Planet Isolation

It’s been a while since my last entry because having moved house, we entered Planet Isolation with no telephone line, broadband or TV. Equally, at work I have no access to ‘social networking sites’ and so whilst I may appreciate a moment for its comedy value and want to write about it, I can’t. Although today, in my going stir crazy with boredom madness I realised I could always appear to be busy by writing my blog in Word and upload it later.

Unfortunately Sky for all it’s whiz and pomp, is a fairly crap supplier of the ‘connection’ bundle, comprising phone line, broadband and TV. It took about a week for the technician to come. He then looked alarmed when I said the existing satellite dish (yes, we live in a house with a dish…) is on the (low and flat) roof, and told me that he could refuse to go up as he wasn’t made aware of this issue before, and normally H&S dictate they have to have a two-man team for safety reasons. So, with a burbling James toddling about pulling at cables and sticking them in his mouth on one side and a fairly senile dog farting in the corner, I opened wide my arms and said ‘brilliant, I’ll be your two man team’. He smiled somewhat nervously, eyeing the fairly vast size of my bump, and said he’d be fine thanks and off he scuttled up the ladder on his own. Honestly, what’s a 30 week pregnant girl to do.

Once he’d completed his task of aligning satellites with dishes and feeding them through our wall to our 40 year old TV, he casually mentioned that it would take another fortnight for the broadband and landline to be activated. This is where my GSOH failed and I became VBT. Turns out that some spiv with a boiler suit has to load up his pockets with Johnson’s cotton wool buds and spend a fortnight in tunnels underground gently rubbing away years of grime from underused telephone cables. Well, that’s what they may as well be doing. What they actually do is: fill in a form, send to a different department, wait for form to be read, signed by someone else, sent to different department, wait to be read, signed, send to BT (who own the phone cables), wait for form to be read, read form, click ‘activate’ on the telephone exchange on the button above our number, and then inform us that we are connected. And that takes a fortnight.

So, back to work and why it’s so dull. I watch my colleagues with envy as they take calls standing up (well, that’s the media team – definitely makes them look preoccupied and flustered); (not sure it would work when I place a call to Esporta to sign up for gym membership, or speak to the babysitter). Others behind me have hands flying at their keyboards, fingernails sending sparks of blue flame off into the drab call centre-esque environment. The team opposite never ever have the BBC website, private email sites such as googlemail or hotmail on their screens and all around there are people hightailing it to meetings, muttering under their breath, papers clutched under sweaty armpits, disgusting brown suits damp in the behind-knee area from sitting down too long. Quite honestly, I don’t know what they’re all doing. But what I’m not doing is very obvious to me. This is one of the problems of having a boss who really has no idea about people management or what his team are up to (I have told him I am, how shall we put it, fairly light on things to do this week), being about 6 weeks away from a second maternity period in 18 months and only working 3 days a week and therefore unable to really get stuck into any majorly juicy projects.

What really bothers me is that I wake up so flipping early when Hugo’s alarm goes off (6.20am…), then have to deal with feeding the baby, changing nappy on screaming baby who rolls over flinging shit across the room in an arc (yes, I found a nice smear of baby poo on my work shirt at about 9.23am this morning once at my desk), cuddling baby to reassure him that quite honestly I’m doing him a flipping favour by changing a dirty nappy in the first place, I’m not cutting off his legs with a small dirty penknife), packing writhing baby into car, ignoring whining dog at gate doing moon eyes, realising my coat, bag, baby jacket are locked inside the house, racing back to house leaving baby alone in unlocked car, racing back to car and yet again setting off the bloody dog who thinks she’s in with a chance of escape if she howls a bit louder, finally closing car door and driving off, and perhaps then, realising I’ve left wallet / phone / pass for work etc on the hall table.

So, I race like an idiot through the first two hours of the day (Hugo has an early start, but he just has to feed himself, walk to the door, exit house, walk to station, get on train, alight train 20 calm paper-reading minutes later, walk to work, sit down, work). Then I get here, only to find that once I’ve read through ten emails from the IT centre telling me some patch is being uploaded onto my laptop which will require shut down for 20 minutes at 2am on a Sunday night…(and believe me, I do draw these email reading moments out), it’s probably about half past nine and I sit at my desk wondering what on earth to do for the rest of the day. Going to the canteen to buy coffee and have small talk with coffee girls takes about 6 minutes. I can draw that out by having a pee on the way, and filling up a water bottle on the way back. Banter with colleagues lasts about 5 minutes and then everyone cracks on with their work again, leaving me to the insomnic work state of nothingland. Today for instance, I have collected 8 quotes from builders about getting our massive sofa through the window into our small house, I’ve sorted out some childcare vouchers, I’ve read some election updates on the BBC site, I’ve converted inches to cms and then been on Ebay looking for curtain material or blackout blinds which we need in order to sleep in past 6.30am at weekends (it.s 2.54cm to the inch if you’re interested). I have tried holding my breath for as long as possible without it being obvious to anyone else, I have done 100 pelvic floor exercises (quick quick quick, slow slow slow) and I’ve eaten half a pack of Oreos very slowly, licking the cream out of the middle and nibbling the biscuit very slowly. And yet it’s only two pm.

And what really bothers me, is that I’ve got about a gazillion things to do out of the office. For instance, I’ve got to get to our GP surgery before 6pm (it takes an hour to leave the office, get through the 17 traffic lights, pick up James from nursery and drive home) to collect a letter which is costing me £37.50 which my new doctor has penned in platinum laced ink, which allows me to fly (we’re flying in 3 days time to Bristol for a long weekend at home), feed, bathe and put James to bed, greet babysitter, then race to Esporta, my new fabulous gym, to sign a direct debit form, race home and meet Hugo who has had the arduous task of a fulfilling days’ work followed by a 25 minute train ride home, and then go out for supper.

I do like the work-life balance of 3 working days a week, I do enjoy not having to change every single one of James’s nappies, of being somewhat financially independent, of having adult conversations. But days like this, I do wonder what on earth is going on and why life forces you to stay sitting at a desk for hours on end completely wasting time, and then propels you into manic wonder-mum duties which cause nervous breakdowns, all whilst my work-happy husband gets to wander in at half seven and shout up the stairs ‘what’s for supper then?’.