Africa - Part 1 - The Journey

It is time again for me to recount, record and reflect on a wondrous adventure. Those of you who read the blog version of our India trip last year may be curious as to how I coped with another trip into a third world country on an organised tour – but please, be assured, this time was equally as overwhelming but without the sickness and for different reasons. Africa and India are both absolute gems which must be seen (in my opinion) but their approaches, their colours, their attitudes vary and it would be like comparing apples with pears if I was to try and rank them in any way.

The route we took on our G Adventures tour

So, I won’t try to figure out ‘which is better’ on any kind of level. But I can tell you that a similarity which is fairly significant is that after visiting I am sitting here completely emotionally and mentally exhausted and trying to process the experiences we had. I am SO bloody lucky, in this limited time that we get on the planet, to explore these places and I realise that and try to appreciate it every day.

I admit, I was actually highly anxious about this trip in the weeks leading up to our departure, for a number of reasons, including the political situation in Zimbabwe, the fear of being mugged in South Africa, massive fear of being sick for the entire trip (akin to the India experience), anxieties about the size of the group (18 compared to a very lucky and awesome 9 in India), worries about being away from my beloved pup for this length of time and ongoing general concerns about leaving my new job at a critical point for one of my key projects.

Amidst all that, I was also hugely excited. This trip represented the attainment of a lifelong dream to go on safari. I remember as a little girl being entirely blown away by my Nana and Grandad’s holiday photos from Kenya – they went in the mid-80s which was a fairly unusual trip to do at the time. My grandad, bless his heart, had a video camera, a very early version, which must have weighed around 4 kilos but which he shouldered valiantly to document hours (and hours, and hours) of footage of the African plains from various game drive vehicles. We watched every minute intently, waiting for glimpses of the incredible animals….

So, many (30!) years on, it was our turn. We worked this trip around a need to be in Mauritius for my brother’s wedding in early September. An African safari holiday was always on our list and we would have got to it at some point, but this gave us the reason and the approximate dates. We booked it around a year ago, once we had the framework in place and it has felt like a long time coming.

I handled the delivering of our beloved pooch to his awesome adopted family pretty well, considering, (which means I avoided it completely and wept into my coffee at work while Stu did the actual drop off) and in the few days leading up to the trip I managed to feel like work was under control so I could legitimately stop the anxieties relating to that side too. I was actually pretty relaxed and happy and everything was under control as we set off for the airport on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I even had an ‘Africa’ playlist set up so I could provide suitable soundtrack at any given moment (Lion King, Toto, Shakira etc).

I should, of course, have realised that things were going far too smoothly and that this surely meant a shitstorm of some sort was around the corner. Hmmm.

At Adelaide airport, we treated ourselves to a platter and a glass of wine or two each and as the minutes ticked by we relaxed and got into holiday mode. We had arranged (because we had around 9 hours to kill in Perth) to meet up with some of our buddies from our previous G Adventures holiday and were stoked to be seeing them again to catch up, have dinner, see their new house etc. We were so looking forward to it we bought some sparkling wine and Adelaide treats (Haighs) to take with us on this first leg – we could get away with it because it was a domestic flight so the wine was not a problem.

We sauntered to the gate in time and raised an eyebrow at how quiet it was. Stu noticed after a few minutes that our flight was no longer listed at the gate, despite being less than an hour away. He walked over to the desk and asked and then he turned to me and waved me over and I could see, by the look on his face, that something had clearly gone awry.

For reasons we were never actually told, with less than an hour to take off, our Virgin Australia flight from Adelaide to Perth had been cancelled. All of the staff at the gate claimed they had not been told why. Our luggage was checked straight through to Johannesburg and we were now being told we would be routed to Melbourne first (in an hour or two’s time) then back to Perth and then on to Jo’burg. This caused us a number of problems, not least of all (and most disappointingly) we had to cancel our plans in Perth and also go and get refunds on the gifts we had bought for our friends. 

It was incredibly frustrating to turn what should have been a relaxed and enjoyable 9 hour layover into a staggered series of sitting-in-airport-twiddling-thumbs events. But hey-ho, we did at least make our connection at Perth and headed to OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg - a name which would very quickly come to represent airport hell on a whole new level (and if you ever read my piece on Heathrow you will know this is a huge attainment in my world).

For some reason, our flight from Perth had taken off around half an hour late and we then faced headwinds which meant the time was not made back up. We landed at Tambo to be met by a very long immigration queue and the news that we had to go and collect our luggage and check it back in for the next flight to Cape Town. Unfortunately, that flight was leaving in around an hour and 20 minutes and so we basically had to sprint from immigration to baggage, then from baggage to check in, where a completely disinterested member of staff who clearly hates their job informed us that our next flight had closed. We wilted.

At this point I had been awake for around 24 hours and it was 6am and I had just run across an airport to make it this far. Stu said some things (I cannot remember what but it had an impact) and somehow the guy agreed to check our luggage but told us unless we sprinted to the gate (on a different level, in the other terminal) we would not make the flight. Cue further sprinting, now with a fellow passenger from the same flight in tow. I am not in a good mood at this point, it is fair to say, but somehow I found the energy to follow Stu and get to the gate and by the skin of our teeth, we made the flight.

