An insult from the French ...

The French like to call us "Les Ros Bifs" . Apparently this is an insult.

Well, I have given this matter a little thought and have to say that I am actually quite flattered at being associated with this dish. I think the French should have really taken a little more time to think this through. You see, if you are too busy retreating in the face of danger, having affairs, blocking Channel ports or setting fire to imported produce at the side of a Motorway this is what happens, you end up having your sarcasm back fire and that is not a pretty situation.

To attempt to explain myself we need to go back to the beginning of man's history in the post glacial British Isles. If we peer between the branches of the birch and oak forests that have established since the retreat of the ice we see a magnificent  beast browsing on the herbs and shoots that cover the wood land floor. It is an Aurochs; the ancestor of all modern domestic cattle. This beast stood 2 metres at the shoulder and weighed in excess of a tonne. Comparisons with modern cattle show it to be much heavier in build and with a larger brain...

... and remember, it had two very sharp points at the front end. We are all aware of the reputation that a modern bull has for short temper. Imagine what one of these beasts was like *.

So there we have it; an ancient British Man stood at the edge of a Forest Glade. He picks up his flint tipped spear, wipes a bead of sweat from his brow and takes aim at this large, dangerous animal. With this first kill the British Nation will become forever associated with cutting a chunk off the hind quarters of this beast and  roasting it.

Well Mr Frenchie, as I have just established, first you have to kill the damned thing because they don't tend to shed rump or topside in the same way that apples and nuts fall from trees.

Now lets, tie a few logs together with vines and take a hazardous Journey across the Channel (La Manche) to see what our French Neighbours are up to...

... The sun is shining as we walk through the woods and we come at last to a marshy area, buzzing with insects and high with reeds and rushes. It is hot and humid and there we see the archaic French Man crouched at the edge of a pool. His furs are soaked and covered with a foul smelling mud. His hair is plastered against his forehead. He is bravely hunting the prey for which his future nation will forever be associated ...

... Yes, while your savage Englishman was taking on a huge and fearsome beast with basically a sharp stick, his contemporaries across the Channel were bravely risking life and limb hunting frogs and snails in the French marshes and ponds.

I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions ......

* In the future there may not be a need to imagine. Although the last of these fine creatures was killed in the early 1600s their DNA lives on in modern cattle and there are plans, through selective breeding of archaic stock, to produce something very akin to the Aurochs.

I am guessing ...

... that the Tooth Fairy has a statute of limitations and that I am not going to get any reimbursement for the £49 I forked out at the Dentist today.

Yes, after the Crown fell out last Thursday I popped in the the Dentist for a consultation. It is as I feared and a further appointment has been made for Wednesday morning for an extraction. Apparently there is only so much repair work that a tooth can take and over the years this one has had fillings followed by root canal work before finally being crowned about 5 years ago.

I will, of course, consult with Bad Man Senior* just in case he feels flush and will pop a fiver under my pillow** but I am guessing that my chances are slim to zero.

On the work front I had another argument stone walling session with the Luxembourgers followed by much better luck with the Swiss and the Execs. All of the changes that we have had to make to reduce cost should actually necessitate another Review Cycle. Fortunately I have been keeping the Execs up to speed with VERY SIMPLE slides showing what we have done and VERY CAREFULLY worded e-mails reassuring them that no crimes have been committed. This evening they confirmed that no further review is required which means that the rest of the week should be reasonably steady.

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*   Truly one of the scariest incarnations of the Tooth Fairy in the entire Universe
** This is actually a parental obligation and he needs to be careful as this is verging on Child Neglect

Time for a Haircut

Sunday started at a civilised hour with coffee and toast. Then it was a case of "divide and conquer".

30% took TP over to Rugby Fitness Training whilst I took T&M out for a walk before the day got too warm for them. The walk was fine and we were back in a little over an hour. After rehydrating it was time to break out the Porn Mower and loose some more fluids striding up and down the turf followed by a good forking over the compost heap.

By the time TP and 30% had returned I was finished and had settled my backside on the sofa to watch the Mugello MotoGP. This was never going to happen. To be honest I don't have the patience to sit and watch an hour of bike racing and lunch followed by a kip seemed a more attractive option...

... so that is what I did.

