Linzi's blog

Strange day today. Have just spent the evening cleaning my long boots ready for going away on Friday so that they will be all nice and shiny for Saturday morning. Unfortunately they won't be all nice and shiny come Saturday evening, they'll possibly be covered in mud, even if I don't fall off the horse. It is curious fact that when you wear long boot for riding, even if you manage to stay on the horse, they get dirty. There is mud and allsorts clinging stubbornly to the side that hasn't been in contact with the horse and sweat on the side that has.
Tommorrow Tess starts training Linzi style. Mum bought one of those extender leads, because she has given up on trying to get Tess to walk to heel. I don't give up that easily, so tommorrow afternoon, I will sort out her Lupi harness, get it on her, clip the extendable lead to it, and the put one of her normal leads in my pocket and toddle off to the park with her for a spot of training. I am hoping that because Tess is a collie cross, she will have some intelligence and get the idea of what I am trying to teach her quickly, and when we get home, she will be walking to heel.
Quiet day at work. The evil one has plumbed new depths of depravity with his latest plan. Occaissionally, we recieve bloods from a hospital which refuses to pay us for the tests (yes they do cost money). Our normal policy is to send them back to that hospital. One of my colleagues said that we should do the tests and then at the end of the month all of us in SR should go round and act as debt collectors. The evil one's idea was to take equiptment such a chemo machines as payment. I felt that it was disgusting of him to even suggest an idea like that even in jest. To deprive cancer patients of vital equiptment, or indeed any patient, is wrong and should not be tolerated. What if you had need of that sort of equiptment at some point in your life?
On a similar thread, I am supporting the appeal against the descision of NICE to ban alzheimers drugs such as Aricept for patients with 'mild' Alzheimers in England and Wales. The descision is wrong, denying such patients these drugs while hospitals are forced to give priority to junkies, often having to neglect patients that are in greater need of treatment. I have heard of casualty departments turning young children away because they will have to phone for a paediatrician to come to the department, or the childrens A&E is now closed (what happened to all day service? Children don't fall ill between the hours of 9 and 5) yet willingly give treatment to people who are abusive to the staff, mainly because they are high on a drug or drunk despite the fact that most hospitals operate a zero tolerance policy. The hospital nearest to where I live has a police guard alongside the security staff already provided. This is not acceptable. All hospital staff, whatever their job, have a right to carry out their work without fear of intimidation from such people.

I think Tess has got wind of our plans to take her to Dog Borstal. She seems to be behaving very well (for her.) You wouldn't think that butter would melt in her mouth. She is still being very optimistic about getting food every time someone walks in the kitchen. Before I send the email, I am going to take her for a long walk on Thursday afternoon, to see how she behaves. If she is still pulling, and generally misbehaving, then I shall have to bite the bullet and send the email.
The evil one in work has got wind of what I am doing to destroy his plans for world domination and has been keeping quiet about any further plans he may be developing. I think that it is more likely he is sulking because his character has been killed off in my book. Not that I really care, it was getting boring writing about how evil that character was, so it was easier to kill him off, and thus preserve the brilliance of my book. I have tried to find a picture on the internet that sums him up but so far have been unsuccessful in my attempts. So instead here is a picture of me working away at my new book:

As you can see, it is not quite an exact likeness, but it is the best I can find.
The book is continuing to go well, is running towards 24 pages, and is not even halfway finished yet

I kid you not. The angelic looking dog you see on my last post is in deep poo and has no way out of it. As regular readers will know, Tess is an expert on destruction, scratching through 4 or 5 layers of paint on the kitchen door to expose the wood, digging up the garden, dragging us when she is taken out for a walk, and thinking that a plane could land in the back yard. Well, this may soon be put to an end. At our wits end, we have decided to apply for the next series of Dog Borstal in the hope that we may be able to come to a solution as to what we are doing wrong as owners and what we can do to stop this behaviour. We have tried everything that we can think of, ignoring her bad behaviour, telling her off, training aids designed to stop her pulling when on the lead (lupi, halti, we've tried them and got nowhere.) So, hopefully, the trainers at Dog Borstal will not think her a lost cause for which there is no hope, or us totally useless owners and we will be able to reform her. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

This person is so evil that I can not write his name as it would only encourage him further. All I will say is that he is an egotistical, megalomaniac, hell-bent upon World domination, who dreams of the whole world bowing down to him and treating him like God. I think I'm forgetting something else about him. Oh yes, he has the intellect and maturity of a zygote. His latest scheme is too evil to put into words, but come down to the fact that if, he were to ever get backing for it, all children's lives would be in peril. Unfortuantely he made the mistake of mentioning his plans to me, and I will do all I can to ensure that they never come to fruition. He is worse than my mother for trying to get me married. Apparantly he had decided that I would be getting married to a former colleague. No chance. As I have said before, I am not getting married for anyone, or any amount of money. And to think that my own mother thinks that I even remotely like him!!

After much personal debate as to whether or not the work in progress should be submitted to a publisher, I have decided to send it off, once finished to some publishing company in London and see what happens. If I get a sick bag sent back to me, I know that I've slightly overstepped the mark with the blood and guts. Of course I might be surprised to find they like that sort of thing. There is also the chance that I will finish the book and then bottle out of sending it off. Actually, that's probably what will happen, it normally does. I have been on the verge of asking Paul Schockemohle to give me a riding lesson numerous times and then bottled out of it. I know, I need to have more confidence in my abilities and a more positive outlook on life, but I can't. I'm too scared to think something good will happen to me incase it all goes horribly wrong, so I go through life expecting the worst to happen and not taking any chances. Take the job I'm in, I could have decided not to apply for it, stay working as a domestic and reapplied for university or when in my second year at college, I realised that I would be better taking A-levels, I should have put my foot down with the guidance councillor and said I was doing A-levels and maybe I wouldn't be here now moaning about how everything's gone wrong in my life, because I've only got myself to blame for it. So as from now I am going to try and be more positive: I Will finish the book and send it to a publisher, I will ask Paul Schockemohle at some point for a riding lesson and will not give him a stress-related illness or fall off the horse.
I feel better already.

What am I to do? On the one hand I promised myself that I would never ever get my book published, but now I'm not too sure. The main reason is a competition being run by Waterstones and Cosmopolitan magazine called Miss Write. I would enter, but somehow, I'm not too sure that my book would come under the heading Chick Lit It now runs to 22 pages, and is not even halfway through, and I'm still not sure if there's going to be a happy ending yet. It comes down to 3 scenarios: Either the hero sacrifices himself,  he kills the leader of troops attacking his temple, or the leader of the troops is recruited to the temple staff and they all live happily ever after (sort of).
I know that there's no point in entering the competition as I couldn't write chick lit if I tried, it's not my sort of thing. I write books that may or may not have a happy ending - depending on which side you're on - and like to garnish them liberally with some blood and guts. I can't write books where the girl gets her man and is happy, or anything remotely soppy. I can't do romance, even though I occasionally get ideas for that type of book which find their way onto file. So I will continue writing my book and debating as to whether of not I should get it published. If any one has any ideas as to what I should do, all comments are gratefully recieved.

I think that my riding instructor has been abducted by aliens. No, really. Why else did she give me bucketloads of praise for my riding today. Normally, even if I ride well, she finds something to critisise, but today, nothing. I have to give some credit to Kiara, the horse I was riding. Kiara is an absolute darling. I adore her and I've only ridden her once, today. Ok, she's young, green and spooky, things I normally try to avoid in a horse, but she's a trier, she really tries to understand what you're asking her to do. This is despite the fact that, technically I should have been on the floor 5 times, from her spooking, and schooling whip phobia. You may think, not another whip, but I have 3 different whips in the boot of my car, and I assess each horse that I am riding from what I have seen if I have never ridden them before, and how they go if I have ridden them before. Kiara is a young, green horse, so a schooling whip is more appropriate than the dressage or normal whip. Luke, is more responsive to the dressage whip, so I use that when I ride him and most of the others I use my normal whip when I am riding them. I would like to point out that I never use the schooling whip, if I think that it will not be of benefit to the horse, ie if it is already trying hard. Thus, it happened that I hardly used the whip on Kiara, except when I asked for canter the first time and she didn't fully understand my leg aid. I just gave her a slight tap with the whip and she jumped about a foot in the air with fright. I calmed her down, trotted on and asked her with my legs again for canter. This time she understood what I was asking her to do and, although slightly hesitant, she produced a nice canter on a circle. We were asked later on to canter down the side of the arena on the inner track. This time, when asked, she was only backing off from my leg slightly, but made a nice transition to canter. All in all we had a good lesson and I would be happy to ride her more often. Kiara just needs to overcome her spookiness and learn to heva slightly more confidence in her rider to be a good horse.

