Find a penny....

Find a penny, pick it up and all day long..........you have a penny!

I know, I know, I am far too cynical, but you would be too if you had to use the train to commute to and from work every day. Five days of anticipation, not knowing if the the wrong kind of weather is likely to jeopardise you getting to work  or if the train will be late because they just cannot be bothered to arrive on time. Admittedly that is not an excuse that you usually hear announced by the various voices that represent South West Trains over the ultra efficient tannoy system. I say ultra efficient but, as they only make announcements as the fast train thunders through the station like a deranged beast, it is hard to tell. 

I do think the most annoying, and probably most unintelligent announcement they make is “delayed due to awaiting a train crew at Portsmouth”. That is the tannoy announcement which is guaranteed to make the passengers blood boil. They may as well say “You will all be late for work today because Mr. Lay Zee Sod of Portsmouth cannot get his act together and arrive at work on time”. The train company management team do not seem to appreciate that this is not a good way to impress a crowd of tired, overworked people whom, quite frankly, are precariously near live rails, slippery steps, hot oil slick coffee and various other items they carry with them. (Don’t get me started on that subject) If a murder was to take place at a station would anyone be surprised? Would anyone be blamed? To be honest, would anyone care?

As for telling me how many coaches there are......... I seriously don’t care!  There is no reason I wish to know this. If you have to be at a certain place in the train then you ask the leg dragging, dribbling, overweight, put upon man wandering on the platform wearing his snazzy SWT uniform and hoping his day ends quickly. You may get the correct information but he will try his best with the total lack of resources at his disposal.

Cancelling trains is probably the most frustrating thing that SWT can do. It is never a good time to cancel a train but seven am when I need to get to work is most definitely the wrong time. This week we had a seven am battle to get on a train which goes to the next town which is, incidentally, seven miles away. So the signals had stopped working again and no one knew what to do about it, when they will be working again or how hundreds of commuters, who rely on the trains to get to work, will actually arrive at their destinations. I presume that SWT do not think the passengers travel with them because they want to, they travel with them because they have to or because it the lesser of several evils.

Firstly the brain boxes at Woking station decided to lay on ONE taxi that takes five passengers. With the heavy traffic in Guildford and the usual gridlock situation that occurs there, this would take more hours than I care to calculate just to get a fraction of the people to work. The next announcement was that a train had pulled in on platform two and the Guildford line had re-opened. A huge amount of people then surged up the stairs and over to platform two like a herd of wildebeest fleeing from a pack of hungry lions. After a ten minute wait on the train we were then informed that we had been misinformed in regard to the train and had to disembark and make our way back to platform five for our possible transport to work. The herd were up and running again in the vague hope that they may actually find a seat on a train that was truly planning on going to their chosen or necessary destination.

The aforementioned scenario is a normal part of train travel and everyday life and I should be used to it; however, I will still complain about it, I will still joke about it and I will still write about it.

My first 2 quotes of 2015

Both the following quotes make me laugh. They are both fashion related in a round about way.

"He looked like he had dressed in the dark after a scarecrows orgy." This is by the hilarious author Stephen Clarke and sums up a few people I see on my journey to work.

"You can't go shopping in a red plastic vest if you have a belly like a space hopper". A very accurate quote by the writer and presenter Jermy Clarkson. If only this was a law, it would prevent the hilarious, yet scary mistakes that are often made when people get dressed.

Service with, or without a smile.

Good service is something I am always surprised at and this is a sad indictment of our world today. We should be appalled by bad service, not expect it, but this is how life has become. Despite high standards being demanded by business proprietors, the staff on the ground just do not deliver.

After working in retail, catering and childcare before I decided that admin was a better path for me, I know the pressure put on staff, the bad conditions and the low wages. Having also worked in the personnel department of a large supermarket, I am well aware of the standards expected by the owners of businesses. They put pressure on the people below them and that goes all the way to the people on the ground. They, in turn, take it out on the customers with bad service and bad attitudes. The expectation of what each staff member can do will often be far more than is possible and this comes about by companies cutting staff budgets while trying to increase productivity and profits.