And so, we made it to Cape Town and the start of our adventure…part 2 will look at our time in Cape Town and Johannesburg and the start of our G Adventures tour. 

Brexit Babble

So in the next few weeks the UK will decide whether or not it remains in the EU. Personally I tend to agree with David Mitchell on the referendum because it is SUCH an important decision that I believe it should be made by the people we voted in to LEAD our country. There is also the worrying undercurrent with this particular subject that many people will vote to leave on one small matter (to stem immigration) when there are SO MANY other issues that will be massively affected by a Brexit.

I worked for 7 years in a role which engaged with and managed projects which could only operate due to being part (or in some cases fully) funded by the EU. These funds were apportioned to those areas of the UK most in need, those with high levels of unemployment, poverty and depravation. We were made to record the postcodes of businesses and individuals we helped so that the EU could monitor that the funds were really getting to the areas they were intended for – yes, EU funding administration is bureaucratic but it has to be that way to ensure the money is spent how and where it should be. Having also worked with non-EU government funds, it will probably come as no surprise to find out that they are far less stringent with their evidence of eligibility in spend.

I have heard NOTHING from the government to suggest that these vital sources of funding will be bridged by them if the UK leaves the EU. In the current economy do you really believe that the current, swingeing, Tory government will step in to fund these schemes? No, me either.

During my time working with these projects I saw many (as in HUNDREDS) of businesses get a real, tangible boost from their engagement with them. I saw EU funds support and engage with struggling SMEs (who could not access assistance anywhere else). Part of my job was to collate evidence of created and safeguarded sales that the EU funds had created – it was standard to get an 8:1 return on investment from these projects, an impressive success by any measure. This is worth bearing in mind when you go on like a broken record about how much the EU costs us.

I also worked first hand on a project which used EU funds to get graduates into SME jobs. Without the subsidy provided by this funding the companies would never be able to afford a graduate in such a role, the graduate would also struggle to find work – this project solved two major economic issues with deft use of the available funds. This was no mean feat. The admin required to pull this off was huge but it was SO worth it when we could clearly see (and report on) the jobs created, the graduates who were being assisted into these roles, the long term impact this had both on the companies and on the graduates was nothing short of stellar.

The UK benefits greatly from these tranches of funding which are ploughed into supporting our SMEs and graduates and there is nothing to replace it if the plug is pulled by an exit from the EU. I have tried to understand the viewpoint around leaving but struggle massively to see anything within the literature I have scoured which, at its heart, is anything other than racism disguised as politics.

It is sadly the case that a lot of people will vote in this referendum without reading up on the facts, they will vote with their heart, not their head and they will be swayed by sensationalist headlines about people from Romania invading our shores and milking our benefits (even though the facts very easily refute this nonsense). It is also quite telling that the amount of misguided rants about immigration and how this negatively impacts upon the UK economy are, without exception, by people who want to leave Europe. Coincidence? I think not.

I have seen a number of interesting posts (again, designed to stir up sentiment and resentment against the EU without considering any objective elements or impact) about how so many UK industries and businesses have moved their operations outside of the UK “because of the EU”. This is stunningly blinkered and a great example of positioning irrelevant information to foster an emotional (and therefore angry) response.

Whether we were in the EU or not, it is highly likely that many of our manufacturing giants (Mini – which is owned by German BMW anyway – Ford Transit, Cadbury) would have shipped out of UK based production anyway because in the current GLOBAL market it makes more sense to run your production plants in an economy where the minimum wage is lower and the profit margins higher. Ironically, that is just as likely (if not more likely) to mean India, China, Malaysia or any of the South East Asia region. And they would have done it regardless of EU loans.

Like it or not, the UK is not a manufacturing dependent country anymore and it never will be again. Our strengths lie in technology, high-skilled workers and service industries (a great article on this can be found here). 

I also fear for UK farmers who may well be financially crippled again if the UK votes to leave. Do you fancy an increase in tax to replace the subsidies they currently rely on? Has the government outlined a plan to cover it?

I do not believe the EU is perfect, I understand that it has its faults, but I fully believe in 2016 the UK would be both short sighted and bloody minded to step away from the benefits, protection and opportunities that being a member affords us.

Yes, I choose to live in Australia at the moment and will likely become an Australian citizen in the next few years. However, I will retain my UK citizenship and hold both simultaneously so yes, I do believe I have a right to a say in all this and I have cast my postal vote to remain accordingly. I feel obliged to say this because I have been the recipient of a few barbed remarks about my views on the Brexit over recent weeks. I am certain that more will be aimed at me after this blog post is published. Oh well.

One of the delights of modern life is freedom of speech. I respect everyone’s right to their opinion and if the UK votes leave then I will sigh, roll my eyes and watch the fall out (just like I did when the UK inexplicably voted in a Tory government at the last election). On the Brexit debate, I find myself agreeing with Dishface for the first time ever. I guess the fact that it has come to that underlines the weight of the risks involved with a Leave vote for me (hence the blog).

Cast your vote and have your say. Just ensure you have truly read around both sides of the argument first and don't base your vote on scaremongering immigration rants alone. 