Don't try to tell me otherwise. My so-called book, Sacred Vow also known as the "work in progress" will never, ever be published. That's final. I will keep everything that I have finished even when I have reached the end an file and password protect it, so that it can not be accessed by anyone but myself. I think there's a flaw in the plan somewhere, but I'm not too sure where at the moment (Oh yes, if I ever have children they will be able to crack the password without knowing it, damn.) I am still writing it, and have come up with 2 endings, so I will have to see where the book leads as to which ending I use. My attempts at writing are rather like those of Snoopy, (you remember him, black and white beagle.) I can imagine a publisher telling me that they will print my book. First print will run to one copy. If they sell it, they'll print another one. My book probably wouldn't be that bad, but I'm taking no chances, if it doesn't get published, no one can tell me how terrible it is. Not even Mum has seen the new book. She knows I'm writing one, but that's all. Of course, if you have been reading my blog, you will have seen the first 10 pages (A4 size) uploaded. I am still debating, at 19 pages whether or not to upload more. If no one likes it, whats the point of foisting such a useless book on them? They'll only resent me for it. So my book will, for now, remain on file, read only by me as I try to incorperate yet more blood and guts into it. Maybe I'll leave it to some charity, if I think it's good enough to be published.
Talking of leaving things to people did you hear about the wealthy spinster who died and left her cairn terrier £4 million? He was unlucky. Her budgie went to court to challenge the will and got half.
On a different thread, it is interesting to read adverts selling horses. I often sit there, sifting through page after page of adverts, trying to sell me the next olympic star and try to think what the terms previous owners use actually mean. Help is at hand, however. I have a little bible which gives me a rough idea of what the seller is telling me about the horse:
Will make showjumper: Regularly jumps high fence to get out of paddock.

Those are just a few of the terms used to describe horses. I have to say that I generally steer clear of those that would do eventing. I much prefer to try and get a horse moving than try and stop one.

Apparantly there is a psychological condition know as Water Intoxification. I will explain in a bit.
Me and some colleagues went to a talk on Renal Function today. Not as boring as it sounds because the guy who was giving the talk, makes it interesting. No, really. This is because I managed to make the mistake of thinking that it is possible for a normal person to pass 9 litres of urine a day. (it is, but, it's not normal.) We learnt that if you have too much salt in your body, your kidneys will retaint water, in order to balance everything out. This is known as sensible water loss, because it is controlled. Insensible water loss is from sweating and breathing, because there is no control over it. (Well, yes, if you held your breath and went to live in the Antartic, but not recommended!) It is normal to pass on average 2 litres of urine every day. Renal faliure can lower it to about 300ml. It is of course possible to pass excessively more than that per day. You can pass upwards of 5 litres of urine a day if you drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or suffer from water intoxification. Water intoxification is a condition where you are drinking about 8 to 10 litres of water. Apparantly it causes similar effects to alcohol. What happens is that you just keep drinking water, because your body thinks it is not getting enough even though your cells are practically swiming in the stuff. Water intoxification can, in extreme cases cause death.
Maybe I should not have mentioned that as it could become the next illness for our resident "hypochondriach". This colleague has had almost every ailment going. She is always telling us about her latest illness whether or not we really want to know. She has told us she's had gall stones, and went for a scan only to find that there were none. This worst case scenario of illnesses is also applied to her colleagues to the extent that we normally refrain from telling her if we are not feeling to good in order to avoid one of her diagnoses.
I may have to track back slightly on yesterday's post when I said that I had not achieved anything. I was informed this morning that I have achieved the ability to tolerate Ian. (Only slightly. He is still a pain in the ___)
After Yesterday's post, saying I was on the verge of abandoning my new book, I have added yet another page. I have decided to at least try and finish it, but I probably will never get it published.

If you have visited my Profile you will have seen this picture taken when I visited Cologne Cathedral last August.

This is the Gero Crucifix. It was donated by Archbishop Gero (who died 976) and dates from around 970. It is the oldest monumental figure of the Crucified Christ that is still in existance. The Christ figure and cross beams are original. The radiant halo behind the crucifix was added in 1683 as a donation of Cathedral Canon Heinrich Mering.

It is unique in that it is the only crucifix to show Christ with his eyes closed. Thus Christ is shown not as victor over death, as in nearly all other early crucifix images, but rather in his deepest humiliation.

For fruther information visit the website of Cologne cathedral.

http://www.koelner-dom.de and click on virtual tour and then important works. You will then find the Gero Crucifix.

Just saw the picture as I was updating my profile and had to draw attention to it, this being Lent and all.

I realised something today. I turn 25 this year, or 52 since Ian is 72 (27 really) and I have not accomplished one single thing of value. I am just your average MLA working their socks off to get blood samlpes and the like through as fast as possible for absolutely no thanks. If you are ever unfortunate enough to have to be admitted to hospital or have blood tests done, please think of the over-wroked Sample reception MLAs who will be processing them. We are a vital, if often overlooked, part of the NHS team. We recieve verbal bashings from all quarters about the quality of our work, but we take it on the chin and just keep plugging away. We get extremely rude phone calls from doctors complaining that they sent a sample 30 minutes ago and it has not been processed, only for it still to be on the ward or department. We get patients who get angry when we refuse to give them their results, secretaries who complain when we won't fax them results that "Other departments fax us the results." We are not other departments, we are Sample Reception. We give results out to doctors, nurses and secretaries over the phone or send them a paper copy. If they want the results that day, then they will have to have a pen and piece of paper to hand to write the results down. As you can see, it's not easy being a MLA in Sample Reception.
I have achieved nothing in my riding worth noting. That is probably because I get so nervous before a competition, that even though I know the showjumping course backwards, or the dressage test backwards (even Grand Prix B and Grand Prix Special!) I end up making so many mistakes in my postition and aids to the horse, it is a wonder that I am allowed to continue entering the shows. I have tried everything to combat my nerves, but nothing ever seems to work. All suggestions welcome. Also I know that the liklihood of me ever having a riding lesson with Paul Schockemohle is less than that of me overcoming my nerves. I would ask him to give me a lesson, but my lack of confidence holds me back. How do you ask someone who has achieved so much in their career to give a lesson to a lowly mortal like myself. (Yes Ian, a lowly mortal.)
Then there's my writing. I am on the verge of abandoning my new book, Yes the one that I was still arving about yesterday, simply because I feel that it is no longer going anywhere. Anyway, whats the point of writing a book that will never be published, even if I paid the publishers. Please do not suggest to me that I try that, because, as mentioned above, I lack the confidence to approach them in the first place.
So that is my life so far summed up. Everything that I want to achieve I probably never will. When I am 30 I will still be working in Sample Reception and still moaning about my lack of confidence holding me back.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IAN!!!

Pancake day in our house normally means anarchy. There's never enough pancakes, and not enough differnt toppings. Personally I prefer Jam or a bit of lemon and sugar. Work today was Ian's birthday, hence the message at the top of the blog. Ian is 72 today, or is that 27? No he's definately 72, he doesn't look 27 !
If you think I'm being cruel, it's because I'm still contemplating my revenge on him for all the times he has called me Evil, Cruel, a Midget, Queen Elf, and all the other nasty names that I couldn't possibly repeat here because I'm far too nice. I had hoped to reproduce some more of my new book tonight, but have decided against it on the principle that, another 4 pages is nowhere near enough yet. If you have yet to read the first 5 parts reproduced in previous posts I will give you a quick rundown of the story thus far. (yes even to the extra 4 pages written since.) :
The book is set in modern day Egypt. The main character is Paul the highest of the 2 High Priests at the temple of Bast. Paul is seemingly immortal, bound to every temple in Egypt by acts he performed during ancient times. He was appointed High Priest when Bast's temple had only just been built. Appointed at the same time as High Priestess was Saska, who died a few months previously defending the temple from attack. Paul was also fighting to defend the temple that day and was lucky to survive. The second High Priest is Michael who was appointed the year before for reasons as yet unwritten. Bast's temple is yet agin under attack, but the new attackers have help from the High Priest at the temple of Amun-Ra, Ademus. His temple have abandoned Amun-Ra twice and Paul knows that if left unappeased, Amun-Ra will destroy not just his own but every other temple which has deserted it's deity twice. Only 2 would be left standing Bast's temple and the temple of Anubis. After meeting the leader of the attackers and persuading him to leave his temple be, Paul goes to deal with Ademus. He tells him that he must make a sacrifice to Amun-Ra, asking his forgiveness for the errant ways of his temple and that he has only a short period of time to do it in. After returning to his temple, Paul pleads with Bast to release him from his service, saying that he has lived long enough and that there will soon come a day, when his knowledge is no longer needed. His request is refused and the encounter with the goddess leaves him feeling drained and ages him considerably. He returns to Amun-Ra's temple to help with preparations for the sacrifice, the following day, but is left so weakened that he is unable to return to his own temple.
That about sums up everything writtan so far. I have decided that the title will be Sacred Vow. Let me know what you think.

