Garrulous Geek

It was our wedding anniversary about two weeks ago. We got sent various cards, including this one, which has nothing to do with wedding anniversaries, but a lot to do with me:



I guess that might not mean a lot to some of you guys reading, but Alison laughed a lot, and I had to concede the point. Everything must be straight. Things must be at right angles. It's an ever pressing concern. OCD springs to mind. So, that's fun.

While I'm busy posting pictures, here's a couple which don't violate anyone's copyrights... Here's Baby Beth aged 14 weeks, lying on her front on her baby gym. You have to put babies on their fronts to get them to exercise their necks which, as you can see, Beth is doing. Good work.



Secondly, here she is sat in her chair, grinning like mad. She was clearly very pleased with whatever was going on at the time.



Right. I've got some other stuff I want to write about, but I don't have time right now, so it'll have to wait. Maybe I'll do it on the train this afternoon. Off to training again... Last week now.

I met up with an old friend on Wednesday night, while in London. She lives and works there, so it made sense to meet up on the rare occasion that I was down there. I don't think I've seen her since my wedding, which was two years ago, which is quite a while. Sure, I keep up with her blog, but that's not quite the same. We sat in 'Spoons while it poured down outside on Marble Arch, and had a good catch up for about 3 hours. It was really good to see her and find out what's going on and see how she's doing.

There's some people, friends, who I've known well enough and for long enough, that meeting up with them and catching up is easy. We've got enough common history and we know each other well enough that its simple to just sit down and get on with talking and having a good time. I don't fully understand how it can be that easy, when you haven't seen someone for a long time, but nevertheless, it's certainly a good thing. I find it quite reassuring to meet people who know me that well, and who I know well, and there is just some kind of understanding there.

I think I like the idea of having some kind of fixed points in life. That's not to say that people don't move about and change and do different things, but that the relationship is quite a fixed thing. It's easy to pick up where you left off with someone like that, because you just know each other that well. Perhaps I find it particularly helpful at the moment when things are moving so fast and my life is changing around me.

I imagine that to those of you who know me even a bit, it should be plainly obvious that - outside of my family - the friends I have who I feel are that close are pretty much all women.

Anyway. I'd best cut this short, as I'm on the train (through the magic of wireless intermaweb access) and not only is my time about to run out, but I'm also about to get to my destination and my battery is dying.

PS I'm off to Cambridge for some more training. Alison and I had a good - if brief - weeked. We saw The Black Dahlia. It was pretty good. I quite like noir stuff. It was quite gruesome though, and while I didn't fully understand the criticism of Scarlett Johannsen as being overly sexualised, I did think Josh Hartnett and Hilary Swank were very good. Lastly, Beth giggled for me yesterday, which was a first, and was extremely cute. Bye for now!

Ali has just sent me a handful of pics of baby Beth to put up here so here goes... This first one is Beth at 11 weeks, which was about a week and a half ago. She's getting pretty big now, and she's so much more alert. She's also found her hands, as you can see from the fact that she's clasping them and putting them in her mouth and stuff.



This is surely one to keep for when she brings her first boyfriend home... although on the flipside I must admit to owning and wearing grey briefs, so I guess I can't really claim the high ground here.


And finally, this is officially one of the funniest pictures ever, and the cutest. Amazing. Behold!


So, there you go. That's Beth. See you again soon.

Well, actually I've been home for a short while and am about to leave again, but there you go.

So, I've had my first week away on training in London. On the whole, it was good. The work is going well so far, and it's been good to meet some new people and get to know them. It's kinda like uni all over again... except you get paid and you stay in a flash hotel and charge the cost of your meals to someone's expense account. So yeah, it's better than uni.

There's about 25 people on the course, I forget exactly how many. We're from all over the country. 7 of us are far flung enough (Bristol, Manchester, Leeds and Southampton) that the firm puts us up in a hotel, the rest have to commute in daily. The first hotel we got put in was pretty naff, and we got moved out of it after the first night because one girl found a mouse in her room. The next hotel was uber flash though, which we figured when the guy in the tail coat asked us if we needed a hand getting our luggage in. Nice. So, that made the whole "away from home" thing a bit more pleasant.

