Cycling holiday

A little while ago Mum and I went on a cycling holiday around Suffolk. We chose Suffolk because it is a relatively flat county and as we are not expert cyclists a flat place is what we wanted!!

It’s not completely flat, there were enough hills to make our thighs groan and us having to get off the bike and walk up. We drove to Needham Market where we left the car for the week as we cycled from B&B to B&B in a circular route back to Needham Market. Of course, this meant having to carry our luggage with us, but we packed as little as possible and let the bikes take the strain!

Seeing as we have had a rather wet summer, it was a lovely surprise to get a week of hot sunshine with only a smidgen of rain. We cycled from place to place enjoying the views and checking the map as frequently as possible!! (we never did have to turn back on ourselves after making a mistake!)

Dad even surprised us one day by driving the few hours from home to join us for a days cycling, which was great – not just for the pleasure of his company but also because it meant that we could get a photograph of the two of us cycling down the road!!

All in all it was a lovely holiday – we visited Aldeburgh (the carnival was on!), Orford Castle, Lavenham and Framlingham Castle.

and saw many pretty buildings along the way. We mainly stuck to the small roads and managed to avoid getting run over!! We did have one or two near spills though – particularly as we cycled down a few byways that had mostly sand for a surface. This meant that the back wheels had a tendency to slip and slide – neither of us quite went all the way over but it came very close indeed!!!

Occasionally we ended up collapsed in a little heap as you can see. We did tend to revive after a good nights sleep and a hearty breakfast!

Filing

I got thinking about paperwork and managing the mounds of paper that we all seem to collect from every part of our life when I read the latest post at Magneto Bold Too.

Even though it's just me and the cat at home it sometimes feels as though paper just accumulates even when I don't give it permission to do so (and I dread to think how much more paper would pile up if there was a whole family living here!) Despite having signed up for a "no junk mail" thing at the Royal Mail, I still get paper I don't want shoved through my door. I've tried cutting down as much as possible by reading bank statements online or paying for most of my bills through direct debit.

However, my biggest issue with the paper that I do collect is the fact that I don't deal with it properly when it comes in to the house. Like many people I have a recycling box and so this is naturally the most appropriate place for my oodles of paper! Do I put it in there though? No is the short answer because what I do when I come in from work is feed the cat and that takes place in the kitchen....which means that all my paper ends up on the kitchen surfaces until I get fed up with it and sort it out!!

The silly thing is that most of it could be dealt with there and then, but once I've put it down I tend to forget about it until it gets in the way! So, it is all about changing the habits of a lifetime and keeping on top of the paper that I pick up from here there and everywhere!! I have to physically remind myself to deal with the paper there and then - I am sure that it would help to have the recycling bin in the kitchen, but there is just no room in the kitchen for anything else. (it does have the shredder in it though!) and so the recycling bin is in the cupboard under the stairs which is not ideal but it is easy to get to.

The other thing that helps with keeping paper is not giving yourself the opportunity to collect it all!! I have a two drawer filing cabinet that up until last weekend was just chock full of paper both new and old. I decided to put it to better use by storing my craft paper as that was piling up too!! ;-) So, I ruthlessly boiled the two drawer cabinet's worth of paper right down to a small concertina folder - because the folder can't hold that much I just cannot keep the levels of paper that I used to. I mean, for goodness sake, I found paperwork relating to my first flatshare which was about 13-15 years ago!!!

Unfortunately it is harder to crack the habit of leaving paper in the kitchen, perhaps I do need to get a small basket where I can just chuck paper and then check that on a weekly basis or something. Anything that is really important like the visa bill that arrived this week along with the car tax demand (!) tends to get stuck to the fridge so that it is in my face every time I get some milk for a cup of tea!! But ultimately I need to be aware of simply handling it all better in the first place - crack that and I've cracked it all.

What do YOU do to keep on top of your paper mountain!?

Study update!!

I have just realised that my first (possibly only!) post about my study for a Masters was written exactly one year ago today!! Before I even realised the serendipity of today I had decided to tell you about my progress so far as I couldn't think of anything else to blog about - but seeing as I need to work on this blog I thought that I had better write about SOMETHING!!

Anyway....I had two bits of good news the other week; the first, and most important really, was that my employers had agreed to fund my second year of this part time course - clearly they're hoping that by my studying for a course entitled MSc Leadership and Management in Health and Social Care they will end up with a better manager than the one they currently have to put up with!!