Maybe yesterday's post was ill-thought out. I would like to point out that in no way have I ever been cruel to a horse. I have the utmost respect for any horse that I ride, and the horse normally has respect of some sort for me. I would never use an exercise that I considered to be detrimental to the horse or cruel, so you will never catch me using Rollkuer for any length of time, ie over 20 minutes as it can damage the neck muscles if incorrectly used by someone who is inexperienced.
It has been proven, that if used correctly, for short periods, Rollkuer, also known as "Round and Deep" can help to improve the topline of a horse and strengthen the neck muscles. I would not recommend using it for more than 20 minutes, as I believe that is the limit that any exercise should be done for, whether it be pole work, jumping, or basic flat work. After those 20 minutes you should move on to something else, or give the horse a break. When warming a horse up I normally do a lot of circle work to help improve balance and rythm especially in younger horses, who have not yet developed the strength in their muscles to carry themselves correctly. I would use Chrissie as an example of this. She is very keen to do the work asked of her, but lacks the basic balance and strength in her hind quarters to carry herself properly, so is often unable to do the exercise as well as an older horse, who has developed the strength needed in their hind quarters and can therefore carry themselves uphill and balance themselves better. I believe that, given the correct training, Chrissie could turn out to be an absolutely brilliant horse. Until then, she should be concentrated on lessons to help her improve her basic paces. It is a bizarre training system we have in this country, where a 4 year old horse is still learning to carry itself properly, while in Germany, Performance Sales International have started their better 4 year old dressage horses on in-hand piaffe! Maybe we need to look at where we could improve our own training system instead of just throwing money at horses from abroad that have been better trainied than our own.

Maybe that's not quite true. When I say that I need a change, what I mean is that I need to change my whole outlook on life. I'm a natural pessimist. I always believe that anything I do is doomed to total faliure. Take yesterday's riding lesson as an example. I was put on Luke, who just happens to be the most stubborn and lazy horse I have ever met. That's not an understatement either. If Luke decides that he doesn't feel like doing anything, you can sit there kicking and smaking him until you are blue in the face and not get a reaction from him. Unfortunately for me, whenever I ride him he normally happens to be in that sort of mood. Yesterday was no exception. He didn't want to go to the mounting block at the start of the lesson, he wanted to go back to his stall and the pinle of hay that would be waiting for him. He didn't really want to warm-up at first. I had to coax him into a walk, and then threaten him with my dressage whip to get any reaction from him. Dressage whips are wonderful things. Luke normally pays no attention what-so-ever to a normal length whip, until it is turned upside down in order to give him 3 sharp smacks with it. The advantage of a dressage whip is that it is longer, so you can just manouver it so that Luke can see it out of the corner of his eye. I have never needed to really give Luke a sharp smack with my dressage whip, on most occaisions only a warning is needed. Luke would probably argue that I don't need to turn any whip upside down to give 3 sharp smacks, I have developed a knack of being able to hold it so that whereas most people holding the whip in the same way would only be able to give a tap, I can use it more effectively. I am not sure whay this is. Anyway, the warning of my dressage whip was sufficient for Luke to buck up his ideas and realise that he didn't have a novice rider on his back. The other factor that helped me to get him going was the fact that we were doing a jumping lesson, Luke likes to jump. It a strange coincidence that most lazy horses that I have ridden seem to enjoy jumping. Next to doing absolutely nothing, jumping is Luke's favourite exercise. That isn't to say that Luke is tottaly useless at anything else. When he concentrates on his rider and decides to apply himself to doing some work he can make a very nice outline on the flat. He is a total demon in the field, so he could possibly make a useful hunter given the current law. Long periods of standing around waiting for something to happen intersperced with jumping and cantering. Just don't give him to the MFH to ride, as it would be Luke who decided when the day's hunting was over! But, despite our argumentative start, Luke applied himself to the task in hand, and found the jumping exercise quite easy. Well, appart from having to canter 3 strides between the fences. I also felt more comfortable as we didn't have our usual instructor, but Jenny, who is more constructive in her teaching in that she doesn't spend most of the lesson telling us what we are going to work towards while we have to stand our horses to listen. Jenny keeps us riding while she explains what we are going to do, thereby keeping the horses switched on and ready to do the exercise. No Paul Schockemohle, but I suppose I can hope.
My new book now has 14 pages written and still I have ideas to go into it. I will post more of the book on this blog when I feel it is ready.

It's officially the weekend! Two work-free days. Time to add to my book, which I am doing at the moment, in between writing this post. I aslo have to write my Mum's blog for her while she dictates as her typing is a bit slow at the moment. Ok it's none existant, as is her knowledge on how to turn the computer on. Before you start having a go at me. I have shown her on many occaisions how to turn the computer on, log in to her account, and even how to send e-mails. But still I have to do these things for her. Mum is actually a bit of a techno phobe, unless it's the TV or anything associated with cooking. No one needs to tell mum how to use any of those appliances. It must be something that mum's just know. Me and Dad know about most of the other things, mum knows about the TV and cooking appliances. I think that mum probably does know how to work the computer, it's just more convinient for her to get me to do it. In the same way, I can sort of cook, but it's more cnvinient and safer if mum does the cooking. I'm a bit of a disaster in the kitchen if truth be told. I have just about mastered how to make toast. Mum has tried teaching me, but nothing seems to stick. If I apply myself to cooking something, and concentrate, it's normally passable, so there's hope for me yet.
I'm going horse riding tomorrow, for the first time in 2 weeks, so cue aches and pains come Sunday. Hopefully I will be on a decent horse that goes forwards when asked and stops when asked.
As mentioned the book is coming on well and is heading towards 13 pages. When I have a bit more I will continue where I left off in a later post.

Today has been fairly boring. Maybe it's just me, but work was boring, the journey to and from work was boring, and even the dog has been boring, for her. I actually think she's sulking, because Dad's working new hours that mean he's not at home for lunch, so she doesn't get as many treats as she thinks she should, and Mum's on holiday. When I say Mum's on holiday, she hasn't gone away, she's just using her holidays up. So I am now sat here, bored, contemplating whether or not to add to the 12 pages already written of my new book. I have managed to come up with a couple of titles for it, let me know which one is better. The first is Sealed Vow. The second is Sacred Vow. I know they're both pretty similar, but I haven't had a chance to come up with anything better yet.
On the subject of work, where was it written in my last post that the signed photo of Paul Schockemohle actually came from Herr Schockemohle himself? I don't recall saying anything about the sender, only that the "letter" came from Germany. Surely Paul Schockemohle is not the only person in Germany. Yet it was implied to me in work that the photo HAD been sent by Herr Schockemohle, by one of my wittier colleagues.
We have a possessive pod system. It has taken to holding onto pods when they arrive for long enough to set our basket full alarm off. As it has been pointed out time and again, the system is cheap, so we can't really expect to much. Then again, what hope is there of getting a decent pod system in our hospital, when there are hospitals removing every other light bulb to SAVE money? Not our hospital, I have to point out, but Epsom and St Helier hospital in Surrey is doing just that in order to cut a £6million deficit. You can't make up some of the stuff hospital chiefs think up to save money, but I suppose they have to look like they are doing something, or they would be sacked, and how would the hospitals cope without them then?