There will always be hard workers among the staff in an organisation and they tend to take up the slack of the people who don't care, can't be bothered or are so demoralized that they do the minimum they can. Sadly though I have found that doing any job, however bad, to the best of your ability, is ultimately far more rewarding than doing a job badly. Your sense of pride should make you want to do a good job and it also makes your working day go faster.  A good work ethic is always a good example to the people around you and your children too.

I am sure there are many people working in jobs they hate who have been ground down  by the day to day issues they face combined with problems which are not work related., however , that is not the fault of the customer. If you go into a business, whether it be a retail business, your doctors surgery or travelling on public transport, you expect to be treated decently. However badly my day is going I know that I have to slap on a smile and treat each patient in a decent manner. Being polite costs nothing, smiling costs nothing, treating people with respect also costs nothing. There are rewards for treating other people in a decent manner, knowing you have helped someone is a good feeling. I know it is hard when you are at work and someone decides to be rude to you because you cannot deliver the impossible or they had a bad day, but you have to rise above it.

I have had some fantastic service and always make a point of giving positive feedback. For example, Specsavers in Guildford always give good service and cannot do more to help the customer. When I broke my glasses leg in my lunch break, which was totally my own stupidity, they had four members of staff finding a leg that would fit and they did it free of charge. On another occasion I was given a free spray and cloth when I asked for advice on the why the coating needed so much cleaning. These little things mean that I always recommend them to people.

Boz's Fruit and Veg in Woking opened this year and their service is brilliant. The quality of stock, the prices and the service of every staff member is fantastic. it is a simple enterprise but it works as they concentrate on those three key elements. (A good product, a fair price and a very high level of service.)

The third example of a high standard of service was in fact in Ogilvy's in Woking. I went there for lunch with my Dad for my birthday. The food was delicious, there was a lovely atmosphere and, most importantly, the waitress was brilliant. They had one member of staff serving all the tables. She had to take the orders, deliver the food, deal with any queries, present the bill, clear the table and get the table ready for the next diners. She did this with speed, efficiency and a smile. There were no mistakes made and she was friendly and polite the whole time.

These examples do show that it is possible to deliver top level service in all jobs. You can rise above the rubbish that is thrown at you on a daily basis and treat people how you would like to be treated.

Quote 5

I am not sure who wrote this, but I like it.


"Somewhere someone dreams of your smile and finds your presence in life so worthwhile. Remember it's true that someone somewhere is thinking of you."

Filofax..... My collection

I love Filofaxes and I am not bothered by the eighties and yuppi labels they bring with them. It is easy for people to see them in this way and ridicule this organisational obsession. The main reason I like them is that you can be ultra organised in your own way, mistakes can be rectified and they are, to be honest, beautiful things. There are so many designs, colours and materials used and insert  possibilities are endless.

This is my current favourite Filofax. It is a personal., purple, patent Original. My diary and day to day planning is in here and it goes everywhere with me.  I have a homemade, laminated flyleaf,  my diary, a list of numbers in case my phone goes wrong and sections for things I am currently planning. There is always spare paper, stickers, sticky notes and 2 pens in my planner. I use Paperchase  week on 2 pages as the layout is clear and uncluttred.

I do have a large collection of Filofaxes which I have collected over time and they all have their uses. All my family and friends have given me various Filofax gifts before and they are all lovely. 

