pay

May – Shorth month . . .

/ Tony / Leave a comment

By that, I mean it’s going to be a short work/pay month. One of the downsides of working at the cafe is when it comes to Public Holidays. If it is a normal day when I would be working, I have to take the time off as either unpaid or accrued holiday. I normally get one day’s holiday for every month I work. They are usually quite good at allowing people to take a holiday that has yet to be accrued but not always. This financial year there will be eight days that I work that will be classed as Public Holidays. That just leaves me four days to take when I need them as an actual holiday. I’m lucky in that I can afford to take some of the days unpaid. The coronation has not helped although, I’m a little surprised that the May Day holiday hasn’t been moved to cover it.

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I need a few days next week with dry weather. The lawn (if you can call it that) at the front of the house needs cutting. That’s a bit of an understatement. It seems to have grown some jungle like qualities. I know it may sound like an excuse, but on the days when I have been able to cut the grass, it is either raining or had rained before. With a small lawnmower, it can be difficult if the grass is wet and as it is powered by the mains electricity, it’s not a good idea to cut in the rain. It’s a small lawn, but it has a steepness to it that makes it hard even when the conditions are perfect.

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The “When are you going to quit?” question came up again the week. A friend and former school colleague asked me on Thursday. I said that I was not sure yet, but that I’m giving it some consideration. It would be nice to not work now I’m 68, and if I’m honest I possibly could afford not to. But £100 a week for twelve hours of work, is not to be sniffed at. It covers a bit of shopping and some pocket money and I think I would miss it. I would probably miss the company also.

Having a moan and other things …

/ Tony / 6 Comments

I’ve not posted for over a week now. I suppose it’s a combination of laziness and wanting to write a more substantial post. I did try, some time ago, to post every day. I think it lasted just over a week, before I began to struggle to say anything at all. So that fell by the wayside and I returned back to simply writing when I felt up to it and had something I wanted to say.

Now that’s out of the way, it’s back to the moans and groans.

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We, that’s me and K*** had a great day out on Tuesday to Beningbrough Hall. We walked round the gardens, which were really beautiful. We then toured the hall which was extremely enjoyable. Where does the ‘moan’ come in you may ask? Well Beningbrough, as the above link shows is an estate owned and managed by the National Trust. A fine example of a house and gardens of it’s time and a great educational place to for all to visit. So why do some parents (and I counted at least five families) think it is a great idea for their ‘children’ to take a football with them? It’s a piece of important history not a sports field! If you want to kick a ball around, then there are plenty of of open parkland in this country to do just that!

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After our visit, we had a look around one of the large shopping parks in the area. Now I get a little upset with some of the shops and I have mentioned before the issue of clothing sizes, so I’m not going to visit that again. No, my ‘moan’ this time is the price of razors! We needed to get some for R*** to take on respite as we had been told he was getting low. K*** was buying some kind of cosmetic stuff and I was charged with picking the razors. It never fails to amaze me at the price of these things. But what amazes me more, is when they are sold on ‘special offer’. I saw one pack that had the razor handle and six individual ‘multi-blades’ priced at the special offer price of £30.99! What really annoyed me was that at the side of this offer price was the words ‘Worth £45.99’. Who says that these are worth what they say they’re worth? Is it some kind of expert retail gurus? Or is it simply the manufacturers that are just trying to con us? I feel that it could be the latter.

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I made a start on clearing out the garage on Saturday. When I say ‘made a start’ I mean just that. For the past few years, the garage has been a dumping ground for everything and anything that we/I/she felt might come in useful at some point. But it’s come to the point where even I have trouble getting in and out of the place. So something had to be done. I was going to the opticians and the local authority tip is én route, so thought I would kill two birds with one stone. Well I think I must have had a chip in my windscreen, and the numerous speed humps on the one of the roads must have exasperated this, because when I got home, I noticed I had a small crack in said windscreen. Not very happy that I have a £60.00 excess to pay to get it fixed, but even more unhappy, that it cannot be fixed until Wednesday at the earliest.