As you may have guessed from the title of my post, Valentines day doesn't exactly rank high on my list of favourite days. It's listed somewhere with my birthday near the bottom of the list. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with Valentines day, it's just not my sort of thing. All that mushy stuff, blokes sending flowers and cards that they wouldn't normally be seen dead doing. I don't do Valentines day cards, and any bloke who has gone out with me for any length of time knows that. If you want to make my Valentines day, buy me something that can't be eaten, and is remotely useful, like a book. Books are always good. You may have guessed that reading is one of my passions, anything from the odd love story, right through to Shaun Hutson blood and guts horror. Especially Shaun Hutson, books shouldn't always have a happy ending. Why should the guy always get the girl and the hero save the day? Why occaisionally, can't the hero get massacered right at the end? Why do so many horror writers draw the line at describing every little detail. You can't just say, "So and so killed the hero." Where's the horror in that? Describe every little part of it. I want to be sat on the edge of my seat while I'm reading a horror book. Ok, even Shaun Hutson can't quite manage that, but I do sit nearer the edge of my seat when I'm reading one of his books.
So anyway, I got home from work tonight, and mum says, "There's a letter for you from Germany." A letter from Germany? Since When did I get letters from Germany? Alarm bells started ringing in my head. I hadn't been to Germany since last August, when we went to the WEG at Aachen. Surely if we had commited some awful error, they would have caught up with us by now. The I remembered ordering the Performance Sales International catalogue in December. 20 Euros it cost! All that for a hard-back book containig pictures and breeding of horses, and 2 DVDs with horses on them. Ok, I will admit, the horses were mostly gorgeous, and I ended up wanting to buy most of them. The DVDs were really great, 56 horses, being shown to the absolute best of their ability. And 20 Euros is only something like £15 anyway. So a bargain. But I remembered that the cheque had been cashed. So anyway, I opened the envelope and there was a signed picture of Paul Schockemohle, who's like the person I admire most in showjumping, even though he now breeds showjumpers rather than compete them. In my opinion, anyone who can win 3 European individual titles, and 3 Hickstead jumping derbies, is worthy of worship. Herr Schockemohle has done all this and more. Me? I am still trying to lose my nerves and get past the second fence. So in a way, any bad things that have happened today, don't matter. Well, they do, but not as much because now I have a photo of my idol to look at when I feel myself getting worked up. My new book now covers 11 pages on my Word document, and is still going strong. You never know, I might get round to finishing it and get it published. Then again, if that happens, then Paul Schockemohle will be taking my next riding lesson.
Actually, that's quite a nice thought
Will keep you posted on whether that actually happens or not.

Continuing where I left off:

"How is it that you know how bad our losses were at the temple of Anubis, and that there was no resistance at the temple of Amun-Ra?" Francois asked him. "As I told you, I have no age. I am in close contact with the goddess, and so I know and see everything. I do not have any need to leave this temple to find things out, yet it is the one freedom I allow myself. If I did not leave the temple, then I would be reliant on information alone, unable to find things out for myself. It is my greatest joy to be able to wander Egypt and beyond. I saw the coming of every war that has been fought since this temple was built, I have met every religious leader that has lived since that time, and I have always used my knowledge to help others where I can. It would be unwise to think that the followers of Bast are only to be found in Egypt, they are spread throughout your known world. I have seen islands that you have not yet discovered, species that you have long believed to be extinct, and those that have yet to be found. I have run with the wild herds of horses in the deserts, flown with the eagles and hawks, and swum the depths of the oceans. I was at every temple you ransacked, although you did not see me. You cannot trust Ademus, as he would abandon you at the first sign of trouble, which will be sooner than you think. Twice his temple has abandoned Amun-Ra. It is two times too many, and the wrath of Amun-Ra will be great, and his retribution swift. If you have troops there, you would be advised to move them, also from the other temples that have abandoned their god or goddess for the second time. You will be safe at our temple and the temple of Anubis, as neither have wavered in their devotion to their deity. It was the unwavering devotion of the High Priest and Priestess of the original temple of Anubis that led to it’s destruction." Paul replied. He didn't look at Francois, but out over his temple as if he were making certain that there were no danger. Francois was slightly intimidated by Paul, he was fairly tall and well-built despite the fact he looked an old man. "You keep mentioning the original temple of Anubis and it's destruction. What happened, exactly?" He asked Paul. "That is twice today I have had to relay what happened to the original temple of Anubis. Only this morning, my young colleague Michael asked me that question. The original temple of Anubis was built not long after ours and only a few miles away. Well do I remember the High Priest and Priestess at that time being devoted to serving Anubis. There has always been harmony between our temples, even now, when they have been forced to abandon the worship of Anubis in favour of the god you have introduced to this country. There came a time many years ago, before you were born, when Egypt was subject to a fierce and brutal attack from another country, I do not fully remember from whence they came, but well do I remember the fear and panic they caused. They decreed that we must forsake the deities that we worshipped and bow down to their gods and goddesses. The only 2 temples that would not comply with this ruling were ours and the temple of Anubis. The leader of the invaders was not best pleased by our defiance and it was decided that both temples should be destroyed and all the staff of each killed in public. They descended upon the temple of Anubis first, Killing many of the servants and lower priests and priestesses. Those that were higher up the order and the High Priest and Priestess were shut in the temple, which was then set alight. Of all the staff that had been employed by that temple, none survived." Paul said, there was sadness in his eyes at recalling what had happened. Francois was shocked at what Paul told him. He vaguely remembered something from his history lessons at school about an attack on Egypt which had been abruptly stopped at one temple. His teacher had said that it was a legend, that there was no real fact behind it. But that attack had been centuries ago. And this temple would have been constructed in the time of ancient Egypt, which was even further back. If Paul had been at the temple since it had been built, then he must be the oldest man in the world, without doubt. "I heard about an attack on Egypt when I was at school, but that was centuries ago. How could you remember something that long ago so easily?" He asked. Paul smiled at him. "You should not question the knowledge of those without age. In your country, I would not exist, purely because I have no age. Bast has endowed me with this gift, and if it means that I will live for as long as she decides, without death, then so be it." The words sounded in Francois's head, and he knew that Paul had spoken them, even though he hadn't made a sound. "Come, let me show you round my temple. You will see much more if I show you, than if you parted with money on a guided tour." Paul said, walking away from Francois. He had no choice but to follow. When Francois left the temple later that day, having seen every part of it, even the parts that were not open to the public and having been told more about not just the temple of Bast, but the others in Egypt, with a detailed history of each one, he felt that it was wrong to attack the temple. It should be left alone. The artefacts that could be plundered and sold to museums round the world, would not look as impressive if removed from the temple as they did inside the temple. Also, no museum would be able to detail the history of each piece as well as Paul could. That was another thing, Paul knew everything, that could be known. He had spoken about what he had seen and done, without it sounding as if he were boasting about it. Ademus had tried to make out that he knew more than anyone else, but Francois now knew that in reality, Ademus didn't know much at all. The point Paul had made about being at Ademus's temple when it had been attacked, was interesting. He had said that Francois hadn't seen him, what did he mean by that, also the bit about running with the wild horses in the deserts and flying with the eagles and hawks. How could he possibly have done any of those things? As he thought this over, he remembered Ademus's words that morning, "the followers of Bast are not all they seem to be." He wasn't sure what that meant, did it mean that Paul was not human, or did that statement not apply to him? Another thing that bothered Francois had been Paul's warning about Ademus's loyalty. He had said not to trust him, did Paul know what Ademus had told him that morning?
"You are smart, Ademus, but you know nothing. Twice now, your temple has abandoned Amun-Ra without hesitation, but you will not abandon him again." Ademus heard Paul speaking to him in his mind and knew that he must be near. "You will not face me, or are you scared of me, Paul?" He said. "No I am not scared of you, Ademus, but I bring you a warning. You allowed Amun-Ra's temple to be defaced by these invaders and stood by idly while they burned his sacred book. His anger knows no bounds and he will descend upon you as a lion upon his prey and destroy you and the temple. You would be advised to incur the wrath of these invaders and try to appease Amun-Ra in the tradition of your temple, rather than face the full fury of his wrath." Paul replied, stepping out of the shadows. "And what do you know of this temple's traditions that I do not?" Ademus sneered. "More than you will ever be able to learn. There used to be harmony between our temples when I was younger, but when you abandoned Amun-Ra the first time, we drifted apart. The traditions of your temple are similar to those of mine. You must make a sacrifice to the great god Amun-Ra, asking his forgiveness for your lack of loyalty. Seal your commitment to him. The traditions of your temple are written all around you, yet you do not see them. Walk with me, and I will teach you, what your temple holds dear in it's traditions." Paul said, walking back into the shadows. Ademus followed him, intrigued. The darkness enveloped him, and when they stepped into the sunlight again, the temple seemed different, somehow.

Well, that's everything that I have written so far. Let me know what you think of it, good or bad.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDREA!!! )

If you are not the Andrea I work with then disregard this bit of the post and skip to part 4 of the new book. If you are the Andrea I work with then, Happy Birthday, if you get to read this today, and sorry I'm a bit late with it, if it's tommorrow.