10 years - Part 2 - 50 Shades of Cray Cray

In the immediate aftermath of Claims Direct announcing it was in Administrative Receivership, a few things became clear very quickly. Firstly, those that could escape quickly, ran. This was true from the very top with senior managers abandoning ship within hours of the announcement (including my boss). Everyone else seemed stunned into a spooky calm, waiting for instruction. I have to admit that Deloitte moved very quickly to try and calm the unease, though they could do little in reality for most of the staff who knew the axe would be falling sooner rather than later.

I remember finding out that not only was the recent conference invoice in a pile of “creditors” there were some pretty huge unpaid invoices from the previous few years which reflected the devil-may-care attitude of the company and the champagne lifestyle that they had enjoyed even when doubts must have been creeping in about how long the gravy train would be in motion. A particularly notable example was for a conference they held in Las Vegas. I mean, really? A conference in Las Vegas?! It was a thing of legend within the office, most of the managers had gone and a decent amount of everyday employees too. No expense was spared. This gives you a little indication of the sheer arrogance and attitude towards image that this company had in its prime.

But now the vultures were circling. The media had a field day and, in light of the ominous stories that had been run in previous weeks, felt vindicated and a little smug. The Sun had been running a particularly high profile campaign branding the firm “Shames Direct” and printing many case studies featuring ‘victims’ of the system who had won their claims but not won any money.

Let’s rewind to clarify what the nature of the disease within the midst of the Claims Direct model was. I actually wrote a paper on this exact issue as part of my MBA (it scored me an A grade for my Operations Management module as it happens). The rot had been caused by a backlash from the insurance industry which had taken a few years to form itself into a united and coherent group against the likes of the ‘ambulance chasing’ PI firms. Claims Direct was simply the biggest, most long standing and well known target and so became the natural focus of their ire.

Basically, Claims Direct forced their clients to take out an insurance premium to cover them in case their claim was unsuccessful (hence the ‘no win no fee’ tagline). The cost of this premium was around the £1,250 mark. The average demographic for people trying to make a claim meant that paying out for an insurance premium up front was beyond them, therefore the cost of this premium was covered by a loan that was built into the claim and if the case was successful it would be covered by the settlement. This model relied on Claims Direct only taking on cases it was certain would win.

The problem was that often a case took 2-3 years to settle and for that entire time the loan for the insurance premium would be accruing interest. By the time settlement came there was often £2,500-3k owing on the loan which would be deducted from any amount due to the client. With many cases being for minor whiplash injuries it was not unusual for settlement to barely cover the amount owing and in some cases the claimant would actually end up in debt with no settlement to show. These were the cases that The Sun sensationalised and which shone a very bright light on to the practices of the company and which, in turn, fed the negative publicity machine.

The insurance industry ended up in a test case against Claims Direct, stating that the cost of the insurance premium should not be recoverable in a personal injury claim. After an elongated battle which went right up to the High Court, the final decision was that only half of the cost of the premium (and none of the interest for any associated loan) was recoverable. This amount was capped at £613.50.

So, Claims Direct was vilified in the press, detested by our clients and staffed by 25 remaining people who now had the task of running the remaining claims in the system (around 100k) to conclusion. It was this volume of claims which explains the 3 years it took to wind the company down.

Deloitte’s main problem was how to keep the remaining staff engaged when they were being yelled at quite continuously by pissed off clients who, now the cat was out of the bag about the receivership, felt validated in aiming their anger at anyone associated with the company. On top of this, the news that we would all, at some point, be losing our jobs was a tad unsettling (though less so for me who had been on a short term contract to begin with).

In hindsight, I understand why some of the utterly crazy behaviour that ensued happened – it was a coping mechanism for the situation we were in. As the original group of remaining staff dwindled down to 12 of us, the office stopped resembling a place of work with professional values and started resembling a dysfunctional family trying to simply co-exist without imploding.

Of the final 12, only 3 of us were female. The dynamic in the remaining group since the day the original axe fell had been predominantly male (around 8/20 females), but for the final few years, as a much smaller team, the imbalance was far more noticeable and at times problematic.

I distinctly remember falling out big style with one of the guys (who incidentally became a very good friend) due to being hit in the head by a football while I was on the phone with a client. Playing sport in the office was entirely normal and in no way discouraged by our (wonderful) Deloitte rep on his weekly visits. Unfortunately, kicking a football round – not just passing but HOOFING the ball violently against walls and people – made for a bit of a toxic atmosphere for those not enjoying this physical release. I can understand how funny this was for the lads at the time but it was severely frustrating for me. I had to learn to care less about the job and just think about the pay cheques.

And, talking of pay cheques, they were the main way that they kept us on board for as long as they did - quarterly bonus cheques to be exact. It literally came as a cheque separate to salary and was a great little sweetener.

The culture of the team became very laddish. This was not always a bad thing, it certainly made for a gang mentality which, when things were going well, was pretty fun. The problem was that people were not always going to co-exist convivially in this kind of environment and even though we officially had a senior manager in charge (female) and an appointed Deloitte overseer, it generally felt like a free for all.

At times, things were actually borderline crazy and many a “can you believe it?” discussion was had between us three girls, who were generally not involved in but witness to the most shocking of events. A debrief following nights out as a team was not uncommon and because Deloitte were determined to keep us as engaged as possible, the (part funded) nights out were pretty regular. On occasion I think we all wished there was some kind of HR mechanism to address matters but all we had was a contact at Deloitte offering advice by proxy and disciplinary matters were generally left for us to sort out in house.