The second bit of good news was the information that I had actually passed my first year of study!! It really was quite a relief because of of the four modules that we had taken we still didn't know the results of the last two. In fact, it was becoming rather a long time in between handing in the third assignment and finding out the results - some of my fellow students were getting a bit noisy about having to wait so long!!

The bigger relief though, was the fact that I had actually passed the portfolio part of the course where we had to do a lot of reflective study and I knew that there was a good chance that I might have to re-do the portfolio because I hadn't given it the attention that it deserved. :-( So, scraping by with a 56% result for that particular assignment meant that I was a very happy bunny, even if I didn't deserve it!! (perhaps I should point out that my marks for the other three modules were somewhat better than that!!!)

The second year starts on the 8th October when we all attend the first workshop of the portfolio element of this year - so I am going to have to much better on that this time around!! At least this time I will have a much better idea of what is involved and how I should prepare the portfolio - but I tell you - it really was agony waiting for the results when I knew that I had quite likely failed! However, I know exactly what my problem is. The problem is that I tend to leave things until the last moment and a reflective portfolio just cannot be dealt with that way as it involves having to follow an issue from start to finish and examining each bit for how you approached it, acted on it, moved on from it.

Oh well - like I said - two pieces of good news - funding and a pass!!! That will do for me!

Darkening nights

For some reason I happened to discover today that sunset this weekend is at 7pm – this threw me into a tizzy because it cannot possibly getting dark that soon just yet.

No, autumn has got to be further way that that!!  As much as I like the change of the seasons, they always seem to take me by surprise.  In Spring it seems like the trees will never burst into leaf when all of a sudden everything is green!

Summer (no matter how wet it is sometimes) always promises that there will be more sunshine and more long hot days where I can sit out in the garden.  So when I discover that the nights are drawing in I begin to realise that there will be no more sitting out in the garden in my t-shirt and shorts until next summer.  That is, unless I like to freeze!!)

There is something a bit sad about knowing that things are changing again, but there is also the anticipation of knowing that summer will come back again next year.  Although next year I think that I will go on holiday abroad to get some properly hot sunshiny weather as I don’t think that I could cope with another wet summer!

Blogging

Besides entertaining topics and good writing there is something else that makes certain bloggers famous....regularity! Yes, they blog on a very regular basis, every day even; which is not something that can be said of me!!

Of course, I am not famous, witty or have anything interesting to talk about, but I could at least be consistent!! If I can't be consistent then I don't deserve this blog despite what my little badge way down on my sidebar says about "blogging without obligation" as I think that has more to do with not feeling under pressure to blog every day and less to do with not blogging for weeks on end! ;-)

So, I am going to try again to do my best to blog rather more regularly!! I blame facebook and twitter, not to mention my feedreader - I am so busy chatting on facebook and tweeting and reading the umpteen blogs that I subscribe to that I forget that I have my own blog and then I wonder where all my comments have gone to. Naturally, I am not going to get any comments if I don't blog, so I really must pull my socks up and get on with it!!

Miracle!

A minor miracle happened last night.

I did a bit of shopping, got home, unpacked the cold stuff and because I only had one bag and most of it is for my upcoming cycling holiday I decided to leave the bag on the side and deal with it later.

 

Well, this morning as I was putting the rest of the stuff away, I discovered that I had bought a small bar of Galaxy chocolate and - gasp - completely forgotten all about it!!!

 

A minor miracle indeed - I am not one of those women that can take or leave chocolate - I am still quite surprised that I actually forgot that I had some chocolate in the house.  I have brought it in to work today to eat at my coffee break as you can be sure that I am not going to forget it a second time!!

stupid stickers

I saw something on the back of a van the other day that made me stop and think.

It was a post office van - one of those red things that you see all over the place - and on the back of it it had a sticker saying that the van was limited to a particular speed. For instance there are lorries that cannot go beyond some odd figure like 56 miles per hour - quite why it's 56mph I don't know but there you go - there are some vehicles that cannot go as fast as the posted speed limit and so they tell you that so as to try and reduce your rage as you trundle along behind them on a country lane.

But I digress....this post office van - the sticker said...."limited to 70 mph".

