Deja vu

Mr H (himself) has just been offered a job 450 miles away from home... well he applied for it of course! and it is fantastic that he has got it... but now I am having feelings of deja vu as I contemplate him moving away not just for a year this time, but for, well who knows how long?

We've done it before and we can do it again, and this time we will choose the 'second home' up north together, so it will feel more like ours rather than just his.   

Interesting times, and looking on the bright side I will no doubt lose weight and drink less when he's not living here ;-)

Midnight on the verandah

I found this in an old notebook of mine, written in May 2008...

"The stench-filled sound of a bile-throated youth vomiting behind the council flats breaks the midnight peace. A small dog yaps forlornly, imploring its owner to let it in. Not a breath of wind stirs the nod-headed bluebells. Our dog inspects the borders for trembling, hiding animals; then returns to his bed. From the front room the strains of music are heard, occasionally drowned by a late-night, closing-time customer driving home. The tiniest of flies flit randomly around the verandah lights and make my skin jump. The newly planted vegetables stand proudly, anticipating the new day ahead. The cigar is over, the chocolate half-drunk; the anger fading to a dull resignation. It's time to walk down the road to meet my man."

An unexpected twist of the job

This morning I got an e-mail from the head office boss, forwarding on a long mail about setting up a Facebook group; he was asking for my advice as I am 'experienced'.

I never expected my knowledge of how Facebook works to be needed in my job - it just goes to show that nothing is wasted!

Buying your way out of guilt

Having read a chapter in my studying about carbon emissions, the Kyoto Protocol and the inequality of the effects of climate change around the world, I did a bit of surfing on the internet.

I would like to talk about carbon offsetting..  Not just in relation to the big companies who wish to build a new power station, so in exchange they kick a few unimportant families out of a suitably sized area in Uganda and plant some trees.

I'm thinking about the Home Carbon Offsetter...
  
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/carbonoffset.html

First calculate your carbon footprint - I didn't, because the information required was on a par with filling in an application for a mortgage or student loan (which is worse than a mortage application, but that's another story)... then you can just click on a button to pay to plant a tree in Kenya, the UK or South America; you can even 'prevent being given 7 toasters for your wedding' (seriously, who gets given even one toaster as a wedding present these days?) and ask people to buy tree planting instead.

I know this is all good and environmental... but, especially for the well-heeled who fly global for a 15 minute meeting without a second thought, or heat their 7 bedroom houses to 25C, to me it just smacks of buying a way out of guilt, because we in the West can afford it. 

Instead of changing our ways and flying less, or driving less, or buying fewer cheap clothes from places like China, or buying local produce... we can just carry on as before and feel OK about it as we add another Kenyan tree to our Shopping Basket.

The last thing on my mind

As I approach the final stretch of my first year of Open University study, and I have signed up for my second year (Exploring Psychology), I have been thinking about where I want to go from there.  During the second year I need to decide on which direction I want to go:  straight Psychology, or with Criminology, or Sociology?   I dabbled with the idea of Philosophy but quickly dropped that after reading a 'quick guide' to the subject - it's all just too deep for me!

Recently I have been thinking, somewhat ironically as it would seem to those who know me, that I want to work with children... not in the normal 'working with children' way but in a way that might help those with difficult backgrounds and help prevent them turning to crime.   My criminology course last year was fascinating, and I read a lot about criminial children and youth; the recent newspaper articles about the two boys who tortured two others made me angry with their parents and I wanted to help those two boys, not 'lock them up and throw away the key'. 

As I said to himself this morning, studying criminology and then working with adults seems to be rather like 'shutting the door after the horse has bolted' - surely better to work on the future generations?

Chicken and egg

When dealing with relationship or colleague issues, it's important to try and focus on the behaviour, not the personality... but does one inextricably lead to the other?

Dig deeper

Now I am starting to discover more about my fellow OU tutor group members, I am realising that there is a lot more to people that meets the eye. That sounds like an obvious statement, but like it or not most of us tend to assume that the population at large are all the same stereotypical dull person, unless they have any obvious distinguishing features like the way they dress, or multiple piercings.

But taking this small example:

One has tunnel vision; one has no central vision, only peripheral.  Several have tattoos, one is a Pagan. Our tutor is a Buddhist.  And that is just half a dozen of the girls!  Yet if you saw us all sitting in a room you'd never know all that.

We may all look similar on the surface but once you start getting under the skin it's a different matter.

Take time to discover people - you never know what you might find.

Decisions, decisions

Benecol suggest that as an alternative to Brits talking about the weather, we could talk about our cholesterol levels.

Oh joy.