A number of incidents require a mammoth leap of imagination to believe.

There were physical altercations between members of staff. On one memorable occasion our IT guy ran over (literally) another member of staff. The other staff member was on the bonnet of his car and for the life of me I cannot remember what they even fell out about now, but let’s just say that large quantities of alcohol were involved.

Human excrement was a feature of a number of “practical jokes” and notably somebody did actually find a specimen on their desk at one point. I am not even joking.

Early in the receivership, there was a very large pile of files in one corner of the office space. By fairly large I mean you could have hidden a couple of small hatchbacks in it without knowing. It was nearly to the ceiling and probably a MAJOR fire hazard. I think, from memory, these were archived paper files which needed securely disposing of because they contained personal information including addresses and medical records of clients. The pile just grew and grew over a number of weeks while we waited for secure shredding bins to arrive, and on a number of occasions various employees would run the length of the office and dive into it, causing papers to slide everywhere and the mess to increase. It was marginally amusing to watch though. For the first 5 times at least.  

We watched the whole of the memorable Ashes 2005 series in the office, with a TV running all day to allow us to keep up with the action which was definitely a perk. Likewise we had the TV running when the 7/7 bombings happened, which was far more upsetting and weird.

It was not uncommon for pub lunches to drag on into the afternoon and one of our team used to regularly sleep, in his chair, at his desk, during his lunch break. I admired his ability to kick back and doze off. I also saw him startled awake on a number of occasions by his rambunctious colleagues which was often very amusing.

Office furniture started to be divided up and shared out towards the end as the Receivers had no use for such low value assets and we knew the offices would be stripped and everything thrown away after we closed the doors for the final time. It was a strange feeling of realisation as the amount of empty space in the office around us grew. This did, of course, make for easier games of cricket.’

To be continued…

10 years

It has taken me 10 whole years to be capable of writing this blog post. Ten years of fairly regular remembrance of a time and place that now seems even more unbelievable than it did while it was occurring. For 3 and a half years, between May 2002 and December 2005 I worked for Claims Direct. Actually, to be more accurate, for 90% of that time they were correctly called Claims Direct in Administrative Receivership and were under the governance of Deloitte & Touche Receivers.

From the get go, I realised this was not a normal workplace. My previous role was with a London law firm, based in the heart of the City square mile, very formal, full of old school process, tradition and observed rules. The contrast between this and the workplace I was now to experience could not be more wildly different. You have seen The Wolf of Wall Street right? This was the legal sector version of that. I kid you not.

I should state, my employment was never meant to be anything more than a maternity cover for 9 months to a year. I never got a hand over with my predecessor though because by the time I had arrived from London she had left, I cannot remember now whether this was due to early arrival of baby or not, I just remember feeling utterly thrown in at the deep end. I had gone from PA to two solicitors in a busy but quite mundane law firm to being PA to 1 Director of a legal department. A fucking crazy legal department.

I spent the first few weeks literally sat on my own in an office space that was physically on the other side of the building from the rest of the legal department. My desk was outside the large, flamboyant office of the ‘Head of Legal’ who was my new boss. But he was not around. He was on some kind of large scale tour of the UK having meetings with the law firms who were Claims Direct’s key delivery partners.

So during my ‘induction’ I read through some scant handover notes my predecessor had left and I had a series of batshit conversations with a woman who nobody seemed to know had been employed. She was apparently a shithot lawyer but she was also mad as a box of frogs, wore 80s make up (like serious blue eyeshadow, tons of it) and because nobody had any work for her to do she spent her days with her feet up on the desk reading Danielle Steel books and occasionally stopping to talk to me. Her office was the opposite one to my bosses and my desk sat in between the two rooms. She had only been in post a few weeks and I think she was just relieved to have somebody to talk to. I NEVER established, in the craziness that followed, what it was she was employed specifically to do.

Also during my first few weeks, one particularly arrogant legal hotshot decided I should be her personal secretary and dumped a pile of files on my desk along with a dictation tape. She wanted me to do her audio typing seeing as I must not have much to do. I complied, it was better than counting paper clips for another few hours, but this was a mistake as she then, for the rest of her tenure, treated me like her own personal typist. Despite the fact there was an ACTUAL POOL OF TYPISTS in her department who were there to provide this specific service.

Anyway, one random afternoon a few weeks in, I got a phone call from my new boss. He was, as he had been on all of our conversations to date, in his car at the time. The crux of the phone call was that he would like me to organise a conference for 200 delegates for the beginning of July. I had about 5 weeks in which to organise it. From a standing start and with no idea who to invite or what it was for or actually anything to go on at all. It is fair to say I was a little panicked by this request. In later months it would seem actually hilarious and a tad sinister that I was asked to do this because the Directors of Claims Direct clearly knew some key pieces of information whilst I was booking this event which rendered it utterly pointless.

I remember having a conversation about this event with one of the Legal Case Managers. She was actually one of my saving graces during my time here – a genuinely down to earth, awesome, funny, strong woman. She gave me the guidance I could not get from my actual boss, some pointers for who to invite, what needed to happen and expectations for such an event and I think without her I would have probably quit on the spot.