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On a more positive note, my early retirement figures came through on Friday. They are looking like I expected, and I am going to take up the offer. My intention is to finish at the end of October, but ‘they’ have sort of thrown spanner in the works, so to speak. The figures from the pension company provide me an annual pension and a lump sum. But ‘spanner’ is that they have also offered to increase the lump sum, if I take a lower annual pension! So what do I do? K*** doesn’t know what would be best and I think I know, but cannot be sure. I’m going to give the figures to K***s father to look at, to see if he could advise. It is a bit of a quandary, but at least I don’t need to make that decision first. That can be decided at a later date, but it’s still a puzzle.

I suppose there is a reason …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

At work, we are now only able to access our pay advice via what is called a ‘Self-Service Portal’. This basically means a page on the works intranet site. The only really downside, is that you have to be at work (or on VPN) to get your payslip. Previously, it was possible to access the site from your personal computer/tablet by logging through the web-mail app.

So, how do you get your payslip home. You could print the thing, but work frowns upon unnecessary print so the only other way is to email to your personal email address. But wait …isn’t that a security risk? I know, I’ll pack it up in a zip file and password protect it. Oh no! Work doesn’t like that … it cannot virus check it! It refuses to send the mail!

So what do I do? Well, I open my personal webmail application (ZoHo mail. The one I’ve been playing around with) and attach the password protected zip file and mail it to my GMail account. No problems encountered, and my password protected payslip is safely delivered.

I think I know the reason that work wouldn’t send the password protected file. They would not want to be responsible for any problems with an email coming through their accounts. But hey didn’t stop me sending it through a personal email account, which I find a little odd!

Two more days to go…….

/ Tony / 1 Comment

That’s right. Only two more days, then I get a week annual leave. To be honest, I think I need it. It has been a long July, and August looks like it could be the same.

The eldest lad phoned at lunchtime, to say he was not feeling so good. Sounds like he has had a dodgy pizza on top of a few (or not so few) pints of Tetley’s. He’s spent the day in bed. Of course Mrs H is thinking swine flu !!!! But then again, so many people think they have got/had swine flu, or at least, some version of it !!! Strange thing happened tonight though. Mrs H had been trying to ring him, and was very concerned (as usual) that he was not answering his phone. I signed into MSN on my mobile, and noticed the he was signed in also. So I messaged him, but got no reply. Then he rang to say how he was. Later, I had to go upstairs, and noticed that his room door was open, and that his PC was running. I turned on the monitor, and it was running an AVG scan. Could not understand why it was running, or why the PC was on. I checked some of the PC settings, to see if it was set to start-up when AVG scan was due, and there was nothing I could see. We are now thinking, that the youngest lad had, for some reason, switched the PC on. Unfortunately, his condition prevents him from saying whether he did or not !!!! Strange. I will ask S**** when I see him if it has done that before.

No J**** on MSN again. Not chatted since the 1st of August. I hope I’ve not upset her or scared her off at all. She is a nice person to chat to. Last thing I said to her, was that I hoped to talk more about her. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I sounded too heavy !! Who knows. Just got a message. Been busy, that’s all. I had a quick chat with M**** on facebook earlier. Been a long time since I chatted to her. She’s been through the mill over the past few months. Doesn’t pull any punches at all. She was one of the first people I chatted to on the ‘Lycos Chat’ that was. Seems to be a good laugh. Always been straight with me. Here’s a thought …… why are most of my online friends women ????

Bloody appraisal tomorrow (as I may have said a few times). It will be another period of my life I’ll never get back. It’s not as if it really means anything. No promotion, pay increase or anything like that, just an excuse to give me my ‘objectives’ for the year. Oh and an excuse for Spike to be both patronising and condescending at the same time. How does he do that ?? There must be an art to it.I’d just love to be fly on the wall, when he does G***s appraisal. She takes even more serious than he does. Could be fun.

Done for now.