Later in the afternoon I did something that I have been threatening for quite some time but thus far have failed to find the nerve to complete. I gave T&M a lamb clip. To date I have only been brave enough to clip their faces and their feet but the time had come to have a go at their bodies. Both dogs were amazingly patient and within an hour both sported a reasonable attempt at the cut. I will post pictures in the next day or so but I am pleased with my first attempt...

... I am guessing that the dogs are too in view of the warm weather.

Testing, Testing

Saturday started relatively early as 30% had an eye test scheduled for half past nine in Redditch. I had also managed to arrange mine for midday so we planned to spend a leisurely morning Chav Spotting in the Kingfisher Centre when we were not occupied with this....

E

N D

H   C   U

A   O   H   T

D    H    L   E   N

I had also managed to arrange for the Honda to have it's MOT test as I realised that this had expired a week or more ago. Unfortunately realisation dawned mid way through the ride out on Tuesday evening. Oops! 

So I dropped the Bike off at Redditch Motorcycles and then 30% and I popped in to town. There is little more to report on the subject. Chavs were spotted by the score and eyes were tested. I may need a new pair of spectacles but, like the idiot I am, I forgot to take my current glasses in to be checked against the new prescription.

Whilst on the subject of Chavs*, I did wonder whether there was a collective noun for them. I have pondered this for a while and, unless anyone knows any better, I propose "moronical" as in " a moronical of Chavs". If anyone has any better suggestions please feel free to offer them up.

The rest of the day was reasonably relaxed. T&M got walked and then were bathed and brushed. Dinner was served in the garden  and then an evening was spent in front of a film on the TV. All in all a relatively relaxing day.

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* or as Mr Miliband would like to see them; "those for whom social mobility is a fine aspiration"...**
** ... and their response; "uh ?"

Time for the Nuclear Weapons, I think !

Friday came and went.

Most of the day was not particularity noteworthy; calls were held, mails got sent, missing resources were escalated and located. The main focus at present is an exercise to reduce our costs and special mention must go to my colleague in Luxembourg. Let's call him Michel.

Michel is part of our team and his specialisation is in the specifics in Luxembourg. If anything is to happen in Luxembourg Michel is the man to ensure it is properly recorded, that it complies with the appropriate legislation, that it has been through the proper reviews, that it covers every possible eventuality including the sun crashing in to the earth, that it is presented in such a way that it is virtually impenetrable and therefore impossible to scrutinise ...

... are you getting the picture? Thanks Michel, you are the most obstructive,  awkward, uncooperative, vague, stalling Bastard that I have ever had the displeasure to work with.

To give you an idea of what a complete arse hole this man is let me present an example. A couple of weeks ago we noticed that Michel had costs in his project for support of a particular infrastructure requirement. We discussed this with him and pointed out that the latest information, provided by the client clearly indicated that they had none - that is zero, nada, zilch - of this type of infrastructure. This obstructive Fucker still refused to remove the million dollars of cost until I had provided him with written evidence from the Lead in America and then he went through an internal review and challenged the Lead because there was an empty cell rather than a zero in the particular spreadsheet.

I know this looks like I have a personal vendetta against this guy but my feelings are reciprocated at the most senior levels on the Global Project but it is me and Tigger that have the displeasure of dealing with him on a day to day basis.

Today we held a call with all of the team to discuss the need to reduce costs and the time line for  doing so. Good old Michel was his usual self and stood fast against a tide of logic and clear instructions that indicated that he was carrying costs for services we did not need to provide. That Fucker then told us that he was not able to comply with the very tight time scales and deliver by Monday lunchtime. I decided to respond with "that is not acceptable" and a reiteration of the delivery date.

I am also working with the Swiss who had similar errors in their costings but their approach was the exact opposite. They simply said "OK- show us the evidence" and then went away to get everything sorted for the beginning of next week.

At one point in this deal the Luxembourgers were accruing hundreds of thousand of dollars of cost for a  service that was not in scope. There justification was that this was just in case an entirely separate Agreement was at odds with local regulations. How on earth they intended to get the client to sign up to that was never established but it makes you think that as well as being obstructive they might also be bent and stupid too.

I have one final piece of evidence to show what an absolute cock Michel is. He has included over £360,000 dollars of travelling expenses for a country that is no bigger than the average dining table. I have repeatedly challenged the ludicrous assumptions used to come up with this ridiculous figure and have just been stone walled.

