It took me 5 hours to get to my London office yesterday. The cause was a fire in some signals. I could relate my Keyston Cops journey - but I’d probably start crying again.

Needless to say, the compensation claim is in!

Mo Mowlam was, for a long time, one of my favourite politicians. Let’s be fair, her upstaging of Blair at the 1999 conference became legendary, but she was also straight-talking and intelligent - something so few politicians can say, these days.

I’ve noticed other entries around the Blogsphere about her passing, but I didn’t feel I could add anything. However, having read Mike’s piece earlier this morning, I just had to add this link, from a bloke who actually knew her.

One of the truly great women of our time.

It may have been a fluke goal, but a few white wine and soda’s in, it was all good! My first Sunday afternoon of the season was like a lease of new life. Thank God for football, white wine and good company.

In completely unrelated news, My Dear Friend can currently be heard presenting the DriveTime programme on Festival FM. Catch it while you can (and offer him a job if you live in Southern Ireland, where he is shortly to take up residence).

So, returned to sunny Wales from a less-sunny Leicester a few days ago. We had a wonderful time, staying with a dear friend of ours, whose mad as a fruit bat! Not that I know that fruit bat’s are made, per se, you understand, just, well, she is.

We did quite a lot in our brief stay. We visited Snibston Discovery Park, where we ate lunch in an ex-Finnish railway carriage (it rained, btw), Gorse Hill City Farm, where we patted the horses and cows and ate home-made cake (it was sunny, btw) and Twycross Zoo, where we said hello to numerous monkeys, elephants, sea-lions and penguins (to say it rained would be an understatement. I was looking for an Ark). We also went swimming in a very posh, new leisure centre, not far from our friends house. I went on a shopping trip to Leicester Market and bought much to much fruit (just getting towards the bottom of the bag of greengages) and we had our farewell lunch at Bobby’s (where it’s as much as you can eat for £4.95 at lunchtime - fabulous!).

Back to reality with a bump. OH’s grandfather is very unwell and in hospital at the moment. He’s suffered with mental health problems quite badly over the last 11 years or so and is currently having a serious relapse. OH is taking this very hard. On top of this, my dad’s not been very well - and what with mum still being a bit unsteady following her broken knee-cap - that’s been eating away at my time.

Good news, OH’s had an interview for a new job, which seemed to go OK and is waiting to hear if he’s going to be called back for a second round (including psychometric testing!). He’s also interested in another job, but that’s not progressed very far yet. I’m back in the office and after a couple of hick-ups, two of our major projects for the Autumn are slotting into place (at last!).

Have some things I must write about soon. In the interim, can I just say to the man who followed me into work this morning (driving a red, G-reg, Mondeo car), it is not acceptable to drive a car with no shirt on, especially when you have man-breasts! Putting sunglasses on your head might make you feel like your Tom Cruise, but the baldness and strange ears (seriously, very strange) don’t really help you in this image. Please, sort yourself out!

We’re off on our long awaited summer holiday this evening. The exotic location of choice is Leicester. We’re hoping for some tidy weather and it appears that, for once, the rain gods are smiling on us.

Although I appreciate that some of you may remain somewhat underwhelmed by this location (after all, it isn’t truly exotic even if we are crossing a border) OH and I are extremely excited. We are staying with a friend who is begging us for baby-sitting duties. And, I mean begging. This means at least one night out - no William - to enjoy some of our vices. I’m not going to mention his streaming cold (think Shrek on a bad day - it’s all green around the nasal area) and incredibly stinky nappies to her before we get there, so hopefully we’ll get away with it!

Service is likely to be interrupted for the next week or so.

I had a free bag of Haribo StarMix from my stationery suppliers today. A kick-back, if you will.

I’ve nearly finished it and feel sick.

Is anybody out there capable of just eating one or two sweets out of a bag and then putting them away for another day (and I mean sweets you really, really like)? Same question goes for Pringles.

I work in a building that is split between 10 or more companies and organisations. Several are health related, but the majority aren’t, so although I occasionally do bump into people, mainly I see the same group of people over and over. The floor our organisation is on is split into 5 separate offices (after all – a whole floor for just two of us, would be a little excessive) of which the 3 health bodies do tend to bond more readily.