The conference itself happened on 1^st and 2nd July. I remember this because I remember that I had to head to the conference venue on the Sunday afternoon which was the 30^th June. It was the first time I had had any involvement in an event on this scale. It was kind of exciting. Most of the legal managers had also arrived on the Sunday. I remember being excited at having my own hotel room and being catered for as a corporate guest for the first time. In years to come I would look back on this experience and realise how different it was from any other conference I would attend afterwards. Like most of my experiences with Claims Direct it was formative and unusual.

For two days the champagne literally flowed as the senior managers and directors wined and dined this large group of Solicitors. Mostly these were named partners of law firms from all over the country. They played tennis and got massages and had ‘sessions’ around personal injury claims and context so that the whole thing did not look like one big jolly. Which is very much what it was.

I remember taking a call from the venue, an expensive retreat style hotel in the midlands, on the Friday of the same week, asking where to direct the final bill and bantering with them about the extent of the bar bill, which I knew must have been impressive. Little did I or the hotel know that the following week, on Wednesday 10^th July, Claims Direct would go into Administrative Receivership.  

I never saw my boss again. He had briefly appeared in the office in the few days after the conference but was due to be back on the road during the week when this news broke. Indeed, on the morning of the 10^th July I took 3 calls from media reps looking for comment on the revelation before any official news was announced. I was, of course, as always, sat a million miles away from the rest of the department as the news broke and crazy lady and I were visited by an increasing number of panicked looking managers who were desperately seeking my (absent) boss and some clarity.

Mid-morning my phone rang and it was him. He was, as always, in his car but he sounded far more sombre than usual. He did not mince his words, simply stating that he would not be coming back to the office. Ever again. He asked me to help his deputy pack up his personal affects when she came round and wished me all the best. I had been his PA for approximately 8 weeks at this point and had seen him in the flesh a handful of times. I was slightly shell shocked when I got off this call but at least one thing was clear. Claims Direct was in the middle of a shitstorm.

I did not expect to keep my job. There were a number of reasons why – I was on a temp contract for maternity cover, the Director I was PA to had walked, I had no reason to believe I would make it past the weekend. Somehow I stayed in post for another 3 years. I watched 250 staff dwindle to around 20 who stayed the distance. I watched people lose their minds in the boredom, low morale and malaise that comes with running a company into the ground, milking a cash cow for the last drops of cream.

Over the next few blog posts I will tell the story of what happened during the craziness of those 3 years as the world of Personal Injury claims was forever changed by the outcome of one major legal case and as those of us on the ship as it went down tried to stay sane.

Happy McHappypants

Are you a mood hoover? Are you sure?

I have begun to realise how limited my patience is with these personalities although sadly I still have not got the balls to fully eradicate the ones that have become part of the fabric of my everyday life. I have, in the past, attempted to address a mood hoover (a particularly vivid one) and it went horribly wrong and therefore I have not tried again since. Even though a large part of my brain desperately wants to shake them by the shoulders and tell them to stop it. Loudly.

If you don’t know what a mood hoover is, maybe I should explain. I can guarantee you know at least one and probably many more of them. You might call them a ‘Nagative Nancy/Nigel” or just label them as pessimists or cynics, but they are much more than just people with a less than optimistic view on the world. These are people who suck the joy out of situations without even knowing they are doing it. Or maybe they do know but they thrive on being assholes. Who knows?

These people have a problem for every solution and would like you to know about it. You can NEVER actually help a mood hoover with his or her problem. It seems what they actually want is someone to whine at and NOT someone to think of ways around whatever the issue is.

If you work with one of these people then they are the one that will sit in a meeting, braced in a distinctly aggressive position (perhaps looking like they would rather be eaten by a crocodile than actually participating) and generally nay-saying everything anyone else suggests. About anything. It might go something like this:

Rational person: So we need to discuss what we might do about X.

MH: No we don’t. We need clarity on Y and Z first or there is no point.

RP: What kind of clarity do we need? I thought it had been decided in our last meeting that we would do B?

MH: Well I don’t think anyone was clear on what B was. And in any event, I don’t think it was an appropriate solution.

RP: What are your thoughts on an appropriate solution?

MH: (Rambles/rants for 5 minutes with no clear alternative solution until someone steps in)

RP: Ok, so what about if we….

MH: (Interrupted) There really is no point in discussing this further, it is a waste of everyone’s time until there is a decision on Y and Z.

Rest of meeting: …..uh….

Sometimes they have a particular pitch and tone that they adopt when they flip into this mode. Sometimes their natural face really is just a resting bitch face (or whatever the male version is?) and so they perpetually come across as standoffish and awkward and downright rude even when they might not have meant to.

Although the above type of individual can be confronting with their downright aggressive approach, even more annoying is the passive aggressive type (in my opinion). The one that snipes and belittles and pisses all over the crisps of the people around them without being in-your-face abrasive. I think I dislike this kind of personality more because it doesn’t have the backbone to actually be so downright rude but generally achieves disruption and negativity in your day by sneaky, manipulative ways.

By this I mean that person who has a face like a slapped arse the whole time you are engaging with someone other than them and makes you utterly paranoid that they are unhappy/uncomfortable/in need of something urgently, thereby managing to distract you from actually concentrating on the person you are meant to be engaging with.