I have to say that the longer I think about this situation the more I think that this is a case of profiteering whilst using local legislation to hinder closer scrutiny.

Here we go again

Today I planned to settle down and tidy up some documentation that had been festering in a folder for perhaps too long. Much of the mad rush of the bid cycle is over and I thought I had enough time to make a start on the paperwork.

Tigger has been assigned a project of his own to lead so I have been offering some pointers based on my experiences on this "trial by fire". I am very conscious that Tigger is just as experienced as I am and hope I don't come across as some sort of "know it all" when we both know the truth is so very different.

So there we have it; I am sat on my favourite branch in the wood scratching away with a quill pen whilst Tigger is bouncing from Pillar to Post trying to find out about a project from Chief Shitting Bull and his merry band of Indians...

... and so the day progressed.

All was going well until my tummy started rumbling and lunch was overdue. I attended a couple of calls and they indicated that things were not going well with the client. I think it is fair to say that "Your price has gone up 7% and don't come back until you've fixed it" is a pretty concise definition of a stalled negotiation. From that point forward the mutterings started and needless to say I was sat at the laptop late in to the evening make preparations to see where further costs can be removed.

This is somewhat ironic as we have a new Manager who has just thrown his Teddies out of the Pram about people working overtime without prior approval. He really doesn't have a clue about the nature of the work and is busy setting rules and issuing dictates rather than spending time looking at what people are doing*. My first impression of him was that he looked like a Yes Man in a suit. So far I have seen nothing to suggest that my intuition was off target.


All of this activity was set against escorting 30% on a couple of trips to the local hospital for some tests. They came back "clear" and there is nothing to be worried about. Her injured foot is also on the mend so if she does decide to dress up as a horse she stands less chance of being shot.

To cap it all I managed to loose a crown today so now have a trip to the Dentist to arrange. 

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* His people are trying to win new business to ensure that the Corporation grows and that our competitors do not. This pays his salary and he should start to earn it by supporting them rather than by bitching about having to check expenses.

Picture Post. No. 8

I was talking to one of my work colleagues earlier today and he asked if I had any trips out to the States planned in the near future. His meaning was in association with the current project. "Yes" I quipped and followed up with the fact that we are off on a road trip to Yellowstone at the beginning of August.

I am ready for a holiday. The last occasion I had any time off work was at Easter and that was spent preparing our bedroom for the painters. I can't wait to step out in to that Vegas Sunshine, walk in to Hertz, grab a set of car keys and head out in to the open spaces of the American West.

With that in mind here is another couple of views of the Grand Canyon. It's not on my itinerary this year. If you are interested in that you will just have to wait for a few more weeks.

Not a lot of other news. On the home front we have finally taken 30%'s Nursing Chair over to be restored and reupholstered. It will look lovely once it has been completed and will be positioned in the corner of the bedroom for Eddy to sleep on.

What I have been missing

Today saw Tigger and me take a brief trip down to The Village where we had a few calls, met two new faces on the team and dealt with a couple of nagging irritations.

It was a short day and I was home by half past two for another call and some mails before I was out of the door with T&M for our daily traipse around the three miler. All day I had been keeping an eye on the weather. The forecasts have been somewhat wide of the mark recently and heavy rain had originally been expected. I was hoping they were wrong as I had planned to go out for a ride on my bike.

Work has kept me off my bike for the past month but that has finally eased and the Rain Gods were ignoring Worcestershire and the Costwolds this evening. We had an early supper and then TP and I got kitted up and rode over to Chippy Ian's house. After a brief chat Mick arrived, accompanied by his girlfriend Cheryl on her GSX R600. This evening Deb rode pillion with Ian as we set off towards Broadway before taking the back road towards Winchcombe. We then cut off towards Stanway to collect a new rider; Steve and his partner Emma.

We then headed up on to the top of the hills taking the lanes around Sudeley Castle and Guiting Power. Our ride then took us through Bourton on the Water and over to Burford where we stopped for a drink before returning home through Milton under Wychwood and Stow on the Wold.

It was a beautiful evening and the Cotswolds were a splendid sight of rolling fields of sheep or poppy studded, wheat and barley. The vistas as you reach the tops of the hills or come out of the woods are incredible. The whole of the Gloucestershire and Worcestershire countryside is just laid out in front of you and is an absolute delight..

