British Standard

I work for a giant multi-national company. But it’s ok because I work in a friendly local office doing environmentally focused stuff. Until recently I thought our office was untouched by the bribery and corruption expected from profit-focused giants. But it appears not.

Each Friday we are expected to fill in on-line timesheets recording how many hours we have spent working on different projects. This data is then automatically processed and used to bill our clients. Obviously if staff don’t enter their timesheets clients don’t get billed. If clients don’t get billed cash flow falters and profits reduce. If profits reduce the Big Bosses get cross. If the Big Bosses get cross they lean on the Local Bosses. If the Local Bosses get leaned on then they are meant to lean on us poor staff.

The past few months the Local Bosses have been getting frustrated at the failure of certain people in the office to enter timesheets. Company policy suggests that this failing is a disciplinary measure. Verbal warning. Written warning. And eventually the sack. But the Local Bosses are far too nice. So they’ve opted for the opposite approach. In most cultures the opposite of getting the sack would be getting a pay rise. But not here. Here the opposite of getting the sack is getting cake.

Soon I will be joining my daughter in thanking God every night for cake. Every week that the whole department enters their timesheets on time, the Local Bosses have promised to buy the department cake. The bribery seems to be working. This is the third week in a row we have had cake. Although this week the donuts are sprinkled with corruption… not quite everyone entered their timesheet this week. The cake-buying Boss failed to do his own.

My kids are clever. As their mum I’m probably bound to say that. But sometimes they do display skills more advanced than expected at their age. Elder Son is 3 and a half. He can do addition and subtraction sums. And he doesn’t always need to use his fingers. He can play with words, altering song lyrics to hilarious effect. And taking what Daddy says literally whilst all the while knowing exactly what Daddy meant… Daddy was reading a list of what 3 year olds are meant to be able to do. He knelt down to speak to Elder Son, “Son, can you stand on one leg?” Son replied “Yes”, and stood with both his feet on just one of Daddy’s legs!

Daughter was 2 last week. She too is displaying amazing skills. She can reduce her big brother to tears in seconds. She can remove her clothes faster than we can dress her… while we are trying to dress her. But most impressive was the skill witnessed by Daddy yesterday afternoon. Playing in the living room with Baby Son and Daughter, Daddy was focused on Baby Son. Daughter was playing quietly by the sofa. She laid her head on the seat and put arm along the edge of the seat cushion, and just stood there. After a while Daddy became aware that she hadn’t moved so asked, “Daughter, what are you doing?” No reply. No movement. He got up to look. She had fallen deep asleep standing up!

I’ve been back at work for over a month now but realise that I’ve been far too busy blogging about family life to add anything amusing from the daily (un)civil engineering happenings…

For the past two days the office has been pretty quiet. Don’t you just love it when technology fails? No phones for two days. My boss has commented on how much work he’s managing to do now there are no interruptions.
Only there are interruptions. Mobile phone interruptions for those fortunate (or perhaps unfortunate) folks have the things for work purposes. And for phones meant to be used for work purposes there are some very annoying ringtones - which means the rest of us are definitely “unfortunate”.
One manager has an alarm-type tone that gets louder the longer it rings. Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if he didn’t keep leaving his mobile on his desk while he vanishes off to have meetings with junior staff. This morning I’d like to take a sledge hammer to the thing. Or maybe just superglue it to his hand so he can’t leave it unattended ringing for so long!

Like Birdie, we pray with our children every night. Elder Son’s contribution is generally to tell us what he’d like to thank God for - typically either a specific member of the family (siblings are currently quite popular) or something nice but wholly random in the recent past (not always on the day it happened). Daughter’s contribution is generally to say ‘Amen’ loudly several times throughout the prayer (possibly in the hopes that we’ll conclude it faster). Baby Son’s contribution is either happy gurgles or vomit!

Tonight Daughter made a step further in her journey to faith by contributing to the focus of the evening’s prayers…

Mummy: “What would you like to thank God for tonight?”
Elder Son: “Having chocolate at Sarah’s house” (Sarah being a friend we’d just visited who’d shared her Easter Egg with him)
Daughter: “Cake!”
Mummy (to Elder Son): “Shall we pray she gets better too?” (Sarah has chicken pox)
Elder Son: “Yes”
Daughter (louder): “Cake!”
Mummy (to Daughter): “You want to pray for cake?”
Daughter: “My cake”
Mummy (trying to figure out if this has anything to do we the fact that Daughter missed out on cake for pudding because she hadn’t eaten her first course at dinner time): “You want to eat cake?”
Daughter (shaking head): “No, my cake”
Mummy (next guess): “You made cake at nursery today?”
Daughter (smiling): “Yes. My cake”

So we did.
(And later I found a squashed fairy cake with pink icing at the bottom of the bag Daughter takes to her day nursery.)
Tomorrow she can have “Cake!”

I sent Mr Standard off shopping with the kids this morning with strict instructions to buy himself a couple of pairs of jeans because I’m fed up of him wearing the holey ones.

At the counter paying for his trendy-but-cheap jeans Mr Standard notices a display of manly bead necklaces and asks Elder Son, “Do you think Daddy should get one of those?”
Elder Son: “No. You’d look silly”
Cashier: “You’ve got yourself a personal shopper there!”

It appears that I should send Elder Son shopping with his dad again; no beads were purchased. Although there is a four foot long helium filled shark floating in our dining room now that I’m sure wasn’t there before the shopping trip!

