NASAP image of the day today,
Courtesy of NASA
I thought this was a beautiful image. …….
Pictures paint a thousand words
Work tomorrow. ……already?
Sunday night again, it seems to come around a bit too quickly for my liking. I’m sure that the rest of the week doesn’t go as quickly so Friday night to Sunday evening.
We seem to spend our lives at work and sunday night is made more of an issue as we know work is coming quickly, the lie insurance have gone, you’ve accomplished nothing (well it was the weekend ) , and only seem to think about how quickly next weekend will come.
We should really appreciate being able to go to work, many, many people don’t have the opportunity to do it, yet we wish our lives away to the next weekend so we can be free of the cloud above our heads that is the dreaded work week.
I’m sure Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order to ban weekends, in the hope to make America great again, of course, but until then let’s try to enjoy the week as well as the weekend, and take the opportunity of enjoying the gifts life has to offer.
Sweets ARE good for you!!
I came across this article today about some brothers who sold their family business for £50 million. The shop was started 50 years ago by the parents of the brothers as a single shop on a high street and was sold today as a chain of 18 cash and carry stores around England.
Lovely story i though and just goes to show that a small shop can turn in to a multi million pound business. Very nice i’d say……
A day in the life of a social housing professional…….
I know i’m not the only one out there……..i know we all go home at the end of the day and wonder why we do what we do. We must, as its not a job that you want to do when you are growing up. Can you imagine the look on your parents face when they ask you “what do you want to do when you grow up sweetie?” To be greeted with ” i want to be a repairs inspector, then one day be the manager of the repairs department with ion the social housing sector”, as the color drains from your parents face, they then spend the next few years trying to get you in to more fashionable work such as banking or prostitution.
Whilst i’m sat here watching 999 whats your emergency? (for those outside the UK it follows the phone operators, Police and ambulance crews around a sea side town in Northern England) It strikes me that whilst their jobs deals with the more serious side of life and death, some of the situations they find themselves in are not to far removed from situations i find my self in on a daily basis. Abusive people, drunk, high and aggressive.
I’ve thought about writing a book about my experiences for some time now, as i think there is a wealth of funny, sad and interesting stories that i could recount that would fill a few pages out and draw some recognition from other professionals around the world, i may do it one day , but for now i think i’ll stick to the blogging and see if anyone out there can relate to some of the issues that are raised. Like the time i was out on some visits to people houses and was offered a cup of tea which was stirred with the persons spoon they were eating their eggs with……..not sure what the social etiquette is on this one? Drink it to be polite? Put it in the plant pot whilst they are not looking? Or when i went to inspect a “problem” with some plaster only to find that the tenants had scrapped the paint and plaster off back to the brickwork, and weren’t to happy with the finish on the walls as they wanted to “paper the walls”.
There’s never a dull day to say the least………….
Books, they are the future….
I never used to like books, wasn’t the sort of thing we did as young men growing up in England. Not in the 80’s anyway, you know the scene…..uh food, water, me like you….hu hu. I was a cave man , no doubt about it.
I only really started reading books seriously about 15 years ago. I now feel a bit empty/ board if i’m not reading a book of some kind. I know books are getting a bit of a reputation in some quarters as being old-fashioned with the new Kindle and other well-known book readers, but let’s be honest its not the same is it?
You cant fold the corners of a page over, all of them look the same, no doubt you can change the colour of the case to suit your mood…..yippee. You can now download books from itunes. I wonder how long it will be before the kindle is classed as old-fashioned?
Book shops have had to diversify over the years to get people to come in, stay in and buy things. You’ll struggle to walk in to a book shop now without seeing a coffee shop and cakes. It took a a bit of getting used to when this first started becoming common place, but now i’m looking for a quiet book shop where i can get a coffee and take half an hour out of my work day to zone out. If i’m sat looking at a computer all day at work, the last thing i want to do when i get home is stare at a small electronic device to read the latest chapter of Harry Potter.
Keep supporting the small local bookshops , they wont be around for ever, but in this age of five-minute wonders and the next new fad lasting 2 or 3 weeks before we move on to the next thing or 24 hour news channels we have to put up with ( seeming 25 hours a day) book shops are a quiet corner of the world where you can forget your troubles and chill out even for a short while. It’s nice to be able to do that……….if you think about it , we don’t usually go to long without having a mobile phone with us, logging on to the internet on your phone is common place now. There was a time, not to long ago , when you went out of the house you were out of touch until you came home.
