DVDs and detectives

[Anne Brooke]

Still slogging away on the Health Centre website today – it’s getting rather more complicated, but I think I’ve managed to work out a new template for it – with the help of our long-suffering IT department. And it works too. Just need a shortcut name now and I can do exciting secretarial things with the leaflet links. Hurrah. Are you keeping up at the back?
The morning was galvanised into further excitement by our first meeting with the Guildford School of Acting who are going to be doing a new Student Care Services DVD for Freshers’ Week in September for us. Goodness me, having an arty, creative type sweep in was like a breath of fresh air in an abandoned room. It was great! We were all bright-eyed and sparky by the end of it all. Which, for me, was helped by the fact that the GSA representative was a nice example of hot male totty. Bliss. More meetings please! Down, girl, down! Hmm, maybe it’s my age?... My obviously pre-menopausal hormones aside, I think they’ll do a good job and it should be zappier than last year’s DVD too. And we can upload it to the website, so that will make us look modern for sure. Double hurrah!

Had a walk round campus at lunchtime and sat in the shade by the lake for a while. Did a bit of thinking, but not much. I don’t want to tire myself out, after all. Not at my age, m’dears. Actually, Andrea and I were talking in the office about our plans for life and what we might want to do when we retire with our respective spouses (so perhaps it’s the month for introspection after all, as everyone’s pausing to think, by the looks of it). Heck, maybe there should be a National Introspection Week and we can all get it over with in one go as we plan our years? – the government should make it mandatory and I will then at last have been responsible for starting a trend. Anyway, we both agreed that joint marital plans are a Good Idea. So it’s official.

And I've made a great and exciting discovery today - the loos in Roots Cafe (which we always have to use as we don't have any of our own) have nice green and red badges linked to the door handles so you can tell whether they're in use or not. How exciting! In three years of working at the university, I'd never noticed that before, so I went round testing them all and giggling. Did check that the loos were empty first though ...

Oh, and Andrea is also this month’s office Superheroine, as she has single-handedly recalculated my bank holiday formulae and worked out that I am giving the University too many days this year after all, as HR’s initial calculations are incorrect. There’s a surprise. Triple hurrahs for Andrea! And it means I can have one more bank holiday without having to fight for it. How we sigh for the days when life was so much less complicated, eh …

Tonight, I have to go and vote in the local elections – so I hope I can remember my own address this time. The time before last, I forgot entirely where I lived (well, it was a bad day, I was tired, etc etc …), pretended to be cleaning my glasses while I thought about the question, and was only saved by recognising my neighbour who was womanning the entrance and was able to wave me in the right direction. Phew. One false move round these parts and the men in white coats will be upon me, I fear …

Later, it’s the glorious “Dangerous Davies” in “The Last Detective” on TV– Lord H and I love this so will be glued. Some nice wit and dogged police work and a little bit of drama – what more could one want of an evening? So like the home life of our own dear Queen. Might also try to ring the friend I’m seeing next Friday again, as I haven’t heard from her yet as to when we’re meeting up (Bryony? Where are you? Hope you’re okay …) so I can rearrange the rest of my day accordingly. I think I’m going to try for an NVQ in Diary Administration, if there is one. I’m sure I’d be a wow.

At home, I've got another rejection from Snow Books (yawn) - in fact maybe Snow Books Yawn should be their new name, as the amount of rejections I get from them is really dull, dahlings. In fact it's so dull their minion couldn't even be arsed to confirm which novel it was - Maloney's Law (which they rejected in January anyway)? Thorn in the Flesh? Who knows! I don't think I'll bother with them again - obviously too much up their own arses to know good literature when it hits them in the face. (And I have to say that when I read one of their novels, it was actually as dull as ditchwater, tee hee, and made me feel very happy that I could write better than that, so I'm probably saved from a fate worse than death, hurrah!).

Oh, and only one more day to the launch of http://www.pinkchampagneandapplejuice.com on Friday (tomorrow!) at 3pm – hope you’ll join me there in a virtual glass!

Today’s nice things:

1. Website tinkering
2. Hot totty from the GSA
3. Andrea salvaging one of my bank holidays – hurrah!

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://www.goldenford.co.uk