Mummy got cross last night. Elder Son and Daughter decided that after lights out they’d play again. This time bouncing on Mummy and Daddy’s bed. On top of the pile of clean washing that had been placed there. Mummy lost her cool and shouted. Elder son ran back to bed and stayed there. Daughter was carried back to bed.

Mummy went downstairs and returned to chores (cleaning the downstairs bathroom). Daddy started emptying the dishwasher. And then he was aware of a little being standing in the doorway watching him.
“Daughter, what are you doing here?”

Mummy hears Daddy (and realises that she must have left the stair gate open). So thunder-faced enters the kitchen and silently picks up Daughter to carry her back to bed once more.
“Hallo Mammy!”
Daughter leans cute little button nose against mummy’s nose, looks into eyes, and says again,
“Hallo Mammy!”
Mummy dissolves into laughter.

So much for discipline.

Learning to speak has a number of distinct stages (according to a speech development book I read recently)… and it’s interesting listening to my kids go through the developmental stages. But what I’ve noticed recently is that learning to tell the time also has its stages:

The first stage has just been mastered by Baby Son – he can tell when he’s day-time and when it’s night-time and sleeps during the correct one!

Daughter is at the next stage, when speech is beginning to be involved. After breakfast she’ll announce, “teef-time”. So we go and clean her teeth. When she sees the changing mat on the floor and she’s aware that she needs a nappy change she’ll say “nappy-time” and lie on the mat. And of-course she’s fully aware of what happens when we get to “bed-time”… or what to do when her brother announces “It’s mornin’-time!”

Elder Son is onto the next stage. He knows about numbers and will ask, “Is it 3 o’clock?” And he’ll often try and connect the time with an activity, for example, “Is 6 o’clock mornin’-time?” But his grasp of the time is poor and getting him to recognise that 6 o’clock is not morning even if the sun is up can be hard.

Actually mornings aren’t too bad. It’s bed-time, 7 o’clock, which occasionally can be a problem. Close the curtains and Baby goes to sleep, but the other two in the room (the 3 share one large room) are less easy. The other evening Elder Son told me that he and his sister were going to play at night-time. I suggested sleeping would be better and continued with the usual routine: stories, prayers and good-night kisses, then I told them it was bed-time and switched out the light. I closed the door and listened:
    Elder Son: “Shall we play?”
    Daughter: “Yes!”
    *sound of two pairs of feet jumping out of bed*
Baby Son remained asleep, Elder Son didn’t switch the light on (he can only reach by standing on a step stool and no stool-moving was heard!), and they remained in their room so I took the relaxed-parenting approach.
I ignored the heavy footsteps and laughter for almost an hour. Then at about 8 o’clock I went back into their room, and found them playing with an inflatable beach-ball by the light of Elder Son’s torch. I suggested that perhaps it was finally bed-time, and they both got into bed without argument and went straight to sleep!

Today, like Rosamundi, I’ve found myself wondering at the insanity that rears its crazy head as soon as there’s a few inches of snow on the ground.

From my window this morning I have observed the following:

1) The park across the road filled with boys and girls and mostly students demostrating their “mine is bigger than yours” attitude to snowmen.

2) A student siding down our street repeatedly on his snowboard.

3) His mate attempting, unsucessfully, to copy him on a skateboard with the wheels removed.

4) A large inflatable crocodile being carried past - presumably destined to be used as a sledge.

5) A ‘bloke’ wearing NOTHING on his top half.

What can I say. The city has gone mad.

We have three lodgers. Male lodgers. Occasionally they attempt to clean their rooms. Slightly ineptly. Sometimes I want to stand in the hall and shout, ‘Vacuuming up dust is not that difficult’. And yet for some it is.

The problem is not that they can’t vacuum, it’s that they expect the vacuum cleaner to handle a lot more than dust. We have a bagless cleaner. I am the one who always empties the cylinder into the bin. Dust is often accompanied by pennies, and occasionally a pound coin. I pocket the lot. To buy chocolate to calm my nerves. Sometimes I find rubber bands or pen lids. One day I found a whole biro in the cleaner. How the entire pen made it up the hose I don’t know, but it did. However, today went beyond even that.

Our vacuum cleaner has seen a lot of action today. Lodger #3 cleaned his room and then Mr Standard tackled the filo pastry explosion that was our tea. (Note to self: never give kids anything made with filo pastry again.) Mr Standard had some difficulty as the vacuum seemed to be reluctant to suck. Then it started to smell of burning. He investigated the situation. A formal black bow tie was stuck in the cleaner. How does anyone vacuum up an item of evening wear and not notice they’re doing it? I am speechless.

Today I received an official looking A4 envelope in the post. It contained a letter informing me that “a tree will be planted on behalf of [my] child at Coed Ysgubor Wen, near Tywyn, Gwynedd. Grid Ref: SH 625 063″.

It’s part of the Plant! initiative.

And it struck me that the initiative is slightly flawed.

The letter was printed, in colour, on paper that did not appear to be recycled. It was single sided. And, since all official stuff has to be bilingual in Wales, the letter was accompanied by a separate letter saying the same thing in Welsh. Double sided printing was obviously beyond their abilities. Oh, and there was a colour certificate too - printed on A4 card.

So, the Welsh Assembly Government’s initiative is basically this: For every child born in Wales from 1st January 2008 (like Baby Son was), a bit of a tree will be cut down to provide 1 A4 envelope, 2 sheets of paper and 1 sheet of card in order to announce the fact that they’ll plant another tree to make up for the ones they’re cutting down!