my birthday March 08

Thank you for your birthday wishes. I had a lovely day and went with FP to RHS Wisley – their HQ near Esher. We wandered the grounds in the blustery sunshine and I bought a huge hellebore and then in the evening went with A* and J2 for a meal at the pub. I am going out with J1 next week.

News on the job front? I am still going through a redundancy process with Scarman. I went and got legal advice from 2 lovely young men at Islington Law Centre who basically said that in a tribunal setting they would come up with a business case for getting rid of me so that’s it. I’ll take my redundancy and be grateful for the 6 years I had that extra income and all the fun nights away in engaging company I enjoyed as part of it.

I had an interview with another consultancy firm which would have involved me going self-employed and probably not earning for 6 months which I didn’t get. I didn’t get it because I had no sales experience, but they said my sales role play was brilliant so that has given me confidence. My line manager at EC1 (the post I tried to get last year) is off sick with stress for 3 months. I had a meeting with the Renaisi Chief exec to ask if they would let me do one day a week ‘prospecting’ which he said yes to ( I could stay with Renaisi) but I also had an interview with a Housing association this week (again I didn’t get it – no feedback as yet). I am thinking about how I position myself to ensure I have employment up to 60. Once J1 finishes this summer I want to put some money into building up my pension which I haven’t been paying in to for about 10 years. I have taken out a new offset mortgage on the house as I have an endowment out this April and another in 2012. This will keep me with a very small mortgage until I am 60, but give me a lump sum now to pay for J2’s one year car insurance, pay off the credit card and allow me to do some infrastructure work on the house. I am not going to have enough money to do all I would like, but I am going to start with a new boiler, solar panels, windows, sofits and new bathrooms.

A* is still in love with James and it survived him going to Australia for 3 weeks. I am a bit tentative about a 28 year old on £v.modest who subsidises his living expenses with 4 credit cards that his VERY VERY rich mum pays off at the end of every month, but another part of me thinks – well – if they have the money does it really matter? At least he does his job, is lovely to A* (who has names for all her potential 4 children – Ania, Harriet, Tristan and Rupert – all no doubt to be privately educated). She is happy.

J1 is doing well at uni in his final assessments and is planning on reattempting the basic commando course in July as well as going for officer training. His testosterone wants to wear a different colour beret from other officer recruits. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think he has some unfinished business there after getting such critical blood poisoning at the last attempt.

I’m a bit anxious for J2. He is still reffing and has asked me to get him reception work over the summer so he doesn’t have to work Saturdays and do anything too manual. I think it might be quite hard because I’m not sure his words per minute are fast enough and he is only 17. It’s interesting how the communicator side of him comes out in his job choices. I hope that will see him through his lack of academic will power or maybe he will surprise me with his AS grades. I know he is depressed and anxious at the moment, but he has joined a local adult football team which is good.

We haven’t given up on Can Do Freedom Travel and as well as having an operational test website are getting legal advice and advice from a university lecturer dad of a work colleague who specialises in eco tourism.
Finally – we have bought the tickets for Arizona so I am going for a month mid June – July. We will have to start planning it now.