The Short Epic

Have just had a great walk with Dad, we were both a bit house bound and decided after dinner to go walk it off. We found a neolithic settlement and burial place not too far away from Avebury (Ha!!) called Windmill Hill that I don't remember ever having been to, and dad thought he had but years ago. A bit about the site

We went a bit of a circuitous route, and a walk that should have been about 1.25 miles one-way, took 2.5, through crop fields, lots of mud, climbing over water troughs, barbed wire and through pasture, instead of just staying on the tractor track and going straight there :) The upside is that I found a fox skull, quite recently decayed and stil with teeth in. The downside is that we were up to our knees in mud as we managed to stray into a field which had a diffuse stream running through it :)

Anyway, we got there in the end, in high spirits, both quite giggly but puffing, we wandered around all the barrows, climbed a couple of them and tried some meditation exercises which was good, and then after about half an hour started walking back. We stuck to the path this time and got back to the village in about half the time, in time to see the bikers head off from the Red Lion. We stopped in for a pint and a chat then went and had a wander around the Henge shop before coming home.

We're both knackered, but we have a good time when we're together so getting exercise of that type is fun. My bum hurts from accidentally sitting down too hard on a fence post while climbing the barbed wire, but I have hot tea and am filthy so it's off to the shower for me.

After a disturbed night, I have a cuppa and I'm awake enough to write about my first full day back at work.

Firstly it was very slow on the phones, we have a rate change today and our rates are going down they have been well publicised in advance and we have introduced a special incentive basically saying "Nationwide is not owned by, or run for the profiteering of a bunch of shareholders, we are a mutual company owned and run by it's members. To demonstrate this we are going to fly in the face of the competition, reduce our reservation fees, abolish all but the minimum early redemption charges, and reduce our fixed interest rates."

As a result of that the phones were dead quiet yesterday, everyone's waiting until today to call and do their business so it was a nice slow re-introduction to work. I was also mistakenly only logged onto the quick quotes line all day, so I got no application calls, just enquiries. I was alright with that idea, but I do need a call with insurances to be scored before I go onto my new sales team so I should hopefully get that today.

New Team I have been given to Team Monte Carlo (MC) and from about the middle of the month I will be working for Lyn Evans and he is really nice. He's a bit like my dad, an older taffy with heart of gold. It's the best possible outcome really, and although I don't really plan to stay, it'll be nice in the intervening time to spend it with someone I like. Unfortunatly Charlotte has gone onto Sharon G's team so we won't be together apart from the odd occasion when our lunches happen to be at the same time, although we will still be on the same shift pattern so we can car share. Neither of us are stuck on a team with S and his harem who all (coincidentally) got put on the same team. Ahh, good news!!

I spoke to a customer yesterday and gave him a quote for moving house, we were talking about his work in PR and I managed to make a throwaway comment about there not being many jobs in that field at the moment and he put me onto a couple of publications which are absolutely jam-packed with PR jobs and even mentioned the words "event organiser" which was cool. So I made a note of them and have been looking through one of the online sites this morning. He's not wrong, it seems there's a real shortage of people with decent communication and organisational skills at the moment.

The evening was even more quiet, I spent it in MC playing games and doing quizzes which is a nice way to pass the evening. I already know and get on with most of MC, especially Saj, Rob and Alison. After work I went to Tesco and bought the makings for dads birthday cake. I am going all out with black forest gateaux from scratch, but using dream topping instead of real cream since loads of people coming are allergic to cream.

This weekend my pappy turns 59 years old, we're having a bit of an open house Saturday, AK Alex & jimbob are comign for lunch, as are Beth, Simon and the boys and I think Doreen & Tony will be there as well, but we've thrown the house open to anyone who wants to show up and wish him well. We've also had a family collection to buy him a car cd player and get it installed because he's decided 59 years is long enough to go without.

Have to go get ready for work, I'm parking straight in the park and ride car park today, no buggering about driving all over looking for parking fo me, oh no!! I quite enjoyed the walk to collect it yesterday, it was blustery and stormy looking, but I managed to get a break in the rain so I didn't get soaked and it cleared out my brain, a nice little break. Today I have my protection re-launch event at the Kings Arms pub in old town from 2pm until 5pm, so I won't be in work from about 1:30pm until about 5:30pm which is nice. We're learning all about the new insurance range and pricing over a pint :)