Or the one who corrects everything anyone says even if it is a tiny, inconsequential error, a factual but miniscule mistake. Usually, in my experience, this is witnessed in marriages and long term relationships that have arrived at a state of perpetual bickering. It is truly exhausting to watch and runs like this ad infinitum:

RP: So I bought the more expensive one, it was $10

MH: No it was not, it was $9.95

Or

RP: I took the route back via South Road and Anzac Highway

MH: No you did not. You did not take South Road you took Cross Road. We were on Cross Road remember because we went past the Uniting Church.

Neither of these corrections adds any value whatsoever to the exchange. They achieve very little except for highlighting to the people you are with that you have an overwhelming need to nit-pick and belittle your partner and some strange need to prove that you are right, even if it is only about inconsequential things. It is painful for people to observe on a continual basis and probably makes them question the stability of your relationship with the person you are correcting.

I do realise the irony of my choosing to blog about this, which could in itself be construed as a passive aggressive way of communicating. But the thing is, I have been burned by trying to rationally discuss this kind of behaviour with these kind of people and life is too short to try that again. I hope, by putting this in a blog post instead, that it circumnavigates the need for addressing it face to face while maybe just making perpetrators think about the affect these behaviours have on people around them.

Anyway, I just wish everyone could be nice to each other and not turn situations into painful and cringe-worthy experiences by their mood hoovering.  

Exciting Times

Some of my favourite UK moments

Yet again I sit here with January over and February bowling along, finally sorting my thoughts into a coherent summary of what happened between mid-December and last week. This seems to be a recurring feature of living in Adelaide. I think this is because the Christmas break has become an opportunity for catching up with family and the emotional craziness that tends to accompany it renders me brain dead for a few weeks. I also tend to mentally want to distance myself from events until I feel ready to hammer out the words – it hasn’t helped that the past two Christmas/new year intervals have involved job news as well as family stuff going on.

That’s right, not content with the stress and anxiety caused by the 2014/15 job change I have decided to manoeuvre again, albeit this one feels instinctively more sensible than the ‘any-port-in-a-storm’ approach I took previously. I feel very lucky in that I have managed, in what is deemed a very hard job market, to find an opportunity that ticks all the boxes and then successfully land the position. I am SO EXCITED that I want to make a squealing noise. But I shall refrain.

This post was advertised before the xmas break. I took the position description with me back to the UK so I could think about the application and formulate a plan. I had that worrying, intense, DESIRE to land this role. I did not dare tell myself it was possible because nothing that seemingly perfect on paper comes easy. Instead of throwing my hat into the ring for anything and everything (which had previously been the case and led to a stressful 4 interviews in one week scenario in late 2014) I had taken on board some advice from a mentor and been far more selective. But then I read about this role and I just absolutely had to go for it. Even though it was advertised as a 0.8 FTE. 

I did the math. It was a grade higher than my current role so I knew I would not be taking too much of a hit to drop to 4 days a week. And think of the work/life balance! I had quite settled on the idea by the time I found out I had an interview. I went along to it with a determination to just take it in my stride and be me. I felt like I clicked straight away with the team and then the awful thing was that by the time I left I WANTED IT SO BADLY because of that, so I had to try and rationalise that I might not get it and would be sorely disappointed. And then, quite to my amazement, they called me that night and offered me the post. Not just that, they offered it to me full time if I wanted it.

Luckily, it seems the feeling of connectedness was mutual. They want me in their gang as much as I want to be in it. I cannot tell you how much that matters to me as an employee – feeling that you are in the right space with the right people. So, in a little over a weeks time I will be leaving UniSA for University of Adelaide. Hopping back into a CBD base with a new sense of purpose. Leaving behind the world of Research Support (I have a whole other blog to write on what this last year has taught me about that).

So, my head is spinning and I have heaps to sort out ahead of the move. I figure, then, I should probably capture some thoughts around Christmas in the UK before the chance is missed and life snowballs into the next chapter.

I already documented the hellish arrival and escape fromHeathrow in another blog post, but aside from the airport traumas the visit was pretty darn awesome. I managed to catch up with good friends and spend some great QT with my wonderful Nana, I refused point blank to turn the whole thing into a whirlwind of back to back visits and that worked wonderfully, I actually got to have some down time and some me time (mainly for clothes shopping and sitting watching films in my pyjamas with my parents).

Highlights included:

•          Managing to squeeze 4 curries into my 10 nights back and enjoying every single mouthful of every single one
•          Meeting my soon to be sister in law who is wonderful and cooked xmas dinner for 10 people without being stressed (she is clearly some kind of supreme being)
•          Laughing so hard at technological woes in my parents ridiculous gadget den that I felt like I induced a hernia
•          Christmas day family craziness – you just cannot buy that shit – with my two sisters, the three of us giggling uncontrollably at another gadget related malfunction and the resulting exchanges it caused between our beloved relatives
•          Getting to spend some time with the older of my two sisters who was due to give birth in January, seeing her heavily pregnant made me feel so old but it was also joyous to see her and her lovely partner preparing to welcome the new arrival.
•          Shopping like a maniac. My luggage allowance was so close to being busted on the way home, I finally have what resembles a decent wardrobe in Australia for both work and casual clothes. Man, I miss Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, River Island etc…

So there you go. This is not the blog I thought I would be writing about xmas in the UK but it is the one I have written.

2016 is panning out to be a pretty exciting year with not just my new job on the cards but some awesome looking holidays planned later in the year. Adelaide Fringe starts tonight and we will be catching up with a lot of friends, doing heaps of socialising and enjoying the sunshine as the city enters Mad March, my favourite time of year here. We already have tickets for 4 different Fringe shows between now and the end of March so it will be a pretty busy time.

Once I am settled in my new role I will update and reflect on stuff, it’s all just a bit too vivid at the moment, here is to an exciting year ahead!  

Heathwoe.

So I am sure everyone has at least one hellish tale of a trip through an airport; perhaps running to make a connection, maybe the stress of a security queue much longer than you anticipated, or even the stomach churning realisation that your luggage really has gone missing somewhere between check in and arrival at destination. I have experienced all of the above - the lost luggage serendipitously happening on our honeymoon when we stood, bereft, in Mexico, in only the clothes we travelled in and learned that our luggage had mysteriously gone to Glasgow instead of Cancun. Stressed in airports? I could have written the book.

But on the very last day of 2015 I experienced an airport adventure which made me question what I may have done in a previous life to insult the god of international travel.

I should probably rewind a bit to state that my arrival in the UK on 20^th December was also not without incident. I forget how spoiled we are in Adelaide to have a small, quiet, clean, efficient airport which generally processes arriving passengers within 30 minutes (from stepping off an international flight to walking out the front doors, luggage in hand and immigration cleared).

On arrival into London Heathrow after an unexpectedly long flight from Kuala Lumpur I was fairly dazed and confused anyway. That flight is usually no longer than 12 hours maximum, but since the shooting down of MH17 and the various war zones and airspace issues since, the route has changed to avoid flying directly over various countries, with the result being that this leg (with Malaysia Airlines at least) is now a gruelling 14.5 hours.

So, we landed at around 6am on a Sunday morning, I wondered, in a moment of utter craziness, whether this might be a quieter time for getting through immigration at Terminal 4. Ha! I had forgotten that this airport never sleeps. There is no such thing as a quiet time. HERDS of people were trying to queue to get into other queues in order to get through the official UK border. Queues to get into queues….how marvellously British….

I have the kind of passport that can go through the electronic visa machine thing (I believe that is the technical name) but the queue for the 2 working machines was longer than the queue for the old fashioned person-in-booth deal so I went for the latter. 25 minutes later I was finally at the luggage carousel, but my luggage was not. The belt was not even moving, in fact the flight was not even listed yet, although the crew on board had told us which belt we could expect to use. I switched my phone on and settled in to wait.

Another 20 minutes passed before the luggage belt began to move and then another 20 minutes before my luggage appeared, I breathed a massive sigh of relief, this was not my first rodeo with the whole ‘lost luggage’ ordeal. In fact Malaysia Airlines have twice in 2 years lost a piece of my parents’ luggage on the same route…but that’s a whole other story.

Luggage finally obtained, I make my way through to arrivals where my mother is doing an impression of “most excited person in the room” (very convincing). We both burst into tears. I mistakenly think the ordeal is over…but not so…

We exit the airport and make towards the payment machines for the parking ticket. There are two machines and two queues. Mom gets to the front of one queue and the machine gives a message to say it is not accepting cash payments. Mom subsequently gets in the other queue, makes it to the front where the machine eats her money and refuses to issue a ticket. We call for assistance and a man with a walkie talkie duly turns up and opens the machine and after an agonising wait manages to get it working. Finally, I think, we can get out of this hellish place!

Not so. Gridlock on the car park means we sit in the car for at least another 20 minutes waiting for someone to move enough to let us into the gridlock pattern. From landing to leaving the airport took at least 2 tortuous hours. This experience made me consider one of the most glaring differences between the UK and Australia, namely the difference in population size and the impact this has on infrastructure (or most pointedly, failure of infrastructure to cope). The same amount of people live in London as live in the whole of Australia, which gives you some idea of the context.

Anyway, with this experience in mind, on returning to Heathrow on December 31^st (ironically, my birthday) we arrived with a good 3.5 hours to spare before my flight. Little did I know I would need every moment of this time and more patience than it is possible to muster.

I have never done the trip to/from UK/Australia on my own, I actually don’t mind travelling on my own, I just kind of zone out and get on with it, but the bit I hadn’t factored in as being difficult was the aftermath of the awful goodbye. It never gets any easier letting go for a massive amount of time, even when you know the exact dates when you will see each other again, it still sucks. Usually I have Stu with me to calm me down fairly quickly and rationalise the whole thing. Not so this time.

So, I join the queue for baggage drop in absolute floods of tears, snot pouring from my nose, hair sticking to my face, looking like a deranged woman. Bewilderingly, the queue for bag drop (online check in) is longer and moving slower than the regular check in queue. Only one desk is open for bag drop and a family of 8 with around 20 bags are currently holding up the process. I try and just stay quiet in the queue, using a multitude of tissues to stem the crying, breathing deeply. A small child behind me remarks to his mother “that lady is broken, mommy” – quite right, I am a hot mess right now.

The longest queue for bag drop finally gets me to the desk where I point out it’s my birthday and the crew member assesses my tear stained face and decides I am clearly too much of a risk for any kind of perk/upgrade. Oh well, I tried.

Next I take an elevator down to what I can only describe as a parallel universe level of the airport that only exists if you are emotional and off your head on prescription drugs (for a cold). Signs have directed me to “level -2” where strangely, given the footprint of the floor above it (departures) and the floor below it (arrivals) the elevator opens into a room the size of a tesco express and with about the same level of shit-togetherness. ALL the tourists who have been to London in the last week or so have congregated and are trying to claim the VAT back on goods they have bought. I want (as a non-UK resident) to claim the VAT back on my new Macbook. That’s 1 item. Most of these people are clutching REAMS of receipts and bags and bags of expensive handbags and shoes. I sigh. This place is the equivalent of platform 9 ¾ at Kings Cross. It only exists if you really believe it does. I am also sure it is staffed by muggle born wizards who can’t get a job at the Ministry of Magic.

A man/muggle spots me and decides I don’t look particularly touristy and helpfully tells me I can do the VAT refund thing after security and avoid the queues. Fabulous, I think, I will do that.

So I approach security. Man, this has changed since I last flew out of the UK. I am now addressed by a freaky hologram and have to navigate a bunch of self-service checkout style machines to get rid of excess fluids and organise my belongings. This is BEFORE the queues for the security checks. The hologram is barking things about laptops and ipads being out of bags…

After the zig zag through the weird machines there actually isn’t much of a queue at the security screening itself. I start to feel like this is all ok. But then I beep as I go through the doorway screen thing (technical name) and so they decide to swab my shoes. And they find a trace of explosives.

WTF?

Yes. There is apparently a trace of explosives on my shoes. So now I have to go be frisked, 360 degree scanned and swabbed again all over. And meanwhile all my worldly goods are sitting in the trays waiting to be claimed by anyone over the other side of the room.

A very nice person asks whether I have been around Christmas crackers, with the sincerity of a priest. Why, yes, I believe so, seeing as its FUCKING CHRISTMAS. Apparently, crackers can give a residue off which reads as explosives on airport swab testers. You have been warned, people. (Australian readers, I mean bon-bons not eating crackers, that would just be mental).     

Finally I am through security and head to collect my bags, except one of them has been stopped for a thorough search (clearly they think I am a terrorist now). I patiently wait while the man digs everything out of my small hand luggage suitcase and raises an eyebrow at the contents, (monster munch, frazzles, after eights, yes I have a problem, ok!?). And finally I am on my way. 

To the VAT refund counter. This one is not staffed by muggle born wizards but by stony faced arseholes (SFAs).

Weirdly, the same amount of tourists brandishing receipts are queueing here as they were at platform 9 ¾. I spend 30 minutes listening to an SFA requesting to see each individual item on a 6 foot long receipt to a Chinese tourist and then conversing via google translate regarding paperwork. It is laborious stuff. 

Eventually I get the stamp I need on the form to claim the VAT back. Where do I take this now? (I enquire). Travelex (he barks). Right oh.

To the Travelex stand. Guess what? Fucking huge queue of the same people who were at both Platform 9 ¾ and the SFA outlet. I glance nervously at my watch. There is now only 1 hour until I am supposed to be at my gate. 20 minutes later I am still in the queue and have not moved and 1 of the 2 guys staffing this stand is just leaving for the end of his shift. Then, as I get to the front of the queue, a cheeky motherfucker asks me if she can queue jump because her plane is about to leave and she only has one item and being a spineless British person I smile pleasantly and say “yes of course” and then SCOWL at her back and hope she misses her flight and chokes on the Toblerone sticking out of her bag. Bitch.

So I finally, by some kind of miracle, get to the desk with my form. I present it with a sense of relief that this admin nightmare is nearly over. The guy looks at it and says "We don't process these forms."

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

Turns out (though no one up to this point had known their arse from their elbow in this process), that when the store in question gave me the form they should have also given me a pre paid envelope in which to return the form to them once it was stamped. The travelex guy pointed to a large post box directly behind me which was allegedly there for this very reason. Sadly I was not carrying either an envelope or a UK stamp so at this very moment I realised that a) I was going to have to post the bastard form back to the UK once I landed in Adelaide and b) I could have spent the last half an hour at the champagne bar.

Cursing Heathrow for the sack of fucking weasels it truly is (and not for the first time), I did the only sensible thing with half an hour remaining until I needed to be at the gate. I marched straight to the champagne bar, ordered a glass and then burst into tears in a combination of residual sadness and utter frustration. Yes, Heathrow, you truly broke me with your mad, bureaucratic, psychotic, shitheap of a set up. On my birthday. What a wanker.

Cheers, Heathrow, you utter shitbag.

The kindly barman asked me what was up and I gave him the short version, namely "birthday, goodbyes, nonsense" whilst trying to breathe and speak through that annoying bit of crying that makes you wheeze and hiccup and generally resemble a 2 year old having a tantrum. By this point I seriously gave zero fucks what I looked like and was just desperate to get on the plane and on with the show. 

This story must end on a positive note after all that whining (!) - a lovely man at the bar had overheard my tale of woe and paid my bill, as well as sending me a second glass of champagne and wishing me a happy new year. Humans can occasionally be awesome. He didn't even want a conversation, just quietly raised his glass to mine and nodded. I think it may have been Jack Nicholson (or that could be the mix of high emotion, prescription drugs and hastily skulled champagne).

Anyway, happy new year one and all, more blog posts to follow about UK christmas when I get chance.