In my last post I told the world about how wonderful I think the weekend break is. This view has not changed since then, however, it would be true to say that a weekend break, followed by a full and busy week working in the NHS is not to be fully recommended. This essentially is because the employer needs its pound of flesh while all of the things you couldn’t do over the weekend (e.g. ironing and food shopping) because you were away finally catch up with you. This week has been eventful, I would like to share my learning with you. As the title of this post tells you, here are some of the things I learnt this week. I am now becoming the queen of the list!

I become irritated if my dear hubby takes a day off following a weekend in Rome while I am forced to pitch up at work.

You can become the subject of a management tug of love. In my absense last week conversations took place which led to people laying claim upon me within their teams. It is currently not quite clear who thinks they are my boss, who thinks they can give me work to do or who loves me most. Still it is better to be wanted by 2 or more people than no one at all.

It is quite possible for your child’s best school report to come in the months before they leave school for university. If only I had known when he was 6 that all would be well in the end, I wouldn’t have worried when the teachers told me he had some kind of problem with writing and understanding written english. I would like to think that the teachers along the way have helped, but to be honest it may be that the most work has come from within.

It is possible to attend a retirement party for an ex colleague and find that other ex colleagues remain in the same place physically and emotionally that they inhabited over two years ago. It is possible to find that the trauma of applying for your job and not getting it could actually be a blessing in disguise.

If you put the word “Facebook” into the title of a blog post you may well receive lots of hits in one day. Equally the name “Gordon Brown” produces plenty of hits. I recommend it.

If there was ever a weekend that I looked forward to this is it. If ever I was weary, I am now.  But actually I wouldn’t change a thing.

I have decided that city breaks are the thing to do. With the price of flights and our close proximity to mainland Europe we are after all ideally placed. Of course this needs to be set against the political incorrectness of utilising too much carbon footprint and the worryingly poor Euro to Pound exchange rate.

Rather than buy Matt a gift he can keep for ever as an 18th birthday we bought he and his cousin a trip to Rome so that they can have memories to keep for ever. What is more, we went on that trip with them and what is more, it was a fantastic way to spend a long weekend. We ventured through Rome for the day on our cruise a couple of years ago and promised ourselves that we would return for a proper visit. Last weekend was was when we took that visit.

To adopt the highlight / lowlight style of Miss Nemesis whose blog I very much admire and who was in Vegas while we explored Rome this is my take on the Italian capital:

Best bits -

• The proximity of our hotel to history – at the bottom of our street Via Cavour was the Colosseum, Forum and Palatine; which I thought was really cool
• The little coffee shop / bar across the road from the hotel where we got cuppuchino and pastries for 2 for 3 Euros
• The meal we ate on Saturday night overlooking the Pantheon
• The Vatican including Sistine chapel
• The fantastic icecream consumed a few streets away from there
• The Italian language – if I ever try to learn another language I’d love it to be Italian it just sounds so exotic!
• The weather – warm and sunny days which led to coffee, wine and lunch outside
• The great time the boys said they had, and the way they enjoyed the culture as much as their time out on a bar crawl!

Less good bits

• Chilly nights which led me to wish at the start of the trip that I’d broughtt my hat, scarf and gloves with me
• The people persistently trying to sell tat
• The people trying to get us to buy a Vatican tour to ‘miss the lines’
• The red wine which would have been nice if it had been offered at the right temperature
• The size of our hotel room, though the bed was comfy, and the room was clean plus it was cheap
• The cattle herding feeling you get traveling with Ryanair – does cheap need to be like that?
• The fact we were ripped off by taxi drivers – next time, the bus!

So that’s Rome tackled, now if we can just pay off our now enormous credit card bill (winning the lottery might help) we can pick up that European weekend break lifestyle and go somewhere else soon….

From the moment a woman is pregnant (if not before) it seems that there is a reason to suppose she is doing or about to do something wrong. She must take the right supplements, eat the right food, drink no alcohol, and generally do everything she is expected to do. For many people pregnancy means difficulties at work, where despite anti discrimination legislation and rules about time allowed off for antenatal appointments an increasing number of women avoid telling their employer until they have to and attend appointments in their own time (so I am told by midwife colleagues).

Once the baby is born on one hand we must stay at home to look after our babies but on the other hand we should go to work to help support the family and the economy. After all we  mustn’t be a drain on society. There is a continuous stream research reports that we are told demonstrate that pretty much all of the ills of our children are down to parenting and most specifically mothers. As a working mum for most of my son’s life I have been told many times by people both in real life and by those on the sofa’s of news and current affairs programmes that I should be there for my child during his fomative years. Over time we have been informed that nurseries are better or worse than one to one care of a child minder, and most recently of grandparents. What is certain is that all child care of whatever type is not the same, and that different types of care are better for different children at different times.

The research carried out by social psychologists and sociologists is likely to be interesting and informative, but is also likely to be complex and time consuming to read. Great then that our great popular media unpicks it for us. Well no, I am not so sure. An article in yesterday’s online Guardian is pretty clear about that:

The authors of an inquiry into the state of childhood have accused some parts of the media of misrepresenting their research to attack working mothers.

