…Powdered up, confident with solarium tan

I apologise for not updating over the past few weeks but I have been insanely busy. No, really. I know, something is actually happening in my life for once.

* Work has been going okay. Better than it was earlier in the year anyway. I have a huge task that was undertaken over the past few weeks to get all the shops to 100% planogram and 100% SEL standard and it was probably 90% sorted so far and I’ve got till Wednesday to get the last few bits done before the area manager comes round and shouts at me at why it’s not done. The past few days have been absolutely shocking though as we’ve had sickees galore and the shops have looked like a bomb has gone off in them!

* Last week I had both Amelia and Bex up, which took up a lot of my free time. Or pretty much all of it! Which, of course, is not a bad thing. We took Amelia bowling with us which was much fun. I ever won a game! Chris and Emily both seemed really taken with the Pud and the Pud seemed to love both of them too. Which is nice as it means she wont be too upset if they babysit or whatever. We also went to a rather nice pub that was by the bowling place and had a lovely dinner. Burgers FTW, obviously!

* The next day Chris, Em, Bex and Pud picked me up from work which saved me the bike trip home and we went to see the Aviation Viewing Park at Manchester Airport as the Pud wanted to see some planes. All I can say is that it is a complete waste of money and absolutely useless. But then considering it’s a MAPLC venture should I be that surprised? £8 for the 5 of us to go and park in the car park. Once there you can walk up to 2 different planes that are parked on the grass. You cannot, however, go near enough to touch or look at them properly as you have to stay behind the fencing. We attempted to eat something at the at the restaurant (that surprisingly didn’t look like an SSP outlet!) and found that they didn’t accept card so we thought bugger that. There was an aviation shop which sold model aeroplanes. A small snack bar that sold drinks and bacon cobs. There was the Concorde experience where you can go look at Concorde and see it’s history etc. However you had to pay a further £5 each to go view this. So, basically, our £8 got us a parking space as there was nothing else that we got once inside the viewing park. What value for money!

* Me, Bex and the Pud went to the Trafford Centre to have a walk round and let Pud play with the fountains and what not. Was nice and we bought some Krispy Kreme’s from Selfridges and I got to see the new WHSBooks that we’d opened in Selfridges. They definitely don’t do as good a job as we do in travel!

* We all went house hunting as Chris and Em are looking to rent a place of their own at some point and saw a really nice 2 bedroom absolutely massive flat for £475/month. Bex wasn’t really a fan of it but I thought the fact it was massive (I’m not exagerating on that one) was really nice and could see myself living there but managed to curb my temptation to say to Bex move up here now and we’ll rent this!

* We walked to some letting agents in the Northenden area and found one which was quite helpful, one which was nowhere to be found and one who was literally a man behind a messy desk in an upstairs back room of a converted house-to-offices arrangement, no pictures up of what properties he had and a “I’ll be your mate and find you a house, I’ll definitely have whatever you’re looking for” attitude. I said to Bex, this really isn’t the kind of man we want looking after our lettings! He’ll lose our contract on his desk, for a start!

* After this, though, Bex and me did have a big conversation about her moving up here which she has been floating for the past few weeks and I’d told her before to make sure she’d thought through seriously as for me it’s great that I get the one’s I love with me 24/7 and I hate the fact that at the minute with my once monthly visits that I miss out on so much of Amelia’s growing up. But for her and Pud it’s such a huge move. She’ll be 300 odd miles away from her parents and Han who have been hugely supportive of the Pud and would obviously not want to lose their current “30 minute drive away” situation. It’s also a long way away from her friends (not that that is such a bad thing considering some of their influences in her smoking/drinking habbits!) But it IS such a huge move for her and (although I really don’t want it to) if it does go sour, she’s lost her flat and is stuck in the middle of northern-ness! But it does seem it’s going ahead, even if we all have to cram in to my little flat for a month or so whilst we find someone to rent this place and find a house of our own. Extremely exciting and yet extremely scary at the same time. I can only imagine what it’ll be like for Bex moving to a foreign land!

I apologise for any and all typing mistakes. I’m typing on my back with my laptop resting on my chest and it’s hard to see what keys I’m hitting!

one step I make an imprint, two steps is commitment
B