Today I've mostly bin...

[tricia]

sad day at work today - we were told that one of the caps in one of the teams had died. Friday he celebrated his 40th birthday then overnight had a brain haemorage, he was going to have an op on Wednesday but bled again. He left a young family

Tricia

[Wulfruna]

(He does that, you know).

Oh yes? .... and how do YOU know??? (not that I'm an interfering parent or anything..... )

[Wulfruna]

p.s. Sorry Tricia - I only saw your post after posting the above. That is such a sad story. It will no doubt have put a blight on all of you.

[Bunnylump]

Oh dear, poor you Tricia, that's such sad news.

(To Wulfruna) now THAT would be telling.

(You do realise of course, that I no more have any insider information about Scurra in his bathcap than anyone else does. But I quite enjoyed winding you up. And I'm perfectly sure that when Scurra reads that he'll just raise his eyes to heaven, tut resignedly and ignore me like he always does...)

[Scurra]

and ignore me like he always does...

I never ignore you. How can you ignore a giant purple rabbit hopping around like she's got a thorn in each foot?!

Also, I know you're only really posting so that you can reach five figures before most people have reached four...


(Sorry to hear that, Tricia. How horrible.)

[eirian]

Tricia, you have my full sympathy - I remember only too well how devastating something like that is in your office. In our small department (30), we have lost 3 members of staff in the last 4 years. One was even at work at the time - came into work in the morning, went to a training session on computers and keeled over with a heart attack.
Sending my love and thoughts to you and your colleagues.

[giraffe]

Tricia that's awful. Something like that shakes you up completely.

I had a newsletter from my old school yesterday, and in the obituary section it said that my English teacher had died. He was only 62. (He must have been very young when he taught me 30 years ago) Last night I was writing a letter and I just had a vision of him standing there saying that if we took nothing else in that he taught us, we should pay attention to how to write a letter, because we would use it so much in real life. I hadn't realised that everytime I pause to check whether it's yours faithfully or sincerely I think of him and that lesson.

[Laura]

Yes, I remember the teacher who taught me that as well. She also made us repeat 'def-eye-nite' until no-one would ever dream of spelling it defanite.

[tricia]

thanks for the messages of support - I felt terrible for most of the members of his team as they are all in their early 20's and they looked totally shocked. I was to some extent prepared becuase Mum had the same thing, and survived 18 months BUT I had worked in a stroke unit But it does not totally prepare you.

Tricia

[Bunnylump]

40 is no age, is it? And I don't think you can ever prepare yourself for someone's death. I know I couldn't. I'm still somewhere inside trying to battle with the idea that my Mum actually IS gone. And yet she was in hospital for a month and gravely ill. But I still wasn't able to prepare myself for actually watching her die.

This is jolly, isn't it? Sorry. But the good news is that I finally got everyone together to scatter her ashes on 2nd Jan in the bluebell wood. My brother has written a really beautiful piece of guitar music called "Bluebell wood in winter". Things do move on, eventually. But it'll be difficult for you all at work for a while I should think. My thoughts are with you, Tricia.

[pebbles]

So sorry to hear your news, tricia.

[LAT]

That's so sad Tricia, really sorry to hear the news.

We heard the other day that my son's ex-housemaster's wife has just died. Leke heard from him in November when he said "all's well here" so we believe it must have been a very sudden aggressive cancer. They had three young children - probably all no older than 10 now.

We alwatys belived that he was destined to be head of a good school but he will have some real challenges to cope with now.

[giraffe]

I'm having one of those days.

First Lally went to try to enter her Barnaby answer to find the computer screen was turning itself on and off and only giving bits of the picture and only in black and white. So I dug out an old monitor and spent ages trying to get that to respond to the keyboard.

Then I needed her password, but couldn't access my emails and just kept getting an error message. Superscurra came to the rescue and pmed it to me.

Then I went to put my third lot of washing in the tumbledryer and despite the little orange light being on nothing happened when I pressed the start button. (I think it had just over heated as it consented to work after an hour's rest) It's a bit elderly and I can't use it for whites as it sometimes puts black marks on things.

I'm just wondering what is going to go wrong next.

[Bunnylump]

I have had a day of phone calls and visitors. It's been ridiculous - first my son rang, then my brother rang, then my Dad, then Janet, then my sister in law. Next, my sister in law lands on the doorstep armed with some knitting needles and a ball of wool for me. For those of you who know me well, you'll realise just how random this is (I knit like a 6 year old).

Then Janet turns up on the doorstep saying "I KNOW I'm being a big GIRL but..." Her husband's gone skiing (he left 2 hours ago) and she's already stuck. She'd run out of screen wash for her car, and not only didn't know how to replenish screen wash, but also didn't know how to open her bonnet. My daughter was laughing at her (this is the girl who could fix bits on steam trains) and insisted on SHOWING her how to do it herself. She was suitably ashamed.

Oh well, now I suppose I'd better try to remember how to KNIT.

I lead SUCH a dynamic and fascinating life, don't I?

[giraffe]

I was once in that position. I went to pick up a friend of my son for a party when they were about 6. This friend was the daughter of an army Major and they lived on the local MOD base and it was armistice day, so the gate which you could normally just drive through to the officers' houses had an armed guard. I was in my husband's car and they stopped me and asked me to open the bonnet and boot. I had no idea how to open the bonnet and no idea what was in the boot. So I opened the boot (they weren't allowed to touch the car) and they gestured to all the boxes and packages in there and asked if they were all mine. SO I just said yes. Then I sat for a while reading the instruction manual trying to work out how to get into the bonnet and they said they'd let me through without looking. Either I looked to dim to be a terrorist or the sight of little F sat in the back clutching a birthday present was enough to convince them. When I finally reached the major's house looking a bit flustered they admitted they should have warned me about the two men with machine guns.

[kathlyn]

We lived on an army base for 6 months. When the terrorist alert was at high risk we had to have our cars searched every day on returning to base!

[Bunnylump]

Way back when...
D used to go round loads of airforce bases playing gigs. It was rather unsettling seeing the difference between the British Airforce bases and the American ones. British ones had armed guards at checkpoints, fit healthy looking soldiers, cars checked, bags checked, loads of things to sign. US ones had fat lazy soldiers chewing gum whilst waving you through with the end of their machine gun without checking anything. The soldiers were up partying and drinking until about 4am, and the brought in coach loads of slappers. It was really quite shocking. The most ridiculous thing was that us girlies started "dancing round the handbags" (like you do) and got a really fierce army type coming over and telling us they had a strict rule on same sex dancing, because it "encouraged homosexuality"!!!!!!!! Trust me, that REALLY wasn't particularly on my plan for the evening, but hey ho. Rather a bizarre thing to be the ONLY strict rule they appeared to have...

[kathlyn]

Some Americans are a bit wierd like that plus a bit puritanical too.

Have you ever been to Miami airport? The toilets there have half doors!!!

[gill216]

I can add a bit to this too. In linedance days we did British army bases in Holland, Belgium and Germany. Hand over 3 passports, only 2 people visible in the van. No questions asked. It scared me a bit to be honest; these were British bases.

[brian]

Just before I retired I acted as liaison with the company I worked for and the Combined Services Rugby team (who we part sponsored) I was put up on an Air Force base before each match. Had to check in at the guard room with guys waving real weapons, not allowed to take car right up to Officers mess but parked in a secure park and then had to get someone down to vouch for me. Mind I enjoyed this as it meant that none of the idiots we have at home could be smashing wing mirrors or tearing off my ariel!