As I rode I realised that this was probably the first time I had really switched off for the past month. This was a strange thing, it was not that the ride was fast and I had not time to think. In fact it was a very leisurely ride and I had plenty of time to mull things over. It was just that the combination of the bike, the roads and the views occupied my thoughts and the project was put on a shelf and forgotten for a few hours ...

... and that, as they say, is a good thing.

It's quiet ....

... too damned quiet.

Monday has arrived and there is very little in my in-box to progress. I cancelled the only call I had scheduled leaving me a day without appointments which is the first time for a month or more. Although it has been quiet there have been the odd irritations and these have mostly involved doing someone else's job for them or telling them something they should have known because a) they didn't bother attending the call or b) didn't bother reading the communication.

Tigger and I did spend an hour involved in some creative accountancy which was amusing as we both knew where we needed to be but, and forgive the vernacular,  buggered if we could see how to get there.

Away from work I managed a good walk with T&M and was prepared to come back and clip Marauder when I heard a call from the garden ...

... I told you it was too damned quiet. 30% had stumbled on a stone and was quite unable to walk. I assisted her back to the house where she now sits refusing a trip to A&E. I therefore got promoted from idiot that gets shouted at in the kitchen to  deputy cook and rustled up supper before racing over to my Dad's to pick up a pair of crutches* that will assist 30% until she recovers or realises that perhaps Professional attention should be sought!

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* isn't it amazing what people have lying around

A swarm of Bees in June

Not a lot to report for the past two days. I probably spent too much of the weekend thinking "I really should fire off a couple of e-mails" rapidly followed by "Actually, I can't be bothered". The past few weeks have been very intense and I have been forced to work late and over the weekends to keep on top of things and meet crazy deadlines. I have therefore been very firm with myself this weekend and stayed away from my in-box. Our price is now with the client and I am guessing that almost everyone on the team is taking a well earned break. I have done so too.

So what have I achieved? The dogs have been walked properly and I have also found the time to clip their faces and paws. The weather is scorching today and they have really felt the heat. I think that I need to summon up the courage and attempt to give them a lamb clip as that will remove much of the hair from their bodies leaving only their legs and heads with any length of coat. I'm guessing that Marauder will be my "guinea pig" as she is much more compliant than Tyson.

I have also managed to complete a few domestic duties that have been overlooked. A blind has been fitted in the bedroom, the "Porn Mower" has been unleashed on the lawn and twenty minutes with coaxial connectors mean that TP now has satellite television piped in to his bedroom.

The title for today's entry was prompted by an interruption to lunch on Sunday. We were eating in the garden when I heard  a loud buzzing and saw several bees in flight above the lawn. We looked up and then saw the bulk of the swarm as it passed overhead looking for somewhere suitable to settle. The title comes from an old rhyme that describes the fact that a swarm needs time to establish itself as a new colony and the later in the year it occurs the less chance there is of it creating a viable new colony.

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay

A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon

A swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly

The swarm reminded me of one of my first jobs after leaving college, I worked for the Ministry of Agriculture's National Beekeeping Unit for a little less than a year. It was fascinating to see the annual cycle of these insects from building up the colonies in the Spring, moving them out to the crops to aid pollination, queen rearing and, of course, honey harvesting in the Autumn. What is more amazing is that much of the knowledge of the management of these insects dates back many hundreds of years when their honey was a prized harvest in lands where there was little as naturally sweet as honey. 

It was one of the most poorly paid jobs I ever had but the opportunity to see, and memories of, the annual apiarists cycle more than made up for the lack of monies. I am often tempted to set up a hive or two but realistically this will have to wait until both house and garden are tidied up and I have time to potter.

This evening will see us take a tip over to Malvern to see Lee Evans. He is doing some warm up shows, in advance of his next Stadium tour and it should be a great night.

They want to do what?

This morning started with an "urgent" message from Christopher Robin. Tigger and and I pondered long and hard over it and then had a good few minutes of repeating the words "what the fuck is he on about" until we felt mildly better.

Basically our current project has been assembled using internal and external resources. The external resources are Vendors with whom we have an established relationship. They are able to deliver services at reasonable rates and can be relied upon to meet Service Levels. After the aforementioned head scratching we think that our prospective client has asked a US Executive to remove one of our preferred vendors as a Supplier in three countries and replace them  with one of their own third party vendors.