PART 4 OF NEW BOOK

Paul stood facing the statue of Bast in the main area of the temple. It would be a little while before the tourists came, which gave him time to look round thoroughly and decide what he should do about the book. It must be moved, surely, or would the invaders leave his temple be as they had done for so long. No other temple in Egypt was home to such wealth as his and yet they had systematically ransacked each and every one of its treasures. "My book must remain at the temple, Paul. The leader of the invaders is coming to visit today. They may attack in a few weeks, or they may not attack the temple at all. What happens is up to you. Meet the leader today when he comes and show him round the temple. Use all your knowledge to make him see sense. If you can persuade him to let my temple be, the rewards will be great." Paul heard the words behind him and knew that it was Bast herself who had spoken them. He turned to see her standing away from the altar. "Great goddess, if you say the book must remain at the temple, then so be it. I will show the leader of these invaders round your temple and try my best to persuade him to leave it be." Paul said, bowing to kiss her feet. "It is your temple as much as mine, Paul. Remember that at all times. I must go now, before the doors are opened." Bast said, turning away from Paul. He watched her walk away and then turned his attention to making sure that the temple was in pristine condition and that everything was in it's proper place. Hearing the servants open the doors, he turned and walked back to his quarters.
Francois stepped through the doors into the main temple area and was amazed by the sight that greeted him. Most of the temples either had a stone roof or no roof at all. The temple of Bast had a roof made entirely of glass it seemed. The temple seemed to have been designed in a similar fashion to a church, with intricately carved pews set either side of an aisle. The floor was marble, as were the pews. The walls were also covered with ornate decoration, art-work depicting scenes from Egypt's history. The most amazing thing about the temple was the altar area. Behind the altar there was a statue of the goddess with her arms open made from gold. Francois had expected the goddess to portrayed as in the books, a woman with the head of a cat. But the statue in the temple showed a beautiful woman. Either side of the altar were 2 statues of cats also made out of gold. In front of the altar were 2 thrones made from gold. One was larger and had more decoration on it than the other. Francois felt that they must be where the 2 High Priests would sit for an hour while the rest of the temple staff paid their respects to them. While he was taking all this in, he was unaware that he was being watched. "Does it have to be you who shows him round the temple, highest of High Priests?" Michael asked. "Yes, the goddess has told me what I must do, and I will not waver in my devotion to her in these dark days." Paul replied, walking out from the back of the temple towards the altar. He walked behind the altar aware of the eyes of the tourists upon him and bent to kiss the feet of the goddess. He then turned and walked back in front of the altar and sat down in his throne. Michael walked out after Paul had taken his seat and walked up to him, kissed his feet, and sat beside him. Then one by one, the priests and priestesses and staff of the temple walked out and kissed the feet of Paul and Michael before walking to stand at one side of the altar. Once the last servant had kissed Michael's feet and taken his place at the end of the line, Paul got to his feet and raised his hand in blessing before sitting back down. Michael then stood up and walked away from his seat to join the temple staff and they all bowed down in front of Paul. Once they had stood up again, they one by one departed from the altar area to resume their duties around the temple going through the same routine as they had at the start of the hour. Paul remained seated in his throne for a few more minutes, then he got to his feet and walked back behind the altar, kissed the feet of the goddess and walked as if to go back to his quarters. Francois had watched the proceedings with fascination, the devotion of the temple staff to their high priests was amazing. "You are the leader of the invaders that have ransacked the temples around Egypt, yes?" Said a voice behind him. Turning, he saw Paul standing slightly away from him. "Yes I am. I was advised to come to the temple today. . ." He started to reply, but Paul held his hand up as if signalling an end to his reply. "This temple is the oldest in Egypt and I have served it diligently from the day it was built and I will only leave when it no longer stands. I see that you are fascinated by what you see, both in the temple and also by me. I would advise you not to enquire as to my age, it is no longer important to me, I will only tell you that I have no age. I was born, appointed to this temple when I was still a young man and will only leave this life of the goddess's grace. The roof of the temple was a gift made to us by a foreign King in thanks for our help to his armies during one of those wars you Europeans seem to be so keen on. Some of his troops came to our temple, lost, injured, dispirited and hungry. We took them in cared for them, provided them with food, water and medicine. When they finally got home they informed their country of the help we gave them, and so it reached their king, and he came to visit the temple. At first I was reluctant to allow him access, but I was persuaded and he was impressed by everything he saw and said that it must be preserved as much as possible and so ordered that a factory in his country, which makes glass, should construct a roof for the temple. I miss the days when we did not have a roof, but it helps to protect the floor from being damaged by the acidic rain that we seem to have so much of these days. You may think it strange in a country where there is little rain to start with, but in my opinion that means there is more cause to protect the floor and pews. The statue of the goddess shows her in her human form, not as these books represent her. Those pictures were taken from other temples which have always been ready to abandon their god or goddess at a moments notice. It was their willingness to change so readily that led to the destruction of the original temple of Anubis. I know that they fought hard to stop your troops from destroying their artefacts and that you suffered heavy losses not incurred at any of the other temples. You received no resistance at the temple of Amun-Ra because Ademus is not as devoted to Amun-Ra as he should be. It is his lack of devotion to the great father of Bast that makes the relations between our temples so strained. I know he has told you about the sacred book of Bast, because he desires it for his own use. The book will remain at this temple for as long as the goddess decrees so." Paul said.

Will do in two parts, more in a minute.

Today, my car had it's first ever flat tyre. Everything's alright now, but I was a bit worried at the time, as I had just driven from work to Asda and back home, with this flat and somehow not noticed. The steering was fine, although the engine sounded a bit off. Mind you that's probably because it needs petrol. It could have ended in disaster though, because, last March, my 9 month RAC vehicle breakdown cover that I received when I brought the car, ran out. I spent a couple of months dithering as to whether the RAC would be better than the AA, or whether I should leave the breakdown cover, as the car was only a year old. Finaly, last May I decided that I should stick with RAC as they had been helpful the previous year when the car had been in a disagreement with a 4x4. As you may have guessed, my car suffered a bit more than the 4x4, but it's a tough little nut and it pulled through. Anyway, getting home and findind that you have just covered about 11 miles with a flat tyre is a bit frightening. It's not an easy thing to change a wheel on a Ford Ka. That's because some bright spark at Ford's HQ thought it would be a brilliant idea to put the spare wheel UNDER the car, so that you open the boot, spend 2 minutes looking for the bolt, and then you have to loosen the bolt securing the spare so that the spare tyre drops down from under the car and you can change the wheel. Then you have to go through the whole process to safely stow away the flat tyre until you can get to a garage and get a nice shiny new spare tyre. Well, I wasn't going to be trying any of that. You're not supposed to change a tyre on your own any way, so I checked that my RAC membership covered home callouts and phoned them to get someone to come and change my tyre. I was given an estimated waiting time of 45 minutes this was about 8 o'clock. At 8:20 the phone rings, it's the RAC mechanic, Andy. He's on his way and will be about 20 minutes. at 8:30, Andy arrives, asks me to open the boot and tells me to go back inside. 8:45 Andy closes boot of car, gives me a survey to complete, and checks milage of car. 2 minutes later he is on his way, job completed. You may wonder why I am mentioning this, did nothing happen at work? Yes, stuff happened at work, but I felt that this was worthy of this particular post, because of the level of service. So if you do not have breakdown cover, or are thinking of changing I would recommend you go to http://www.rac.co.uk and sign up to one of their breakdown plans. I am on solution 3 or roadside, recovery and at home. I pay by direct debit each month and the cost is £12, so not much for that piece of mind if any thing happens when you are travelling.

Thirteenth post so not writing anything in case something goes wrong, will update.