Which completely baffles me as our national speed limit is 70 miles per hour, which, surely, negates the need for a sticker on a van that says "limited to 70 mph". I still don't understand it, but it is surely a sad reflection on how most drivers seem to ignore the posted speed limits and just go as fast as they feel they can.

So perhaps a sticker warning other drivers that this van cannot go faster than 70mph has some value, but I still say that such a sticker is redundant - NOBODY should be going faster than that anyway!! The thing is that somebody actually thought that this 70mph sticker would be a good idea - why?! I don't think that I am ever going to understand this one!

dry throat

It's rather amusing how I manage to be calm and collected in the face of Swine Flu and yet every little dry and tickly throat or sneeze sends me into a spiral of thoughts that I must be catching Swine Flu! and what would I do if I did!  I am not ashamed to admit that I have even checked my temperature a couple of times!!

 

Still, it just goes to show just how pervasive this thing is even if I don't know anyone who has been infected (to my knowledge!!) and yet I still believe that, other than good hygiene, there isn't really much we can do to stop the advance of this particular Flu - the antiviral medication just reduces the symptoms and possibly reduces the length of the illness by one day.  It doesn't actually cure it; and the vaccine....?  Not available yet!

 

There has been some talk in this hospital of redeploying staff in the event of a shortage of clinical staff if they all go down with Swine Flu, so...I could find myself on the wards yet if the worse comes to the worse and I am needed to feed patients or make the beds!  This is quite probably an over-reaction on the part of management, but I can still admire their forethought whilst still hoping that it doesn't happen!

At the moment though, I am Flu free and I intend to stay that way!!  ;-)

A surfeit of information

is what I had today! I am in the process of applying for a Hearing Dog for the Deaf and as part of that I was invited to an “information day” at the centre in Buckinghamshire.

This was an opportunity for applicants to see what the charity is all about and to see how the dogs behave, where they are trained. And more importantly, I think, to hear what the staff have to say and what a current Hearing Dog owner thinks of having a dog.

The website for the charity doesn’t actually give travel directions – probably to ensure the safety of the dogs - so I had to rely on a map and a rough idea of where it was. So, the closer I got the more worried I was that I had missed it altogether when I suddenly saw a road sign that said “Hearing Dogs” – aha!!

We were given a demonstration of how the dog works for us – including how to tell us that the alarm clock has gone off….

One of the best bits (and there were many) was probably the talk given by Hearing Dog owner David (dog was called Mitchell) that really opened our eyes to the responsibilities and the joys of owning a Hearing Dog. The funniest thing that he said was that when he first had the dog he was approached by someone who asked what a Hearing Dog did and he was ever so tempted to say that first thing in the morning the dog goes and listens to the radio and then comes and tells me what the news is!!!

Anyway – we certainly had a lot of information to take in and I still had a dozen questions at the end of the whole process!! But at the end of the day I came away feeling that I definitely, positively, absolutely would like to have a Hearing Dog.

Cycling holidays

I can't remember whether or not I've already mentioned this, but in August Mum and I are off on a cycling holiday in Suffolk.

Naturally this has meant a great deal of preparation - making sure that my bike was fit for purpose, doing a few bike rides to get myself prepared and buying some panniers. (after a great deal of research and reading other people's reviews I eventually settled on Arkel - a Canadian firm that sell very robust panniers).

We've also done most of the travel preparation, i.e. booked the Bed and Breakfasts and roughly planned our route; although I still need to do a few more bike rides, but the weather has been putting me off lately!

Anyway, the main purpose of this particular post is to say that we were getting a bit worried that Mum wouldn't even have a bike to ride on! Clearly, the one requirement of a cycling holiday is that you have a bicycle!! Mum had applied to get some money through the bike to work scheme; only it was taking rather longer than expected to arrive.

The voucher finally arrived yesterday and so Mum went and got her bike and after a few hiccups with the saddle and the gears, took it out on a short ride today. Mum's first ride on her lovely new land rover bike (which is purple!) and what does she do? She falls off!! Would you believe that she was stationary too!!! (sorry Mum, this was too good to keep quiet!).

Mum tells me that she overbalanced a little and when she went to put her foot down the ground sloped away a little and so she just missed altogether and fell over! Ending up with a muddy brake lever and a bruised knee - sending kisses your way, but you really shouldn't fall off your bike!