When we moved in, back in August 2003, I soon discovered that in the office next door was a guy I’d worked with back in my Welsh Office days (about 6 years previously). For a period whilst I was based in the Welsh Assembly’s predecessor, this chap and I worked back to back, with two other girls sharing the partitioned off space within the department. Like every other government office I’ve been in, at the time the Welsh Office was an open-plan utopia (until you got to a certain grade, when you were allowed an office of your own – with either glass or wooden walls – again depending on rank). However, to combat this spirit of openness, individual departments, over the years, had bought all manner of devices to partition themselves off. On the particular part of the floor I inhabited, this included photocopiers, pot plants, cupboards and coat-stands. At some point, the powers that be decided this looked messy, and new furniture, corralling us into fours, arrived and hence my working environment.

Anyway, I digress. I remember that on meeting AW again that we joked about how two out of the four of us were now working in the same building. What were the odds?

Let me tell you, the odds would not have been as attractive as having three out of the four of us in the same building! I walked into one of the other health care organisations the other day to drop off some post (62p for a stamp or a quick wander up a flight of stairs – no competition – I’m tight!) and saw SH one of the other girls! Now married and after a spell working away, she’s now back in the area.

Nice to see her though it was it was slightly odd. I mean, seriously, what are the odds?

Our organisation had its Summer Lunch last Friday in central London. Very nice it was to – much good food and wine were shared by the masses and the small cogs – whilst many of the larger cogs had to disappear off for meetings in the afternoon. Some of the larger cogs who did stay ended up rather the worse for wear (with one being slowly, but surely undressed by a fellow Celt, who should have known better – luckily it was just a shirt!).

So, I leave at 2000, assuming there to be a 2045 from London Paddington to Cardiff – a train I now know for some reason no longer exists. Ho hum, thinks a slightly drunk me, no problems, the 2115 will still get me into Cardiff with 15 minutes to spare for the train back to the Gene Puddle. Of course, drunk me wasn’t factoring in that in over a dozen train journey’s back and forth to the smoke over recent months, not one has gone smoothly both ways. If I’m on time going up, odds are the delay will be on the way back. And vice versa. Needless to say, we were diverted – via Box (?? – I’ve never heard of Box, but it involved going via Bath Spa, if that is in anyway relevant).

There must be something fairly worrying for a train guard (or is it now Train Manager/Customer Service Executive/something similar) when he has to announce to a train full of passengers, many slightly the worse for wear, that Arriva Trains Wales is not responsible for many of them missing their onward connections. Luckily, mine fell into the small category of those they were responsible for – leading to the statement, “you will get me a taxi and you will pay for it – to my door!”.

They did as well. There was a little more discussion when we got to Cardiff, but leaving my foot in the door of the train and stopping it departing seemed to have the desired effect. If only they could have arranged a non-racist taxi driver and life would have been perfect. However, you can’t have it all!

I’ve been undertaking a survey of my fellow human beings. Not, I will hasten to add, is this survey the same as those done by my good friend L, who used to throw herself into undertaking survey’s of the opposite sex with just a little too much gusto! It tended to follow one too many lagers – but that’s another story, for another day.

My survey began because last week I had a potentially nasty incident with a VW Golf at a roundabout. As no indicators were involved on the Golf’s side, I thought perhaps some sign language might be appropriate. Fingers and fists come in so useful – and not always where you might think.

Since then, I’ve been on an indicator mission. To date, I’ve calculated on my journey’s back and forth to work (taking place just before rush hour on both sides of the day) that 67% of cars don’t bother to indicate at roundabouts. Not even a little bit of indication at the end to say, “Yup, that next exit, that one’s mine”. Last week, I watched a silver Toyota Yaris swing across three lanes of traffic to make its exit from the big roundabout by work. Not that people beep any more either, like so many other things, it seems to be taken for granted that this is a hazard of driving.

According to my workings, slightly less drivers fail to indicate at junctions. These conclusions come, in the main, from journey’s outside work – when I’m pootling around town. However, this is very dependent on the type of junction and where it is in the grest metropolis where I live. Some junctions seem to piffling for drivers to worry about – despite the crossing of oncoming traffic.

Am I being slightly old-fashioned and dull expecting people to use their indicator’s? Should I just join in with the chaos – after all, it’s probably much more fun driving in Paris and losing a bumper every now and then. As a French friend once asked me “..well, the bumpers, they are for bumping, no?”. I always tended to think that they are for making sure your main bits (engine, etc) stays out of trouble. But, again, I could be wrong.
Strangely some might say for a woman, I realise that I’m not perfect. However, I’m not psychic. If you don’t indicate then how do you think I know you are heading my way? Views welcomed – as ever!