Right, as promised I will now continue with  my new book, picking up from where I left off:
Most of the time the temple was open, Paul hid himself in his quarters, he had no desire to meet the public or show them round the temple. Michael had been more enthusiastic, as had Saska before him, organizing guided tours and even taking time to answer the visitors questions as best they could. Today, however, Paul would have to face the public. It was the first Tuesday of the month, which meant that the High Priests would sit in front of the statue of the goddess while the temple staff paid their respect to them. It would only last an hour, but it would feel much longer to Paul. After a few more minutes, Michael left Paul's room, following the same ritual as when he had greeted him earlier. Left alone at last, Paul allowed himself to fully wake and think about the temple's fate. For certain the invaders would remove most of the artefacts to sell to museums for their own profit. But what of the book? That could not be sold. It must be taken from the temple before the invaders arrived and taken to a safe place. Paul thought back to the help they had received last time the temple had been under attack. He could not remember fully the identity of the group, but remembered the country they had come from. Maybe there was somewhere in that country that the book could be kept safe. The other problem was how to get it out of Egypt. The invaders were everywhere and they would easily spot the book and would be prepared to kill who ever held it in their quest to own it. There were only 2 weeks to the main festival and if he were to take the book now, he must be sure that he could return before then. Feeling despair at the fate of the temple, Paul prayed to the goddess for a miracle.
“You must attack the temple of Bast within the next week, or if you will wait, then it will be the end of the month before you can safely attack the temple. After the end of next week, you will be destroyed if you try to attack Bast’s temple. They say that during the time of her festival the goddess walks among her followers and destroys all who would attack her temple. Also, you must not underestimate the highest of Bast’s 2 High Priests, Paul. He may look like an old man, but he is anything but old. Followers of the goddess say that her blood flows in his veins. If that is so, you will not be able to kill him. Do not ask me how old he is, as all I know is that he was anointed High Priest when the temple was built and has been there ever since. It may be that he is immortal, the goddess’s chosen representative on Earth, but be aware that the followers of Bast are not all they seem to be.” Ademus said to the leader of the invaders, Francois. “You say there are 2 High Priests. How will I tell them apart?” Francois asked. “Go to the temple today. This is the day that all the priests and priestesses pay their respect to the High Priests for 1 hour. You will know Paul by the fact that the younger of the 2, Michael, will pay respect to him by kissing his feet. Also, Paul will not wait around after the hour is over. It is not in his nature to mingle with the public, and, if he had his way, the temple would not be open to the public. Only for the fact that they need the money generated by the guided tours, did he consent to open the temple’s doors every day to the tourists. Michael will mingle with the public and often takes guided tours. You would be advised to part with some of your money and go on one, the knowledge you will gain could prove invaluable to your mission. Paul thinks that I am ignorant of the treasures housed in his temple, but I have seen enough when I have visited, to know that the artefacts contained within the temple walls would be extremely valuable to any museum wishing to expand their collection. The most valuable of these treasures is the sacred book of Bast. It is said to have been written by the gods and can be read by anyone, as it is written in all languages. Paul will not give the book up without a fight, and may even now be planning to move it to a safe haven while the temple is threatened.” Ademus replied. He hoped that the invaders would be able to capture the book. If they did, then he would be able to prove once and for all just how blood-thirsty Bast’s followers actually were. Maybe it would also tell him how to get rid of Paul. Ademus was often frustrated by Paul’s knowledge of everything to do with their history, even knowing everything about all the temples and their history.
Ok I think that's as much as I can reproduce tonight. I will continue tomorrow and hopefully you will soon be able to read the entire first draft. If you can help in any way with a title, please contact me.
Anyway, let us now return to today. I have to say it has been one of our quieter days, mainly because it is half term. It is a curious fact that we seem to recieve less blood tests during school holidays than any other time of year. So of course this results in less work and boredom. One of our main topics is: If you went on American Idol, what song would you sing that sums you up? As you can possibly tell, there are times when we seem to have far to much time on our hands, but, somehow we manage to keep working while discussing these things.

As promised last night, here is the second part of my new book.
Michael turned towards him, "What happened to the original temple of Anubis?" He asked. Paul closed his eyes for a few seconds as if trying to remember the exact details. "As I told you, the original temple of Anubis was built not long after our own, in fact it was built only a few miles away. For a long time there was peace throughout Egypt, every temple worshipped it's own god or goddess and all were happy. Then suddenly, one day invaders came sweeping through the country. They said that we must all worship their gods and goddesses or be destroyed. Most of the temples agreed to save their staff, and because they have no loyalty. Only 2 resisted this new order, our temple and the temple of Anubis. As you can imagine, the leader of the invaders was not at all pleased by our stance. He decreed that both temples be destroyed and all who seved in them killed. His armies descended upon the temple of Anubis like a swarm of locusts, killing all they found there. They made prisoners of the priests and priestesses and shut them in the temple along with the High Priest and Priestess and set fire to the temple. There were no survivors from the staff of the temple at that time. We were lucky to escape the same fate. The invaders came upon our temple during our main festival when the goddess herself walks amongst us and they were destroyed. Those temples which had given up their deities so easily went back to worshipping them without a second thought. They did not care for what had happened at Anubis's temple or his followers. We took them in, and gave them somewhere to worship until they had rebuilt their temple." Paul replied. Michael's face went white. "Could these new invaders do that to us?" He asked. Paul shook his head, "They would not dare. They may subject us to the same humiliation as Amun-Ra's temple Destroying everything of little or no value and selling the more valuble items, removing every image and statue depicting the goddess and replacing them with those of their own god. Ademus thinks it unlikely that much will happen to our temple, he does not think that Bast is important enough." Paul said. Inside he was angry with the comments about the temple made by Ademus. Little did Ademus realise that the temple was the greatest treasure trove, full of artefacts from it's history, gifts from foreign countries in thanks for kindness shown by the temple. Some of the artefacts were older than the temple itself. But by far the most priceless of these was the sacred book of the temple. The book had been written by the gods themselves, and could be read by anyone as it was written in all languages, but olny ever visible to the reader in one. The words were engraved on paper made from pure gold, and the front and back covers were inlaid with precious stones, some of which even Paul could not name. The book was a work of art almost as much as the temple's bible. People flocked from around the world to view the temple and have a guided tour. Paul had been reluctant to open the temple to the public, preferring to keep it closed to all but the followers of the goddess. However, it was almost impossible to do that sort of thing these days, as everything cost money. Therefore, the temple had to pay it's way like every other one in Egypt.
I have to go to darts now, but I will continue later and give a full update of the news from my day.

As promised in an earlier blog, the first part of my new book is copied here. I would put everything I have written so far, but it runs to 9 pages on my Word document, so I'm going to have to break it down a bit.
"Paul, you have taken the vow to serve my temple and followers for the rest of your life. You have agreed to preside over it's festivals and to ensure that no harm comes to those who look to you for my guidance. You have sealed your commitment to me by your sacrifice of meat and blood. Therefore, it is my great honour to bestow upon you the title of High Priest. May your devotion to Bast never fail and her great father Amun-Ra watch and protect you."
Paul awoke with a start. It took him a few second to remember that he was in his quarters at the temple. He wondered briefly whether Saska, the High Priestess, had been having the same dream, before reminding himself that she was dead, relieved from her service to Bast after she had been badly injured in a fight against enemies of the temple a few months before. Paul had fought alongside Saska, but they had been terribly outnumbered and it had been Paul who had survived, not Saska. He wondered why he had been remembering the day he had been appointed High Priest of Bast's temple, it hadn't exactly been a recent event. He could remember the day well, even though it had been many years ago. The temple had only just been built in honour of Bast and he had been chosen out of all her followers to be her High Priest. Saska had been chosen as High Priestess and they had been appointed at the same time. They had sealed their commitment to the goddess with a human sacrifice. They had eaten the victims flesh and drank his blood as their final act of devotion to the goddess. How different things were now. The new High Priest, Michael, who had been appointed the year before had sacrificed a goat to show his commitment. That wasn't to say he wouldn't have made a human sacrifice, it was just that such things were frowned upon these days and no one, not even Amun-Ra was above the law. Paul remembered Ademus, the High Priest at Amun-Ra's temple telling him about the foreign soldiers who had come to his temple. "They destroyed everything that they felt was worthless, removed all the valubles, the statues and images of Amun-Ra, and replaced them with those of their own god. They even destroyed our sacred book." All over Egypt there were stories of similar things happening. Paul worried about his temple, it was the oldest and one of the largest. Well, whatever these strange invaders wanted with Bast's temple, he would do his best to stop them.
Hearing footsteps outside his room, Paul got to his feet and walked silently to the door. Opening it he saw Michael standing outside, jut about to knock. "I am so sorry to disturb you, highest of High Priests, but I was wakened in the night by a sudden fear of what should happen to the temple if the invaders attack." He said, bowing low and kissing Paul's feet. Paul moved to one side to allow Michael access to his room. "Whatever these invaders want, they cannot be as bad as the last ones who came before you were even born. You will note that Anubis's temple seems to have been built more recently than the rest. It is not new. The temple of Anubis was first built not long after our own temple. It only appears to be new because it has been rebuilt and not even where it previously stood. Last time there were invaders we feared for our lives." Paul said.
Right, that's all I'm going to reproduce here for now. I will continue tomorrow, I promise.