The days are pretty long and busy. The training runs from about 9:30 to 5ish, though we did finish much earlier than that the first couple of days. We've done some basic accounting, and then started studying law, and tax law in particular. We've been given our statute books, which are basically huge books with the actual letter of the law written in them. There's about 20,000 pages, which is not only scary, but also impressive, as the books aren't all that big. Still, you know you're in trouble when the index is the size of a regular paperback in it's own right. So, here's to 3 years learning to find my way around the books!

In the evenings we've been out and about getting our meals and going for drinks and stuff. I'm getting a bit of a reputation for eating a lot, as I'm doing my best to make the most of the expenses policy and the fact that someone else is paying me to eat in a restaurant. I may as well order 3 courses and finish them all, right?

I caught up with my sister on Wednesday night, as she was down in London for a few nights with her boyfriend. I met up with her in Piccadilly Circus, where I'm sure there were no actual Londoners, just tourists. We all had a drink and a chat, which was nice. Good to see her again. On the meeting front, I'm looking forward to getting to see some other people I don't get to see too often, which should add a bit of extra fun to the jaunts to London.

I got back home at about 9 on Friday night, which was pretty good going, but Ali reckons I can get back earlier if I go via Wigan... something to try in the future. We've had a good weekend together, much more relaxed and enjoyable than the last one. It's our wedding anniversary tomorrow, so we had a fancy meal last night (beef bourgignonegenonenegggee) to make up for my absence on the actual day. It's good to be back and see Ali and Beth again, obviously. Beth has grown a bit since I last saw her, and as Ali had told me, is now "talking" like crazy. She makes all kinds of cooing noises and burbles away to herself, looking very pleased. It's well cute.

So, back to London tomorrow. 1 week down, 3 weeks to go. I might try to post during the week, especially as I apparently get free broadband access in the hotel. See you soon.

Well, so far work is pretty good. I had my induction in Manchester on Thursday, which went well. We had various talks about the firm and the job and the different streams (audit, tax, business restructuring) that people are doing. It was also a good time to meet everyone and start getting to know people. At the end of the day we all got the train down to London, and headed off to the Hilton, no less, for the night. It was, to say the least, quite flash. My room had two queen sized beds, which is about 4 times more bed than I need. Still, I wasn't about to ask to be moved to the nearest Travelodge! We went out for dinner at a random Italian restaurant (located above some suspicious looking night club with an ominous sign stating "Minimum spend per person: £44") which was fairly nice, and I wowed everyone with my maths skills by dividing the bill in my head. Which was fun. We headed off to a pub for a drink then all crashed back to the hotel.

The next day started with breakfast, as it should, but this was no ordinary breakfast! This was Hilton hotel breakfast, which means you can have just about anything you can think of for breakfast. I went for Danish pastries, yoghurt and cereal. Quality. After that the real business of the day began with our full on induction. We had more talks about the firm, and this time also had specific talks about the training for our particular stream. For me, that meant 3 hours or so of being told about the tax training, which sounds pretty tough really! We shall see. We had a fancy lunch, and at the end of the day headed off to "the BDO pub" as it is apparently known, being as it is round the corner from BDO's main offices. Drinks were free, which was handy as I had no cash on me at that point. After a pint some of us headed off for the train back to Manchester. I finally got home at ten, in time to feed Beth before bed. So that was that.

So, jobwise things look good so far. All the people are nice, and the job looks hard but interesting, so that's good. No fears realised just yet.

This weekend has been good, but busy. I've been doing some of my homework ahead of time (keen!) so that the coming weeks are slightly less stressful. We tried out a new church this morning, which was a bit of an experience for one reason and another. Some bits of it were a bit on the Adrian Plass side, for those of you who have a clue what that might mean. We'll try a few more places and then see what we find. This evening has been a bit mad what with getting everything packed up for the coming week in London, which is not helped by the fact that I have to get up at half six and drive to Stockport to get the train on time. Fun stuff.

Ali and Beth are doing OK, though I do feel a bit bad leaving them behind on their own. Ali should cope, but I know it's an awful lot easier when there's another person round. Hopefully some people can visit her or she can visit them or something (hint hint). Beth is doing well. She's getting really heavy now! We're trying to teach her about hand eye co-ordination by attaching one of the cats rattly toys to her wrist with one of Ali's hair elastics, but she's not really getting it yet. Oh well.

Last but not least... my mum bought me the best card:



And no, that doesn't mean I've stopped playing computer games! See you all later.