active option (though door knocking is always a fall-back). Check.
Take weekend off, go home, obtain guitar that I have wanted for the last 4 & 1/2 years and was my christmas present from my family (had to be shipped from Puerto Rica - best not to ask). Much joy ensues.
Recover watch.

And so this week begins.

Now call me crazy but that all sounds quite normal to me. At least this week has been pretty good so far.

As we often used to say back in the grantham pub: gotta love the cp'n!