It’s now less than one week to go until my holiday in the Lake District. There’s a good chance that this will be my last proper update until I return home at the end of August, although I will still post updates on Twitter to describe what I’m doing. (That’s if there is any mobile phone reception where I’ll be staying).
I’ve had a really busy week at work – the first 2 weeks of the month are always extra busy, because everyone always wants their reports as close to the beginning of the month as possible. So the first week of the month is always frantically busy and the second week is very busy. The second half of the month is still pretty busy, but not quite as bad as most of the monthly reports are out of the way and we are mainly working on ad-hoc requests by then.
Tuesday was especially busy – in addition to dealing with a heavy workload, I also had 2 appointments to attend. The first of these was a hairdressing appointment in my lunch-hour, and the second was an eyebrow-wax appointment in the evening straight after work. I went to a different hairdresser at a different salon to normal, as my Mum recommended it. I had to complete an urgent report before I could leave the office at lunchtime, so I was a couple of minutes late for the appointment and I had to run up the road! I liked the way this hairdresser cut my hair, but I didn’t like her personality. At the beginning of the session, she asked me how I wanted my hair styled, so I said I wanted a short, modern hairstyle and that I’d leave the specific details up to her. She said a few things which made me feel uncomfortable. She was asking me a lot of questions, such as why I stopped going to my previous hairdresser, which made me feel awkward. Then she said it’s a wonder none of my previous hairdressers had ever made a mistake with my hair as I’m very quiet and I don’t say much about how I want it styled. I’m always quiet when I meet someone for the first time, but I don’t really know that much about hair so that’s why I left most of the decisions up to the hairdresser. The weirdest thing was that she asked me how old I was, and when I told her I was 25 she said: “Oh, so you’re actually younger than me! When you first came in, I thought you were older than me!” O_O There were a few other things she said that made me feel uncomfortable, but those were the main ones. Apparently, she has said weird things like this to other customers as well. So even though I like the way this hairdresser styled my hair, I don’t think I’ll go back to her again.
On Friday, our department had a half-day away day from work. We went to a local pub (The Unthank Arms) and took part in various team-building activities and quizzes. It wasn’t a particularly sunny day, but it was dry, so we stayed outside in the garden for the whole day. The first activity was based on the concept of speed-dating, where we all had to stand in 2 lines and we had 2 minutes to speak to the person opposite us to find out more about them, before moving onto the next person. They had to ask us questions as well. When the head of department first mentioned that we would be doing this, I was a bit nervous, but it actually turned out to be fun! We all had sheets of paper with prompts on them, so I was never stuck for a question to ask. Examples of questions included: “What would your ideal job be?”, “What do you dream of?”, “What is most important to you in your life outside of work?” and “What is your worst habit?”
After that, we were all split into teams to take part in a “Who am I” quiz where we had a list of “secret facts” about all the staff in our department (which had all been prepared in advance) and we had to guess which member of staff said which secret fact. My secret fact seemed so mundane compared to most other people’s! I can’t really think of anything that I’ve done in my life that is particularly daring or shocking. In fact I was having trouble thinking of a secret fact, so I just said that I had a cat called Holly. Some other people had secret facts about meeting celebrities or that they’d patted a tiger or something equally shocking/surprising. Our team didn’t manage to guess many of these correctly, unfortunately.
The next round was a pub quiz, and I really enjoyed that. The first part of the quiz was general knowledge, and I knew quite a few of the answers. In fact I was answering more of the questions than most of the other people on my team. I felt proud of myself for that. In the next round, each team had to draw a design on a bowling ball. I let this other woman in my team do the drawing on the ball, as I didn’t think I’d be so good at that. Then each team had to nominate someone to bowl the ball, and the team who got their ball closest to the target would win. I was the person chosen to bowl, and I did quite well at that and scored several points for my team. After that, we went back to our tables to take part in a second pub quiz. I did better in this pub quiz than the first one, as most of the questions were about history, geography and science and I like those subjects. I answered quite a lot of these questions too. I felt pleased with myself because I was the youngest person in the team and I seemed to know more of the answers than the older people did!
At the end of the quiz, we had to swap our answer sheets with another team so we could mark the answers and add up the scores. When we got our answer sheet back, I could see that we had scored 68.5 and there was one category (I think it was Geography) where we had scored full marks! Our team should have won. Alas, when all the teams’ scores were announced, it turned out that another team had scored 68.5 as well. 
So we had to do a tie-breaker. The organisers had never even anticipated there being a tie, so they didn’t have a tie-breaker prepared. The organisers decided that we (the 2 joint-winning teams) should do another game of bowling, and whoever scored the best of 3 would win. The man from the opposing team bowled his ball first, and it landed a metre from the target. I then bowled my first ball, and it also landed about a metre away from the target, but in the opposite direction. It was hard to tell whose ball was closer, so the organiser had to use a tape measure. It turned out that the opponent’s ball was just a little bit closer than mine. The other man then had his second go, and his ball landed really close to the target. At this point, the pressure was starting to get to me, as I didn’t think it was likely I’d get my ball any closer than his. This was in spite of the rest of the members of my team saying “No pressure!”. When I had my second go, I didn’t throw the ball very well and it didn’t travel that far at all. It was at this point that I realised I’d ruined everything. The organiser then confirmed my worst fear by announcing that the game was over and the opposing team had won. I felt bad for losing, but the rest of my team still seemed pleased with how I’d done anyway.
The winning team was then given their prize. It was a big box of goodies that they could share out amongst all the members of their team. There were some decent things in there, like iPod Shuffles, drinks, books and bars of chocolate etc. I was pleased for them, but I still felt bad about losing, especially as my team was so close to winning. Then the leader of the winning team got out his domino set, and he invited people to play dominoes with him. He said that whoever wins would be allowed to take something out of the prize box. I decided to take part, even though I can’t remember playing dominoes since I was about 6 or 7 years old. Somehow, I managed to win the second game of dominoes. I think it was pure luck. I was really pleased that I had managed to win a prize after all, even if it wasn’t in the way I was hoping for. I felt better after that. I picked out a bar of Marks & Spencers Swiss Chocolate to take home.
At 7pm we had our evening meal. It was still nice enough for us to sit outside in the garden. I had fish and chips, and ice cream for dessert. We had originally been planning to go to the Waterfront for the 80′s night straight after the meal, but then the other members of the team said they didn’t want to go there after all so we all went home. It was a really good day out and I think it was one of the best away-days I’ve ever had in the 4 years since I’ve been with the company. What I really like about my current department is that we take part in a lot of different activities, whereas my previous departments didn’t do this so much.
I had to wake up at 6am though – eek! 