So the moral of this story? take your lunch break , don’t take your phone, get a book and sit in a coffee / book shop and take a load off…………whats the worst that could happen?
I love book shops
It might be just my memory playing tricks on me, but when i was younger bookshops were a bit stuffy, full of old people who looked over their glasses at you and smelled like the inside of my dogs kennel. Now they are one of my favorite places.
It’s nice to walk in off the street of a city and notice the quiet immediately when you enter a Waterstones or a Borders. The book shelves are all nicely set out, the books are nice to look at and all displayed in order to entice you in and make you want to buy one, or 3 for 2 as is the offer these days.
Theres usually a coffee shop in them now where you can go and peruse a book you may buy or look at the one you’ve already bought. they are quiet and a great place to eat your lunch when you’ve only got a quick half hour slot before you go back to the office. You can normally get help off the assistants who are usually younger than you and they are happy to help as well as give advice on what to get , whats hot and what is coming out over the next few weeks.
It’s nice to think that in the days of internet blogging, wireless communication and tweets that the modern bookshop is a haven from the day-to-day grind of everyday life. I love technology as much as any one but i don’t think the Kindle will replace the feel of a good book in your hand, do you?
One of those days……again
It’s not the best feeling to go in to work and not want to be there, this is a feeling that I’ve been increasingly feeling for the last erm…..16 years.
I don’t know why but sometimes you can feel trouble brewing on the drive in, a gut feeling that all is not well in the camp, that something may jump up and bite you through out the upcoming day , not sure what but something. Very rare in this day and age that trouble is contained to your team, there is normally some way for people in other departments to find out about it, twitter, facebook ect, so you end up getting it when you get home as well.
I’ve submitted a patent today for a social networking site for bosses and line managers where no one who you manage or work with can go on it and see what you’re putting about your problems……its going to be called pullingafacebook.com.
Hope this one catches on , I’ll put a link to it on my twitter page , you know , to spread the word…….
take it easy peeps
Riots?
I can’t honestly belive this country, these so-called rioters should be stopped with force by the police or the army as required. I think they should use water cannons , gas, rubber bullets or what ever they need to push them back and get the message through that this type of behaviour is just not acceptable.
Quiet clearly this has turned in to a free for all, and an excuse to loot and pillage any shops that they walk past. the prime minister has come back off his holidays ( well done sir, that’ll show them) and quiet frankly not done much as yet to stop this. Yes he’s said a few words , yes they have deployed police from around the country to London and now Manchester to assist the police that are already there, but he should have authorised the use of more force to combat the violence right away. Once again the hoodlums are getting a few more hours of doing what they want, when they should have felt the rubber bullets , water hoses or tanks of her majesty’s finest sooner rather than later and we’d have seen a few of the young lads and so-called hard men going home to their beds rather than being out on the streets all night causing trouble.
Innocent people are getting hurt, losing their homes and business’s through no fault of their own.
Time for the Prime minister to earn his money and give the police the resources it needs to combat the violence.
New York in january
I thought I’d share this one with you all. This is the view from the top of Rockerfeller Centre new York on a crisp January morning.
We visited New York to celebrate my girlfriend birthday as we love the city. This is one of the best photos we took showing central park and a lot further. You could literally see for miles and miles from the “top of the rock”.
beautiful, I’m sure you’ll agree
A guy trys to surprise his wife…..
A friend of mine was an avid golfer and awoke one saturday morning , with his wife snoozing beside him, thinking that he’d get up early and go for a round of golf.
He said to his wife he was going to play golf, to which his wife remarked “are you crazy? its raining cats and dogs out there you get soaked.” Ignoring his wifes advice he got up, loaded the car with his clubs and set off for the course.
About 10 minutes later, he had the windscreen wipers on full-bore and could hardly see 5 yards in front of the car. He decided that his wife was right and that he’d not bother with the golf but rather go back to the house to surprise his wife.
He parked the car quietly in the garage, entered the house slowly and sneaked up the stairs carefull not to wake his wife. Giddy at the thought of the surprise, he undressed on the landing in to his birthday suit with the intention of showing his wife how much he loved her. He slowly opened the door , pulled back the covers, slipped in behind his wife and commented ” its raining cats and dogs out there love” to which his wife replied, “I know…… that silly buggers gone to play golf.”
Hhmmmm…….
7acko 