Richard Layard, of the London School of Economics, and Judy Nunn, of King’s College London, who wrote A Good Childhood, published by the Children’s Society last week, say in a letter to the Guardian that their research was twisted.

Layard told the Guardian: “The bit about working mothers was wrongly reported and the family breakup was distorted as if to say it’s about blame rather than what we can do to make work better.

“We simply didn’t say mothers shouldn’t go out to work. People should have a choice: better childcare and equally more entitlement to parental leave for mothers and fathers.”

Nunn said: “My main feeling is that nobody has read the book so they don’t know what we said. It was reported as an attack on selfish parents, we didn’t say that. Single parents were blamed, we don’t say that and working mothers were also blamed. That is such a long, long way from the truth. Parents should have the option to stay at home – that should be made easier. They should have the option to go back to their job and more job security when they have a child.”

This just confirms my feelings that you must be careful about what you read and where and equally careful about what you take at face value.

As a working mum I had no choice but to work (if we wanted to keep a roof and feed ourselves), my son attended a number of childcare options. This has not stopped me being in school for shared reading, attending assemblies and special events, parent consultation during the day etc. But then I have a good and understanding employer with work life balance policies. Just don’t expect me to feel guilty that my son has grown into the great young man he is today!

The UK and particularly the southern part of the country is not really used to this kind of weather incident. I kid you not, that is exactly what I heard a weather operative (forcaster / presenter) call the snow this morning. Meanwhile a BBC journalist was seen standing outside a saltmine in Northern Ireland and a Sky reporter was seen outside of one some where in England. The weather has led to some bizarre reporting. I have decided to wait for a lull in the blizzard before I set off for work, plus I have cheekily decided to take lunch at 9.30 and get an early hair cut. Therefore you are getting a post of things you can do when it snows here in the UK. This will be followed by some things you can’t do.

My favorite thing to do today would be to sit on your sofa drinking coffee and surfing the net. The place to go to get a range of great nursing stories is Change of Shift Take my advice and get over to Keith’s place Digital Doorway. You could do worse!

Keeping to the theme of sitting down, you could watch TV. As I speak a range of great news programmes are available and it is fun to see the presenters standing in the snow, looking freezing cold, telling us what we can see out of the window – it is snowing

If you would rather immerse yourself in another world then you can do worse than to read a book. I am reading a great book by Barbara Wood at the moment. The Dreaming is set in Victorian Austrailia when much of the country was a mystereous place to the white man.

You could put on your hat, scarf and coat and go off for a walk, you can also throw snowballs and you can do sledging. Be careful though, I heard on the radio that there are gangs of youths in the streets of the uk throwing snow balls in an unpleasant way. This could lead to an arrest. You also need to take care when sledging as this week sadly a young girl was killed following this persuit.

Make soup or a stew or something. This is the kind of pursuit our grandparents would have favoured, though of course all winters were like this one and people had less heating in their houses then. My hubby was very impressed yesterday that I gave him stew with dumplings, and therefore he is obviously easily pleased.

What you mustn’t do if you listen to the doom mungerers is to leave your house by car – conditions are terrible, and indeed they are since no one has been gritting our roads round here. Apparently they may have run low. Someone from the council needs to visit a salt mine! What you also can’t really do is walk on the pavements. Snow, thaw, ice, snow, thaw, ice etc has caused everyone to fear walking the streets. Also you can’t do much shopping in the town here. Yesterday I found that a number of town centre shops were closed all day. Lack of staff to work there? Later this month retail sales will have fallen and everyone will blame the snow. Perhaps if staff went to work they might sell something? Who knows. Lastly if you are a school student or a teacher, don’t bother with school as it will be closed. My son has now missed 4 days of schooling in what is the most important final year. Even he would like to attend school now please!

So there you have it, an assessment by Julie of what to do and what to do when snow falls in the UK!

The last time I personally saw as much snow as this I was within a hospital building, confined as I awaited the birth of my son. 18 years ago I didn’t have to negotiate ungritted roads and pavements. I didn’t need to spend hours in traffic in my car and I didn’t worry about school closures. I don’t know if in 1991 people gave up on work before they tried to go in, I don’t know if trains and buses were cancelled, I don’t know if health and safety issues kept schools closed.

In my particular town we have had about 3 days or nights of snow. On sunday several inches fell and it was very cold. The UK is apparantly not set up for this kind of thing. We only get snow round here on one or two days each year, and even then if often doesn’t last till lunch time; much to the disappointment of children and their sledges. This year the whole winter has been more severe, therfore if we were ever going to get significant snow it was going to be this winter. On Tuesday when I went to work the main roads were fine. The smaller roads in a town centre area where my place of work is were pretty much an ice rink, people were skidding into the kerb of a large roundabout. Having parked my car in the car park (I was amazed later to find it was actually between two white lines) I then had to negotiate some seriously treaturous pavements. The only place gritting had taken place was by a department store and my office building next door (oh yes folks I work right next to a John Lewis, and that is a story to tell one day!)

Schools were cancelled for 2 days and again today. My husband has so far worked a one day week. But children have had a good time, learning in a different way. Parents have taken days off work and actually spent time with them playing in that snow. On Tuesday morning as I drove slowly along my road a car passed in the opposite direction and the driver actually smiled at me. People walking along the pavements appear to be concerned about each other.