Now this is where it gets tricky as all we have is a sentence cut and pasted from an Instant Message that was typed by a very tired American Executive at godawful o'clock in the morning. We haven't a clue who the client's preferred vendor is or what range of services they want us to use them for. Neither do we know whether this is a "by the way" type of question or a DO IT NOW instruction.

All we could do was go back to Christopher Robin and politely point out that we could do absolutely nothing until fundamental questions were answered like who is the vendor?, what is their address?, what is the requirement from them? I outlined a sereis of activites that would be necessary to engage with them and indicated that this was not a 5 minute job in the most positive way I could. We are, after all, delivering an updated price to the client today!

After a brief session of idiom mashing the following phrase is felt to describe this situation; A Blind Man on a Galloping Horse chasing down a blind alley after a gaggle of wild geese.

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Away from work my eye is much improved. I can now tolerate reasonable levels of light and have been able to take T&M out for a walk provided I wear a hat and sunglasses. This probably makes me look a little eccentric as the weather requires neither at the moment being quite overcast.

I also had a rare chat with my younger brother. He was celebrating after being told that he has got his BA in Illustration from Cardiff University. He is obviously very pleased, as are we for him, and I may persuade him to apply his talents to update the avatar I use in The Journal.

A poke in the eye with a bent stick ...

... or at least, that is what it feels like!

Let me explain, the observant will have noticed that I have not written a Journal entry for the past three days. "Ah" I hear you say "he has been up to his neck in it, getting his price release to the client" and you would be correct, or at least half right.

On Monday morning I was playing with Marauder and at one point, when we were head to head, I felt a sharp scratch across the surface of my eye. It was one of her whiskers and it had scratched my cornea. The past three days have involved a trip to Casualty for a diagnosis followed by me sitting in a darkened room with my eyes shut. To say it was painful is a bit of an understatement.

This morning is the first time this week that I have been able to look at a laptop screen without my eye streaming with tears and feeling like I have taken a right hook from a champion boxer. It is still sore but at least I can sit in a room with the curtains open.

On the work front there has been no rest and we have been running around like mad things tying up loose ends. A huge thank you goes out to Golfy who has been a godsend, holding things together, while I have been literally flying blind.

Someone else who deserves a special mention is Noddy. Noddy is the man who produces the minutes of our EMEA wide Delivery Review. He ensures these are accurate and issues them promptly so that we can comply with or satisfy any conditions in order that we can issue our price to the client. Our Delivery Review was on the 10th June and he finally issued the minutes ten days later on 20th June. When I read them they were absolute crap. There was no complete set of conditions and, instead of collating missing approvals, he simply issued the minutes with the comment " please forward you approval to the Bad Man".


I am not joking when I say that he did little better than note down the attendees on the call and then issue the minutes with the comment "please write down what you said". We have therefore spent the last few days nudging senior, and in some cases very senior, people in order to get our price out. Thanks Noddy - you are a complete COCK....

... Oh, and we issued our price late yesterday. I have a feeling that there may be at least one more iteration to go. As Fred Astaire put it "There may be trouble ahead ..."

Word of the Day

For some reason I woke on Sunday lacking my normal vigour, it may have been the Rhubarb Vodka.

So. I did what any sane person would do; made coffee and settled down to knock up a couple of PowerPoint slides for Christopher Robin. This isn't as bad as it sounds as both slides were simply tables that needed updating. At one point I thought I was going to have to make further contact with Luxembourg but then realised that the slide was "Death by PowerPoint" already and that I could have put absolutely anything in the empty cells, no-one would read it. So I found some relevant numbers in a spreadsheet I had to hand, applied a similar growth algorithm that had been applied in other cells in the table and there we had it. The table was completed and I had avoided dealing with what I am discovering to be the most uncooperative Nation in Europe.

Back in the real world we took a trip over to see Bad Man Senior and then went on to collect Tyson & Marauder from chokey.  On the way back I saw plenty of road kill and as we trundled along started to knock up portmanteau words to describe them...

... the first I came up with was unphleasant which is an adjective describing the general smell of putrefaction that accompanies anything that has lay in the gutter for more than a week.

That was rapidly followed by blodger which is a noun and is the bloated corpse of a badger after a some unexpected and unwanted Ford Focus.