It is a curious fact that whenever I decide that there is no way on this earth I am going to go along with what my mum wants for me, most times I end up going back on my own words. Take my last but one post. I said that there was no way I would get married, have kids or stick with a secure job. I said that I wanted to compete for Britain in Showjumping or Dressage and that if by the time I had achieved that, I was too old to have children, then so be it. Scratch that. Well some of it anyway. This morning at work we recieved the bloods for a baby born at 28 weeks. You may think, so what? But bear in mind that the latest that you can have an abortion is 24 weeks and maybe you will see my point. It is also a fact that babies born at 25 weeks have been known to survive, so surely it seems absurd that you can have an abortion that far into the pregnancy. If we are not to abolish abortion (which I believe we should do) then would not the best thing for every one be to lower the abortion limit to, say 12 weeks? If you have not realised that you may be pregnant by then and decided that you didn't want the baby then that would be your problem. I know that in a perfect world, every baby would be wanted, but we don't live in a perfect world. It would be pretty boring if we did. But in this less than perfect world, there are women unable to have children for whatever reason who would make brilliant mothers, and women who have children just so they can claim a bit more money from the benefits system. I realise that not every mother does this, but there are those who do. I heard of one young girl in her early 20's who was sat on the bus with her friend and young son. The child was dressed in clothes that were obviously too small for him, and were dirty. The mother, meanwhile was dressed in designer gear and was busy showing off her purchases to her friend, none of which were for her son and talking about the fact she had just spent about £500 on herself and complaining that her mother had said she should buy some things for her son. "But he's alright, he doesn't need anything, does he? So what does she think she's talking about?" Was her comment.
I remembered this story today and wonder whether the young lady in question has since bought her son any new clothes, or is she oblivious to the fact that he is going to keep on growing until he's 18 or 21? It made me think about my own stance on having children. I know that I probably wouldn't make the best mother in the world. I'm unorganized, messy, and forgetful. Also, I wouldn't be able to do that whole ante-natal thing, where you have blood tests, as at the first sign of a needle, all my veins go south, and it's like drilling for oil. I wouldn't have the patience to go through a natural birth as I'd get bored with all the pushing. So as you can imagine, the whole idea of having children is not my idea of fun. However, if I did, by some miracle become pregnant, I would go through with it and accept the consequences of my actions. I also have to slighly retract the whole idea of riding for Britain, as I have finally accepted that my legs are at least 4 inches too short to have any effect. I briefly considered becoming a riding instructor, but remembered that you still have to do some riding to pass your exams, so that wouldn't be such a good idea as a career move. I am still holding out on the marriage front, however. There is absolutely no way I am getting married for any one, and nothing you say can make me change my mind.

Well, we finally had our meeting. You may think that everything was brilliant, we resolved all our differences and every one's happy.
No chance. This meeting was basically a PR exercise designed to make us feel like we had achieved something and make the TAPs look good. It didn't do any of that. If any one thinks that we in Sample Reception are thick enough to believe that the TAPs are going to change their attitudes, or She Who Must Be Obeyed is suddenly going to start directing all her problems with our department through our supervisor, they must have been born yesterday. That may happen in the short-term, but give it 2 weeks and we'll be right back where we started. Take for example: at the meeting we were informed that the Coagulation lab had reached their target regarding the processing of A&E samples. Were we in SR informed of this? No. The only reason that Coag, or indeed any other lab, could achieve their target, is because the staff in SR work hard to ensure that sample turnaround is as quick as possible. We would not be able to do this if we were not organised enough to know when to come off the job we are down for and hep in another area. For example, if you are on boxes and urines and the staff member on, say Haematology goes on their break or lunch and everyone else is busy with their jobs, you know that the boxes and urines can be done later and move onto Haematology. To the untrained eye, SR is chaos, but if you work with us for even just a day, you will see that it is anything but. Everyone knows their job, and gets on with it, and if they have nothing to do, they help out somewhere else if needed. In this way the work is done quickly and efficiently and departments such as Biochemistry, Haematology and Coagulation can sit back and take all the glory for reaching their targets.
So you see, this meeting was basically just to say, yes we know how hard you all work, but we will continue to nit pick on every little thing that you do, because we don't have anything better to do with our time.
I finally put pen to paper on my new idea for a story today, and the results will be posted on this blog when I am finally happy with the final draft. So unfortunately, you may have to wait a few years to read it! Seriously though, the book is coming along well. The basic idea is based around some one who has been following what he believes to be the right path all his life, when something happens to make him question whether or not he is in the right. Even at this stage, I'm not too sure how this will develop, or even if the main charcter is going to end up on the right side or not. If you think that some one else has had a similar idea, then at least wait until you have read what I have to write before passing judgement.

Some people just don't understand me at all. Take my mum for example. She has decided a long, long time ago that I will find a nice bloke, settle down get married and have kids. I will have a comfortable job that is more or less secure (ie. the NHS). Well. I'm sorry, but that's not me. I'm very happy to be single, I don't want to go through the hassle of getting married ever, and there is no way on this earth that I am even going to think about children. I'm 24 not 34 and I have things that I want to do with my life before I think about any of that, and if, when I have achieved them, I'm too old for children, then that's fine by me. I don't want a boyfriend for any length of time that may entail having to share a bed with him unless he's sterile as accidents happen and accidents like that, if allowed to go unnoticed result in children. As for the secure job, don't even get me started. I want to compete for Britain in Showjumping or Dressage if I ever progress beyond being a perfectly capable rider. My instructor has never been helpful in that department, so I don't hold out much hope of improving dramatically any time soon, unless Paul Schockemohle or some one like him takes over my riding instruction. Again I don't hold out much hope as it would probably end in disaster. Either I would fall off the horse, or Herr Schockemohle would end up suffering a stress related illness. But if any one thinks they can help out, please contact me. (details on profile page).
I can't say much about work today as we are having a meeting tomorrow and so anything that I say today may prove irrelevent by then, so I won't bother.
On a similar thread, all the problems at work have inspired me to start yet another book. No book that I have started writing has been finished, they are all on file waiting for me to get the inpiration needed to finish them. This new idea could end up finished, however. I can't say too much, except that I have had the idea for quite sometime now, but have been unsure of how to word it. Hopefully, I will be able to do the idea some justice when I commit it to paper. That's the problem with being born in the Egyptian Birth sign of Isis. For the uninitiated, Egyptian Birth signs are in some ways similar to star signs, but cover a different period of months and each year started at the innundation of the Nile on 29th August with Thoth and ended with Anubis. My birthday fall in the period ruled by Isis 25th February to 26th March. I have a book on the subject written by Storm Constantine which goes into detail about each sign, the positives and negatives and so on. Apparantly Isis people are very creative and imaginative. That's my problem: Pisces are supposed to be creative and imaginative, so are people born in the year of the Dog. I have to be born under all three. That's 3 times the creativity and imagination, what am I supposed to do with all the excess. I can't sleep some nights for all the creativity bouncing around my head. It all has to go somewhere, so I write stories that never get finished because the Dog person in me says that they will never be good enough to be published, even though the Isis side of me wants to finish them off. I have horror stories, love stories, general stories, fantasy stories. All with different themes, all unfinished, most untitled. The closest I have come is one I called The Arab Filly: a love story of sorts which has 3 parts all on seperate files and unlinked. If anyone cal help me out please do so.

ATTENTION S.R M.L.A.S!
FROM THIS DAY 06.02.07 THERE WILL NO LONGER BE A TRAINEE ASSISTANT PRACTITIONER (T.A.P) ASSIGNED TO YOUR DEPARTMENT AS THEY HAVE EXPRESSLEY STATED THAT YOU DO NOT GIVE THEM OR ME OUR DUE RESPECT. THEREFORE YOU WILL BE DENIED THEIR ESSENTIAL HELP AND ANY OTHER HELP FROM THE BIOCHEMISTRY OR HAEMATOLOGY M.L.A.s. THIS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL YOU GIVE US OUR DUE RESPECT AS YOUR INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORS. ANY DISPUTE OF THIS ORDER WILL BE PUNISHABLE BY DISIPLINARY ACTION.
By order of:
SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED (But can't be named)

That was this morning's announcement after a meeting between our boss's boss, the TAPs (well, one of them) and She who must be obeyed (in biochem only.) We in S.R have one reply:  and a one fingered salute. These "brilliant" TAPs are, for the most part, pretty useless and the only reason they wanted to stop working in SR was because and I quote one of them: "We don't like working there because the works really hard."
Hard?! They are supposed to be smarter than us, yet they think it's hard to label a few samples correctly, or know whether or not a GP sample is for Micro or Biochem just by looking at what test has been requsted. That says a lot about how hard it is to work in biochem or haematology. Hard in our department is when there's only 2 members of staff, 3 on break, 1 going home and half a ton of work arrives. At 4:45 in the afternoon. This has been happening for a couple of weeks now. Apparantly the GPs are paid to do blood tests so they take blood samples from pretty much every patient that walks through the door. Ultimately, our workload goes up because, obviously, more samples are being sent by these cash-hungry GPs. I don't know exactly how true that is, but if it is, they should be ashamed of themselves. The amount of money thay are already on, and they decide that they need a bit more, so they do more blood tests, then tell the patient to come back 2 weeks later for the results, when most tests can be done the same day and the latest they will have a full set of results is the following week. It makes you wonder, especially when the tests show up normal, just why the GP bothered in the first place. Personally I hate having blood taken. Well, I don't mind so much now, but try telling that to my veins. At the mere thought of a needle, they go South. It's like drilling for oil somethimes trying to get blood from me.
So of course, this afternoon we had no TAP to help out with the workload. That was because the one assigned to our area of the lab, walked in to start her late shift at 12 and felt like she had walked into world war 3. A slight exageration, I think, but her words not mine. She was informed of what had been decided that morning and stormed off to have words with She Who Must Be Obeyed. We don't know what was said, but that was the last any of us saw of her far the rest of the day.
So, as I mentioned in my last post, the holiday is booked. It now seems unlikely that Dad will tag along, but Mum is most definately coming. We had our first argument last night about whether or not I should go trail hunting, which is a bit late as my name is already pencilled in for that weekend. Mum thinks I should go on a hack out, and I think otherwise. I don't mind going trail hunting, I went last year, and I feel that it helped my riding more than if I had had 6 lessons.