There is a fantastic online community , mainly based around the Philofaxy blog and Facebook group, where you can discuss every aspect and possibility of Filofaxes. People from all over the world and from all walks of life  are users of either the Filofax system or a similar one. ( Van der Spek, Franklin Covey, Kiki K, Gillio, etc)

My collection also currently includes a red, pocket, zipped pennybridge as my wallet, a black A5 metropol as my blog notes Filo, a personal red butterfly for all my writing notes, a personal, ochre malden for financial, a purple, compact saffiano for health and beauty notes,  a purple, personal songbird for addresses, a blue personal domino for home notes, a personal heart which was for food lists but currently am not keeping a food diary, an old black patent personal for last year's diary,  a burgundy deskfax for Fiofax related information,  a pocket denim for listing websites and blogs, a grey pocket sketch for birthdays and other occasion planning, an un branded, black , leather pocket size for log in info, hints to passwords etc,  a mini metropol for interesting words and 2 pocket petals, an aqua pocket finsbury and a pocket spot, all with book and reading notes.

There are 12 other Filofaxes all  used for storage too. 

I will be doing various blog posts in the future on individual set ups for my different use planners but this is a little taster of my collection. 

Spider!!!!!

For quite some time I have been warning people about the impending spider apocolypse, but sadly no one listened and they kept "putting the spiders outside" with no thought to the increasing numbers and species in the country.  I have noticed in recent years, and this year in particular, that spiders are getting more prolific, larger and nastier. It is easier for the dangerous spiders to get in to the country now, They come in accidentally with fruit and other imported products. They can also be seen queuing at airports and docks, passports clutched in their nasty, hairy hands. Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but I do think that the importation of exotic spiders is on the rise as people look for more bizarre pets.

To be honest I cannot see the contribution that spiders make to the world. All this rubbish about eating flies is nonsense as most of us clean away the cobwebs. As far as I can see cobwebs are the only way for a spider to catch a fly. I can honestly say, and I am pleased about this, your average English housespider does not jump into mid air grabbing flies as it goes. ( shivering at the very thought) This is mind, how do they do any good?  They string webs around in hard to see places so we walk in to them. ( this may cause hysteria in some people .... me!) and do little else that I can see apart form lurk around waiting for victims.

At 5.30 in the morning a few weeks ago, when confronted with a psychopathic, killer arachnid in my toilet; I knew I had a fight on my hands The rather large furry beast that I had encountered had come with one intention..... to kill everyone that he could find. I knew this because he was weilding a large baseball bat (really). I am not saying he was a little scary, I am telling you he was a monster with eyes like saucers and fangs like a acouple of ice picks. A scuffle ensued and the hellmonster was slain at the hands of a broom weilding maniac. Another eight legged attacker dispatched to spider hell.
My advice to anyone who thinks to attack  me at 5.30 in the morning; do not hide behind the toilet cleaner bottle!!! 

     

Why the Colour Orange? ……………. How I Named My Blog

I have always been a red, black, purple and blue kind of a girl and as a child blue was my favourite colour. However, a few months ago I got hooked on the colour orange.

I love my orange dress and plan to update my wardrobe with some more orange pieces when I need more clothes. I won’t go for the head to toe tango look and I cannot wear wishy washy peach tones, but a few good, vibrant orange pieces would be rather nice.

To be honest I am also leaning towards the orange accents in stationery too. Paper clips and post it notes in orange have come up in the sales recently and I am happy to see that Paperchase has an orange range of stationery in now. My Filofax “unicorn” is an orange A5 Finsbury, rather elusive but I hope to find one eventually.

So to the origins of my blog name. Originally I was going to call it “The Girl in the Orange Dress” but sadly I discovered there was a book, and an internet link to the book, of the same name. I wanted a name which didn't reflect just one thing that I wanted to write about as I didn't want to be tied to one subject. My feeling was that by allowing myself to write about whatever I chose I gave myself a larger prospective audience and a more interesting range of subjects. Restricting myself would be counter productive as I have far too much to say about so many subjects.

I chose to put coffee in the title purely because it is my favourite drink and I was born in 1969 so added that in too. Throwing the three random things together gave me a unique blog name without narrowing my field of subjects and hopefully draws in readers as they do not know what to expect.