Nice to come home and visit my blog. I have been a very busy boy, and it is going to get worse over the next five weeks or so...
I started my new job on the Monday and I am part of an 18 strong management team that has been pulled together from all four corners of England. We are spending two weeks in a conference centre doing a lot of team building and stuff. We then go off some place else for further training and development.
Day one was a tandem bicycle treasure hunt. 5 miles on a tandem is not easy. They are strange beasts where you have to know exactly what your co-rider is doing, or you both fall off. We also visited a playhouse and learnt some circus tricks and how to act. Got taken way way out of our comfort zones. Nothing pushes you together more, than when you are all feeling totally awkward and vulnerable.
Day two was filming a video. That was brilliant. Wandering around the town pouncing on the general public, and interlocking sections that displayed the core values of the company. I have to say that out of the three that were shot, our video was voted the best. I was the director/camera man. It was totally funny.
Day three was food and wine tasting. All the wines were fizzy, from Cava to Champers, so that was good, and the food was to die for. We then had a full blown evening meal and loads of beer.
Day four and five were a little more about the operation, but still good fun.
Still racked with pain in my right shoulder and it is causing pain down my arm and in my fingers. Been to the walk-in centre and they just gave me short-shrift and told be to keep taking Ibuprofens. The Doc also looked at my toe nails and told me to go to my GP for treatment.
Went to my GP and showed him my toe nails. He told me that a sample needs to go to the laboratory. Nothing else that he can do. Told him about my shoulder and he said the same as the Doc in the walk-in centre.
It's great, ain't it. Try and get fit and look what happens. My toe nails go septic and diseased, and I pull my shoulder muscle. I feel like the walking wounded. All in the weekend before I start a new job as well. It feels like someone has been sticking pins in a voodoo dolly of me. Oh well, if I keep taking the pain killers maybe it will all eventually pass.
Today I am going to bum around the house for a bit, do some housework and get some bits. I need to pop to the hairdresser and get my hair cut, well, I just need it styled really. Just chopped into to maintain that 'just got out of bed' look. I normally have a number 2 up the back and sides and quite short on top so this new look is something different and I am quite enjoying it to be honest.
Kez is round in the afternoon and we are going strawberry picking in Dunchurch, the next village down the the road. We are then going to eat the strawbs with a bottle of champers to celebrate being together one year this Saturday. Seems like an age ago that we had that first kiss. In fact it was a really odd date. We kinda got together on a completely bolt-from-the-blue hook up. I would never in a million years have thought that we would have done, but took a chance and here we are now. Whilst at times it has been a little fraught along the way, as we have pushed each others boundaries, what we seem to have developed is a totally balanced and equal partnership where there is total honesty, respect and safety. It's been hard work to foster and develop that culture within a relationship, but years of counselling other people with their relationship problems has given me a pretty big insight into them. The payback for all the effort is out of this world.
If I am going to give any relationship advice at all, the cornerstones are:
Being yourself - being close and being shy don't really work, neither does being close and bigging yourself up to be something you are not.
Making time for each other - if you cannot be bothered to make that time, then the relationship is flawed. It is saying, 'I would rather be doing something else than be with you'.Saying what you are feeling - if something is niggling away, it will effect how you are with your partner and that builds resentment that festers away and mole-hills become mountains. Over time the 'issue' is so clouded that it becomes impossible to get back to ground zero. And by then the habit of being awkward and difficult with each other has formed and becomes the lifestyle pattern for the foreseeable. But on this last point, don't become too entrenched in your own opinion. Step out of your shoes and ask yourself 'Why?' and you might uncover what you need to know without having to go into full and frank soul-bearing confrontation.
Anyhow, I need to steer myself off this theme as the blog is not really the place. See how easy it is..
I have just cleared my noticeboard and stuck all the takeaway menus in a drawer. They were taking over somewhat. I now have a takeaway drawer, an idea that I got from John, a mate in Northampton (or his nephews). I also cleared off various holiday confirmations and stuff. We have to keep anything and everything that shows that we are together, so that when I apply for my Oz visa, off the back of Kezzy's Perm Visa, we can prove that we have been in a long-term relationship. That day is looming and I will put my visa application in, in September 2009. Hopefully it will just be a formality, but that is for next year to worry about.
Well, I guess I better start to make myself look half decent and drag myself up town to catch the hairdressers before every man and his shaggy dog decides that they want a haircut too.
Ciao 4 now
(o:
