IF you could see me wandering up through the graveyard about half six, on a filthy wet dark morning, sleet lashing in sideways from somewhere north of Siberia, muffled in the Cherub's woolly hat and wellies (he's outgrown them, I haven't..) you'd see where I was coming from here.

I am dealing with it you know, the cold, the dark, the leaking windows, the boiler that's re-defining temperamental. And this isn't a whinge, it's just a flat declaration - look some one else is living my life.

Evidence?
Boden catalogue Summer 2010.
This does not look like a couple unduly bothered by the small print on their Scottish Gas Boiler Maintenance Contract does it?

Sensible self - You want to live in a Boden catalogue, Macy???
Frankly wee Sensibles I can think of worse places

But picking on Boden is unfair. One catalogue does not an entire winter of discontent make.
Check out Living Magazine why don't you?
Clever Eilis and Tom have converted their five bedroom holiday home in Dorset to reflect the tranquillity of their surroundings...
She used to be a hat designer you know..
And now their holiday home has 5 bedrooms. Count them. FIVE.

Sensible Self - That's a lot of cleaning.
DO hat designers clean??
Sensible Self - No need to be nippy about our friends who are Artists in Felt.

Keith and Dora's apartment is in Italy. He loves to paint the nearby Santa Maria di Miraculi.

Sensible Self: So what you're saying Macy is that these people have stolen your life??

Well not all of them obviously, but you know something's gone wrong somewhere.
I passed all the exams they threw at me
I worked overtime
I paid into the pension fund
I've been good for years on end now.
Dammit - I can design hats!

Questions need to be asked.
That's all I'm saying.

I'd like my real life back please.

Becaue the Extremely Esteemed and Reputable Institue of Edinburgh is so very, very extremely esteemed and etc, it is governed by a series of Boards and Committees.
Oh indeedy.

All of them made up of extremely distinguished and learned academics.
And the most distinguished, prominent and critical of these is the Audit Committee. The very name of which strikes fear into the finance department.
No missing comma, misaligned table, or erroneous page reference escapes these boys' notice. No typo is too insignificant to escape their withering scorn and demands for Immediate Action.

Every quarterly committee meeting means the production of a thick 150 page review document in which the accounts, objectives and strategies of the Institute can be scrutinised in eye pinging detail.
Production of said review document consumes all of the Finance departments waking hours, and nightmares in the weeks preceding.

So you can imagine how the balloon went up when the committee discovered there had been an error between the reviewing and binding of said review document.
And an e-mail someone had left on the printer got bound along with the document.
Between table 6 "FTE equivalents" and 7 "IFRS Restatement of Income" we had


I believe the Finance Director may have been summoned to explain this one.

Hem Hem.

Today I got my first payslip
And some kind of record is vital
I'd write a poem to celebrate
But I can't even think of a title.

OK. Off to admire the NEW TEMPLATE for a bit longer.

Three weeks in, and I'm well installed at the new job. Get me! I have been issued with my own mug, with the E.E.R.I.E logo on it; I've perfected my voicemail message. I have colonised the shelves behind my desk.
And I've got my PHOTOS on the desk. Nothing like the old photos on the desk routine for breaking the ice is there.
Kurt's wombled over to check them out.

"Nice one. What's your dog's name?"
Oh that's Ned. Well, actually since we moved to the east coast here, he's become Glasgow Ned.

"... Heh heh he. Oh great.. a beancounter with a sense of humour!"

Used to...The joke's worn a bit thin the past couple of years mind you..

"And the kid?"
Oh that's The Cherub! Mind you THAT joke's getting funnier by the day..

"Heh heh. I hate to ask what you call his dad"
Oh.. well he's had his share of name calling in his time..

"Yeah?"
Yeah. And then he went and died. And that fairly put an end to the funnier ones.

"....?"
Sorry. I'm going to work on the timing on that one.

Because I am CONSCIENTIOUS and DILIGENT I am writing down everything I learned from that seminar I went to.
With my boss, Penny.

Obviously the object of the road trip was to learn Matters of Extreme Importance on Arcane Facts. However I also learned en route:-

1. That since Penny lives between two extremely old and respectable private schools, it is impossible to drive to hers without sitting in a traffic jam of Chelsea Tractors for half an hour.
2. That given a small confined space like a Mazda in a traffic jam, my boss can talk for Jesus.
3. That my boss thinks she should have the finance director's job.Because, not only does she know everything and the FD know NOTHING, but the FD is also constantly working from home
4. That the longest the FD has "worked from home " in one stretch is 3 weeks.
5. That it hadn't occurred to my boss to bring directions on how to get to the seminar.
6. That the director of the Department Next Door is two faced.
7. That my own predecessor couldn't add her way out of a paper bag.
8. That my predecessor has, however, been adopted by the two faced director of the Department Next Door, and so instead of being let go, has been promoted.
Over Penny.
9. That my boss doesn't like driving so fast...
10.. Another assistant was made redundant so my predecessor could take over as manger next door....
11. That I should be careful never to get stuck in the lift alone with the Senior Lecturer..I wish
12. That I should ignore that sign for the big Market Town.
13. That nobody likes Liz because.....
14. That, maybe I should have taken that turn off back there for the Big Market Town15. That it doesn't matter if we miss the first half hour of the seminar
16. That the Folk on the Second Floor...

One of the best bits about the grand new job with the Extremely Esteemed and Respected Institute of Edinburgh is the chance I get to go on lots of courses and seminars being run.
Like the one being held in the big Market Town just up the motorway from Cheesetown!

Yes accountants and interested bodies will be converging to discuss matters of Vital Importance in the reporting of Arcane Facts.
I get to go.
And since the Big Market Town is about 30 miles as the crow flies up the motorway I get a long lie in bed till at least 7am, before driving up the M9. CDs blaring loud enough for me to sing along to.

Yep. That was Plan A.

Time to meet my new boss. Penny. Penny is QUIET - and painfully shy. Why she recruited me from the other applicants God knows, but He isn't telling. Listen.... if everyone stops typing on their PCs long enough you can hear Penny speak....quietly...When she first showed me how to work the photocopier (no really it's password controlled) I thought she was whispering me a State Secret.
I'd make up a sentence with the words "Chalk" and "Cheese" in it to describe us, but I can't be bothered.

Today I found out that Penny is going to the conference too. Except Penny is scared to drive. Seriously scared. So we could share a car?

Oh Oka-ay.. that's a bit of a change in musical direction then.. Maybe no singalong to Primal Scream. At this point I'm still amazed that anyone is more scared of driving than they are of being a passenger in mine.....
But it gets better.

Can I pick her up from her house?
Oh...Oka-ay. Because obviously she is scared to drive, and so taking a bus or public transport to the far and distant Cheesetown is out of the question too.

And where does she live?
Sigh. Guess what. She's scared to drive and so yadda yadda yadda blah. She lives two minutes away from the office. Two minutes walking time from the office.

Yep. This is why I'm now going to be getting up half an hour earlier, so I can drive into Edinburgh in the rush hour, through Tramwork Diversions, then all the way back out again.
PFFFttt.

Obviously I have warned her about the car..
Obviously I have warned her about the great smell of NED wafting around the car.
Nothing can dissuade the woman.

Let's just see how slowly and quietly I can drive the Maz up the M9 huh?

Yes, yes, yes. Been awhile I know, what with the new job, and all the TIME it takes up.Sensible Self: TSK. Time management Macy.

And I keep getting asked how the new job is going. And the trouble is...erm...don't want to say this or anything... but the trouble is it's going great. It's fantastic. It's not about fund valuations, or stock classifications and pricing, or discounted interest rates.
Sensible Self . zzzzzz

Exactly.. You can wake up now....No. It's about conferences, and publications, and urgent issue task forces out in China and Romania. It's about the disciplinary board and big legal cases. It's about the NERDS down on the second floor studying arcane stuff.
Sensible self. Steady there Macy.

I know. I'm like Tigger in a sweet shop.
Sensible Self. Not a good image for the financial controller.

There's the library, with acres of books which I can borrow whenevers.
Sensible Self. You generally do that in a library mind.

They run courses, and I can sit in on them and get copies of the coursework.
Sensible self. Good girl. Remember not to ask any of your OBVIOUS questions won't you?

And did I mention the Nerds? The boffins? The experts in extremely arcane stuff? Nothing I like more than a good discussion of the intricacies of ship insurance, coffee bean futures, and Edinburgh's medical museums.

Sensible self. Yes. Many's the time indeed I've worried about my ignorance on coffee bean futures..

Yeah, I'd read the lukewarm reviews before I went. Plotless film, ridiculous Disneyland Heaven, Sarandon a waste of space as the glam granny, Jackson's direction lacklustre, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But I went anyway.

I could pretend I went because I'd already read the book and wanted to see the film treatment. Or I could pretend that there was nothing better on.

But I wanted to check out heaven. There was some appeal in trying to imagine what it's like to be dead. I wanted to see how we could imagine the dead watching us. Without going down the horror film route.

And I loved it.

Yes the plot is ridiculous, and slight. Whatever pedants.... I'm watching for the dead still sharing moments with the living; which is done beautifully. And I'm musing on the dead still being around until they feel that they can let go of the world because they won't be forgotten here.

Because I like that idea.

Obviously there's a limited appeal here, but hey the price of a ticket plus popcorn plus paper hankies still works out a lot cheaper than therapy.