Well, the holiday to Northumberland has been booked. Instead of staying at the B&B I have instead opted for self-catering on the pretaxt that Mum, and possibly Dad, are tagging along this time. This does not go down too well with me. I go on holiday to Northumberland at the start of the year to give Mum and Dad a break from me and me a break from them. I suppose that instead we'll all get a break from the dog. I should mention our dog since her picture is on my profile. The dog's name is Tess and she is a 8 year old collie-cross we have had for 4 years after our Border collie, Tina, sadly had to be put down at the age of 16 in 2001. Tess is a destructive force unto herself, she doesn't need inspiration on how to destroy things, she wrote the book. Her favourite pastime is to see how much of the kitchen door she can destroy before we repaint it. She will shred newspaper that has been put at the bottom of her box for absolutely no reason, and try and destroy the cushion that I specially brought for her about a year ago. Luckily the cushion seem to have been made from Tess-resistant material as it has so far withstood her attempts to destroy it. When we put her in the back yard (we used to have a garden, but Tess destryed it, even digging up the rose bush.) she enjoys nothing better than barking at pigeons and planes lest they should attempt to land in our back yard, thus displaying her ignorance of just how big a plane actually is. Anyway, when you have to put up with her all day, it's nice to be able to go on holiday and be able to leave some one else to put up with her insanity.

But of course, now my parents (well mum at least) are tagging along. At this rate I will need to go to Germany on my own just to chill, never mind anything else. When we went last year, just me and mum as dad doesn't have a passport yet, it was mainly so that I could watch the final day of dressage at the World Equestrian Games in Aachen. I left it a bit late to decide that I wanted to go and we ended up staying in Cologne. Not that staying in Cologne is a bad thing. It is a beautiful city, the hightlight of which, in my oppinion is the Dom which stands 157 metres high. http://www.koelner-dom.de is the website where you can take a virtual tour of the Dom, but it is more impressive in real life, so if you ever get the chance to go to Cologne, you really should try and visit the Dom. Another place worth a visit, especially if you love chocolate, is the chocolate museum on the banks of the Rhine, where you can learn all about chocolate (obviously), watch it being made and of course buy some at the end of you visit. It cost 6 euros to get in and is well worth the money.
I have recently set up a myspace page and as a result have heard from some one I have not seen since I was in Trinity. At the moment the page is not very good as it needs a lot of work (something to do with being able to understand html, which I don't) but it has more info about me and the address is: http://www.myspace.com/ljmotty there you can see more about my likes and let me know what you think.

Suzie is getting married. I suppose that I should mention that until this week I hadn't met Suzie for about 2 years. I have known Suzie since we were in choir at high school. I admit that Suzie was the better singer, I just tended to prove infuritaing to our head of music, Mr Pomphrey (Aka The Evil Gnome) by singing far too quietly. It wasn't my fault, my mum says I have a confidence problem. Anyway, Suzie phoned during the week and I was at Asda with my mum, we got hold of her mobile number and I phoned her back. Only Suzie's phone wasn't on and I had to leave a message. Suzie sent me a text this morning to say that she is engaged. You will note that I was only ALMOST lost for words, otherwise I would not be writing this entry. Not about Suzie getting married, I always knew that eventually Suzie would get engaged to a totally brilliant guy and be happy, I was almost lost for words at hearing from her. There have been times when Suzie has phoned me and said she will phone back the following day, only the following day tends to be 2 weeks later. I will admit though, that I am just as bad, so if you even us out we're equal. This shock has caused me to cancel my riding lesson this week, we're supposed to be jumping 3 fences that are set out a stride apart in a zig-zag in a straight line. At least that's the gist of what our instructor said last week. Whatever, there is no way on God's earth I am even attempting that exercise again. Last time I did it I was riding a horse called Anna, who was absolutely brilliant at jumping, until you asked her to repeat the exercise. 3 times I tried and I ended up on the floor twice and only just managed to stay on the third time. So you can understand my reluctance to try this time round, I would like to be in one piece still by the time I go on holiday.
Speaking of holidays, I have 9 whole days to use by the end of March. HOW?! I'm sure I used more than 18 days proper holiday, but my boss says otherwise, so I have to find somewhere to take them. I thought about going to Germany at the end of March, only the hotel I wanted to stay at, where we stayed last year, The Best Western Hotel Premier Park Consul in Cologne is fully booked that weekend. So after a lot of thought, Germany can wait till the end of April and I'll go to Northumberland at the start of March. Hopefully the B&B where I normally stay, Kimmerston Farm House will not be fully booked and I will be able to squeeze in. Kimmerston is one of my favourite places in the world. It's peaceful, relaxing, and Penny, who runs the B&B and Dickie and Jane who run Kimmerston Riding Centre are really nice, friendly people. Trust me, none of it is false, everyone up there is genuine.
You will notice that I have said nothing so far about work, that's because in the main, there haven't been any real problems today. However there must be a lot of people in Biochemistry who must wish they worked in Sample Reception judging by the amount of time they spend looking over at our department. I can't say about Haematology as there is a wall between our departments where the pod system is located. The pod system is a wonderful thing, If you have been to Tesco you may have seen some sort of system where money is put into a pod, which is then sent along a chute to wherever they send the money to at Tesco. That's the basic idea of our pod system, some one from one of the wards will put sample that they want testing whether they be blood, urine, poo, or whatever and send it along the chute to sample reception, where it is sorted and sent to the correct department for testing. Only no one told the system that it is supposed to be in operation 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The amount of time it spends down because one of the pods has got stuck in a diverter or someone at one of the wards forgot to remove excess pods from the basket is significant. This is when we get grief from the porters who have to pick up more samples from the wards and departments that are on the broken system and ferry them across the road to our lab. Then of course the wards get on the phone moaning that the sample they sent 10 minutes ago hasn't been processed, honestly they must think that we are miracle workers. It takes longer than 10 minutes to process and test some samples depending on what tests they want doing.
We do try to get the samples through as quickly as we can honest.

We have a new campaign in sample reception. The slogan is written on our notice board. This board, I should mention is supposed to be for important messages for the evening MLA's and not for (managements words, not mine) writing silly messages on. Our message for the foreseeable future is based on the NSPCCs full stop campaign: Stop MLA cruelty FULL STOP. You may wonder what possible cruelty can be committed towards MLAs. This is a long running problem which started when we were told that if we didn't like our working conditions we should be grateful that we didn't work at Tesco's. Cue maps showing the route to the local Tesco and signs stating that "We know where Tesco is." Eventually, however, these were removed. A few months later we were given a notice board. The notice board has been used to give important messages to the evening MLAs, informing them of the fact they are in that weekend or would they swap a weekend with someone. It has also been used to convey our word of the day at infrequnt intervals. One of the most recent of these has been "Hypocriticallity" this word may not be in the dictonary, but it has been in use often since it was dreamt up. Our main problem with the other departments is that there is one rule for us and another for them. We are continually told to wear our lab coats at all time when we are in the lab and to keep them fastened up, only to see some one from another department walking around with their's unfastened. Only this week a member of staff from another department who is off at the moment was seen walking around our department and another without a lab coat on for quite a length of time. Then there is the food and drink issue. While we are not supposed to bring cups, drinks, or food into the lab, it is perfectly alright for senior members of staff in other departments to walk through with food and drink at the weekend and during the week.
As you can tell from the above tirade, the MLAs where I work are often asked to do the impossible and then critisized when we do manage to acomplish the set task. This is not your usual cruelty, but it must be stopped before it goes too far.
On a happier note, WE HAVE INETERNET ACCESS!!! As of the morning of February 1st we have been conected to the internet. This itself was not without problems, but they have been resolved and now all systems are go. It is great to be able to go online whenever you want and to not have to go up town to do so.