The came a Splox. This is also a noun and is obviously a splatted fox.

Finally and my personal favourite is a word that is used to describe those bloody streaks of grey fur that regularly populate the rural roads at this time of year. From here on in they will be know as Flabbits!.

A normal Saturday for once

Saturday was initially quite quiet. A thirty minute call about pricing intruded on domestic activities but other than that it was a pretty normal Saturday. The house got tidied, my hair got cut and unfortunately the eggs in the incubator didn't hatch. I'll leave them a few days longer but I have a feeling that we won't be having any chicks.

Today saw T&M taken over to the Kennels for an overnight stay. This was a case of killing two birds with one stone. We will have a house full this evening as James Bond and Moneypenny and Children's TV Rag Doll favourites Rosie and Jim will be coming over with their progeny for supper and drinks. 30% also wants T&M to spend a night in kennels before we go away for our Summer holiday so she has a degree of reassurance that the dogs are reasonably happy away from home. So the dogs will be away from the socialising experiencing prison life for the first time in their short lives.

As I jot this down I see a table loaded with food and a vast array of drink set out. I am guessing that tomorrow may need to be a quiet day too.

Why I don't work in the telecoms industry anymore

Today Golfy and I were working at home. We have had one hell of a week and have managed to squeeze 10% out of our costs and completely revise our method of delivery in one country to achieve a portion of this. The rest was down to harrying and harassing our colleagues on a daily basis until they complied. This evening saw the final cost case passed to pricing and a final few e-mails issued to try to satisfy approval conditions.

Working at home involves frequent calls and Golfy and I have noticed that if I make a call to him it takes significantly longer to connect than if he makes a call to me...

... I pointed out that this was entirely natural advising that ****cester is much larger than the branch in the Hundred Acre Wood. Therefore it was entirely natural that a call from the Wood would take longer to reach ****cester than vice versa. Golfy replied that this was bollocks.

My reposte was as follows; it takes eight minutes for the light from the sun to reach the earth. If you shine a torch at the sun you can hardly expect the light to reach the sun in the same amount of time. After all, the torch is significantly weaker than the sun and it has to flow against the huge amount of light coming from the sun. For some reason Golfy didnt quite agree with this logic....

.... I tried another tack. It is a bit like trying to paddle a canoe up a waterfall. So, from the perspective of an Amazon Indian who is wearing nothing but red ochre, a piece of vine round his waist and a gourd over the end of his penis he will entirely understand why it take longer for a call to reach ****cester than it does for a call from ****cester to reach me. the reason it takes longer is because canoes aren't any good at going up waterfalls*.

Therefore my argument was much better as it was truly international in nature and could be understood by even the most non technological of cultures. To disagree would definitely be, at the very least, insulting to the noble inhabitants of the Amazon Basin. 

There is probably a moral to this story. Then again I have a deep suspicion that if there is it is probably best left unexamined because  I am developing a strong feeling that it is not what you say, it is more the way that you say it.

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* well canoes are, but only if they have  a 40 HP Evinrude strapped to the transom. These are very rare in the deepest Amazon

Quote of the Day

OK, so apart from the Lager, the chocolate, the fine Medieval Architecture and Le Mannequin Pis what have the Belgians ever done for us?

Day 18

"What", I hear you say, "are you rattling on about?"

Today is day 18. Eighteen days ago I set a dozen eggs in an very basic incubator and every day they have been manually turned to give the embryos the best chance of development. Today the turning stops and, if all is well, in three days time we will hear cheeping and see the first signs of hatching. The old adage Don't count your chickems 'til they've hatched really applies here. I have carefully tended the clutch but there are so many things that can go wrong and Saturday could be anywhere on the scale of complete failure to success.

If the little buggers hatch we then have to wait and watch them develop until we can work out which are hens and which are cockerels. This will take about six or seven weeks. Welsummers are a laying strain that means that the cockerels are not going to give much of a carcass. So even if I have a successful hatch I could still end up with a high proportion of cockerels that have minimal value as meat birds.

On the work front, I was back in the war room with Tigger and Christopher Robin. Once again we sliced and diced the numbers and interrogated the bunnies and weasels in our attempts to get things back in shape. We appear to have had a successful day but there is still much to do. At the same time it has become apparent that this is a very different beast from that we started hunting and, if are lucky enough to have a head to hang on the wall, this one is not going to be one that will take pride of place over the fireplace.

