OK, so its the 8th already and therefore hardly a new year still, but its the first time I could be bothered to blog anything since Christmas. Over the entire holidays I hardly went anywhere and hardly did anything, but still the time went by far too quickly and all too soon I was back at work.

One place I did go over the holidays was Essex, to visit the family. That was fun, because both my sisters were there with their husbands, and the younger sister had her three children too, so it was quite a houseful. To make it even better, one sister gave me the book Nick Mason wrote about Pink Floyd as a present, and its signed by the author. Her husband bought himself (or got my sister to buy for him) an iRiver music player like mine so now I am not the only person I know who has one! Actually his one is not exactly like mine: its the one with 40Gb of storage instead of 20Gb and its all black, so I am a bit jealous now.

On the bank holiday after New Year’s Eve we went into town for the traditional annual event – buying up a few cut-price selection boxes of chocolate from Woolworths and looking in the sales. I bought both the Kill Bill films on DVD and watched them back-to-back. I have to admit that I liked them more than I expected. I have enjoyed all Tarantino’s other films but for some reason I expected to be disappointed by these.

Returning to work was as bad as I expected it to be. I had almost forgotten what a shithole our offices are. There was a bit of trouble buying a new season ticket at Crawley station, as the new ticket machines were playing up (or the staff were not trained properly?) but I just managed to get it before the train arrived and got to work at 8:15. I think I was bored by 8:30 and spent most of the week on my favourite websites, which are mostly jobsearch sites at the moment.

Jayne started work a day after I did, and promptly handed in her notice on the first day. I wish I could do that. She has found a better-paying job doing home care for old people and has already started shadowing someone there so she can start as soon as she has done her last day at the school.

Today I went to the community centre for an event our MP was holding. It was supposed to be a coffee morning where people could get together and discuss problems with the neighbourhood along with her and representatives from the Police and Council. The Police Inspector for this area was there and seemed to be OK, certainly a lot better than his immediate predecessor, who was a bit of a waste of space. The Council sent along the head of amenity services, which was a good move. He is one of the best officers they have: very good with the public and he keeps his promises. I don’t think the event went too badly, even though many people were more keen to bring up their own past or present problems rather than look at future improvements.