So my assessment is that yes it is mad that we can’t cope with a bit of snow. But if it means that people are nicer to each other for a day or two, if parents spend quality time actually playing with their children then I can’t see how the economy will be poorer in real terms.

With the media full of doom and gloom about recessions, credit crunches and job losses it is not surprising that people who wouldn’t previously have touched the public sector with a barge pole are apparently applying for jobs in the health service, local authorities and others. Indeed during times of recession people re-evaluate their personal values and may decide that earning great wads of cash is their only driver and develop a vocation for teaching, nursing, the police force etc. This in my opinion is a good thing. We need people in the public sector who have the experience of real life (if the financial sector is real life that is). What people need not think though is that the public sector is recession proof.

The difference for us is that our recession will be at a different time from the real world’s. This is because we are relying on the allocation of public money. Recently we have had some good years of investment. In the UK the government has been on improving services and has pushed money at doing so. Unfortunately some of our accountants and managers were unable to manage these resources well and some of us therefore were able to experience a down turn at a time of stockmarket boom. Government needs to be mean and lean and if that’s the case then we in the health service need to be lean and mean too. We have had to develop the skills for examining a pathway of care and seeking investment in the services within it. However this generally means disinvestment somewhere else rather than new money as such.

If you are currently an accountant, business manager or even a consutruction worker looking for a change then you can do worse than the public sector. We have reasonable salaries, we have good HR practices (its hard to be sacked and you get something called work life balance), we have good holidays and we still have a pension. But you will be expected to work hard, you will be expected to interact with the public and you will be expected to remember that the patient / child / service user is central to your service. We have excellent training opportunities, some career structure and a often a predominance of women. But you will encounter people who have been doing things a certain way for years and you will be subject to down turns in fortune as well as years of boom. Also remember that a job in the public sector is not just for Christmas, some of us seem to have been there the whole of our lives!

He two-timed me on Facebook. But our divorce will be for real

My husband has a natural distrust of the internet and of sites like friends reunited and facebook in particular. He claims they assist in the break up of marriage, I always tell him that real people break up marriages not the internet. Recently though I have seen a darker side. Nothing to do with marriage break up per say, but more about manipulation of those on the periphery. Over the last couple of months the marriages of both my brothers have fallen apart (is it me I ask?) I am on facebook and so are both sisters in law. I have no axe to grind with either of them. They are the mother’s of  my nephews and neices, they are human beings and I believe it takes two to make both a good relationship and a bad one. But one sister in law in particular has begun to write status reports that seem intentioned to test out whether I support her or my brother and really that is not on.

Then I read this

My mother emailed me last week to tell me she had joined Facebook. We don’t chat on the phone; we email. Soon I expect she will want to poke me, write on my wall and, worse still, tag me in photographs of my wedding last May. Well, not if I can help it, mama. I love you too much to expose you to my online self.

You see, she doesn’t yet know that I, her 24-year-old daughter, am about to divorce. She can’t see my Facebook status, so why would she?

Mummy, how do I tell you I’m a Facebook divorcee? That the son-in-law you try so hard to like cheated on your only daughter using the social networking site you so adore? That your daughter learnt of her imminent divorce via Google Mail’s free chatting facility, Gchat?

It began with a woman he met at a party. But it was within the sticky web of Facebook where they really got to know each other, despite the photos of us and our “married to…” status. I know this because my husband once logged on to Facebook and foolishly left the room. I began to use his Mac, only to find myself blasted into the middle of a sizzling cyber romance.

And once I was in, I was hooked. Their lusty emails touched on bad Beat poetry, but were infused with textspeak, their coy cyberflirts rife with emoticons. It felt like I was stuck in a hyper-reality where Douglas Coupland wrote Danielle Steel novels. “Could this really be happening six months into my marriage?” I wanted to comment on my own Facebook wall.

Read the rest here, it certainly makes you think!

Yesterday I wrote about the woman in California who has given birth to octuplets. Today it seems apparant that the commercial world we live in means that a bidding war may have broken out to obtain the mother’s story. Reading the story as outlined i today’s observer is quite horrific – a bankrupt grandmother, a woman appearing to health providers when already pregnant with 8 foetuses, no partner, no visible means of support.

The world as we know it is in a complete mess. But it is not the bombs of terroists or the acts of a terrible dictator that have brought us to this point. Instead we have emerged from a couple of decades when we thought we could have anything we wanted, never mind the cost. The only value we seem to understand these days is financial. How did we lose sight of the important things in life.

Imagine the basics of life. What is important to you? Health? Family? A roof? Food on the table? Honesty? Trust? Happiness?

Where  in all of this does material wealth and the ability to over ride need over want originate? At a meeting last week colleagues spoke of women misunderstanding the point of the ultrasound scan performed 12 or so weeks into pregnancy. People are thinking of this event as a way of perhaps predicting the sex of their baby, of a way of seeing it wave at them. Actually this is provided to check that there are no abnormalities. To me this is indicitive of the way we have been living our lives recently.