12 hours in a war room.

Tuesday was another day down in the Village.

Tigger and I are creatures of The Hundred Acre Wood and do not adapt well to the confines of an Office but that is where we have been put. "Tigger and Pooh, you will stay there and shout at the Weasels and Bunnies until you have managed to reduce your costs to a level they were a month ago". So in the office we have been, call after call, constantly updating a spreadsheet as we locate and remove unnecessary cost.

It is a hard job but we are buoyed by each success and dive deeper in to our costs striking out eye watering sums, ensuring that agreement is obtained for each chunk of money we remove. It is amazing how dividing by a million and rounding can allow us to throw around these immense and scary numbers and hammer and mould them in to a shape we like better.

It is fascinating to see how a large International Deal is assembled and progressed and today the Accountants, Tax Experts and Financial Wizards have turned up. Their work is great for the Corporation and great for the client too but it is becoming apparent that tax in Europe is not a palatable thing and if it can be avoided it will.

It now seems that the nelifunt Tigger and I were hunting may actually be a woozle. "Fuck me Tigger, we've had the telescope the wrong way round. It's no bigger than a rat". "I see that Pooh,but please don't swear about the size of the fu......"

Grinding away at it ...

War room waffle with a hint of progress summarises today at work.

Tigger and I took a trip down to the Village to meet up with Christopher Robin and work out just how bad our numbers had become. We now have a figure and possible plan to deal with about a quarter of it. At the moment things do not bode well for the future of the deal. Previously I would have had something in my back pocket that I could use to assist but that was taken away from me in a previous iteration of costing and pricing.

I am currently taking a stoical viewpoint and am progressing what I can. Where changes can be made I will attempt to make them, where they cannot I will attempt to explain why.  Perhaps the idiot that thought we could do this in a little over three weeks is starting to realise that they really need to brush up their project planning and estimation skills.

Away from work I managed a walk around the Three Miler with T&M before supper and back to the lap top to attempt to put things in a better shape. To be honest there is little I can do and need more information and a stroke of good fortune in the shape of a Techie that can deliver amazing server infrastructure at incredibly low cost....

... and this is never going to happen

Here we go ...

... the weekend arrived and, after a manic couple of weeks, I had a morning that was not going to be disturbed by the project. Realistically I knew that there was still a lot to do and a weekend off was never going to happen but I was not going to spend all weekend working my tits off. I was going to wind down and spend some time with 30%, TP and the dogs.

We started the day with a walk around the Three Miler. The day was beautiful and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I planned to take TP over to a local air show later and it looked like a perfect day for the event. Once home TP and I started to get our shit together to go out and then the phone rang...

... it was my Sales Exec. He was concerned about the approval status and the costs and needed to set up a call to discuss. I knew this was coming and accepted an invitation for five o'clock. This gave me a good chunk of the day to spend with TP and 30%. The air show was fine until the rain came in and we then decided that an air field was not a great place to be in a storm. We returned home giving me the opportunity to accompany 30% on a search for curtain and upholstery fabric. We took a trip in to Worcester and we rewarded with a find that will be absolutely perfect for an antique Nursing Chair that 30% has arranged to have restored and re upholstered.

The five o'clock call was pretty much as expected; 90 minutes of trying to sort out uncooperative Europeans and a list of actions that I needed to progress. I spend a further hour issuing the urgent mails leaving the less urgent ones until Sunday.

The evening was a combination of supper, TV and beer; low brow but about all I can manage at the moment.

Sunday was pretty similar; an early morning walk in the pouring rain and then a couple of hours sat in front of the laptop explaining why costs increase when a "guess" is validated and found to be inaccurate.

The afternoon saw us take a trip out and a road block made us take a diversion down a lane I had never driven before. The result was an absolute delight; empty lanes and a stunning three story brick and timber farm house in the middle of nowhere. It was an amazing sight; it had obviously escaped significant restoration and was there in the same role as it had been for the past four centuries as a home for the farmer rather than becoming an insensitively restored country home for a Commuting Senior Manager.

A conference call marked the transition from afternoon to evening and dinner followed. I type this entry looking "forward" to a week of screwing people in to agreements that they would really rather not make.