Tag: Work

Daily Life, Work, Writer's Blog

The IT Manager

Julie G

I am the girl who you hope not to see,

Life can be dull when you work in IT,

If I’m at your door, there’s surely been strife,

Something’s not working, you can bet on your life.

Girl Working on a Computer

If I’m hovering nearby, then a system has crashed,

A workstation’s broken, your hopes will be dashed,

All thoughts of a good day, where your work gets ahead,

Will fly from the window, your desk you may dread.

***

If I am there now and the technician’s been by,

And still nothing’s working, my face may belie,

May give you a hint of the depth of the bad,

When I return with a smile, then you’re sure to be glad.

Girl Working on a Computer

For if all is well, all is good behind the scenes,

The servers are serving, most definitely means,

You have nothing to fear, your work will surely get done,

If I’ve walked away you can be sure problems are none.

***

For I am the girl, in her office resides,

Answering issues, and keeping an eye,

Certain that errors we can mostly contain,

If my presence is needed, of your life I’m a bane.

Girl Working on a Computer

For most everyday, the technician’s you’ll see,

Out and about fixing issues, you’ll not see me,

But don’t think I’m not working as I’m holding the reins,

Hoping to prevent you from suffering IT pains.

***

 

Advertisement
Daily Life, Work, Writer's Blog

Spinning

Julie G

The last three days have been an almighty mess. I have been unable to go into work, which some may see as a bonus, instead opting to work from home, helping my technicians remotely, as much as I am able.

Monday was an ok day, an average working day. Nothing major to report except one of my technicians had clearly succumbed to the germs being spread by the other the previous week and was fighting a dreadful cold.

Tuesday morning began as most Tuesday mornings in winter, with me struggling to haul myself up and out from under the duvet, having been rudely awoken from a precious slumber by Greg James of Radio 1’s Breakfast Show. I stumbled with eyes semi-closed to the kitchen, popped the kettle on and headed to the bathroom. Dressed and ready to leave ten minutes later, I bent to pull on my boots and fell into the wall. Telling myself I am a daft bat, I sat down to continue with my outerwear application. Keeling to the side, I realised something was amiss, and dragged myself into the living room, slumped onto the sofa and dropped my spinning head into my hands. The room was turning around me and I started to feel nausea rising.

Clive found me and insisted I message work to let them know I would be working from home. I am glad he did as the dizziness has persisted for a third day snd shows no sign of abatement. I suspected an ear infection, the aching one one side of my head being a give away, but that has now disappeared and I am left unable to move my head one way or another.

Each time I move, the world starts moving faster and I become disoriented. So much so that on Wednesday I stood up, walked around my bed and fell over sideways. I couldn’t prevent it and the only reason I didn’t smack the floor was the wardrobe kindly catching me by the arm, leaving me bruised and quite sore.

I feel as dizzy today, although everything else seems to be in place and working as it should. My eyes ache a little but that’s more to do with staring at my laptop,  connected remotely to my work computer.  It feels a little lame to be stuck here but I have no intention of falling over my desk or up the stairs at work. I have been able to do lots of work from here and am keeping on top of things so it’s not too traumatic.

I am unlikely to go back to work tomorrow, I need this dizziness to subside and I will have to be careful when our granddaughter comes over to visit on Saturday. I don’t want to be dropping the four year old beauty.

I am lucky to have a fabulous husband who has been cooking in the evenings and checking in on me throughout the day.

I am very much looking forward to this spinning dizziness retreating me and taking me back to some semblance of normality. Until then, I will be sitting here, a dizzy blonde, in my living room, working, writing and resting.

 

Poem, Writer's Blog

I just had to share this awesome poem written by Brian Bilston.

Julie G

I was so moved by this cleverly written poem I just had to share it. Steffan Griffiths, the Headmaster of Norwich School, where I work as an IT Services Manager, included this in his start of term address, which focused on the power of language. As you all know, I love to write poetry – mainly rhyming verse – but this poem has touched me. Please do have a read – both ways – it will blow your mind.

Refugees, by Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help

So do not tell me

These haggard faces could belong to you or me

Should life have dealt a different hand

We need to see them for who they really are

Chancers and scroungers

Layabouts and loungers

With bombs up their sleeves

Cut-throats and thieves

They are not

Welcome here

We should make them

Go back to where they came from

They cannot

Share our food

Share our homes

Share our countries

Instead let us

Build a wall to keep them out

It is not okay to say

These people are just like us

A place should only belong to those who are born there

Do not be so stupid to think that

The world can be looked at another way

 

(Now read from bottom to top)

 

Daily Life, Poem, Work, Writer's Blog

Published!

Julie G

Imagine my surprise to come home today and find a poem I wrote for my four-month-old granddaughter, in print in a beautiful photobook.

20190104_175622.jpg

When Harper was first born, I wrote her a poem which I was so honoured to see displayed in a frame not only in her nursery but in one of her other Nanny’s kitchen last week.

Having spent two whole days with them last weekend, I felt I had enough content to write another one and the finished result was a ten verse, forty line poem, which I was reasonably pleased with.

I posted it on my blog and shared it on Facebook, little knowing that my daughter-in-law to be (let’s call her my daughter-in-law), enjoyed it enough to have it printed along with some relevant photos and made into a book.

20190104_174702.jpg

The front page, which I cannot resist sharing with you all, read as follows:

“Dear grandad Clive and nanny Julie. I loved the poem you wrote me that much I asked mummy to put it in a book for me.

Please will you bring this with you when you come visit me and read it to me and Winnie xx”

20190104_175653.jpg

I opened it and couldn’t read it straight away as my eyes were filled with tears. Such a thoughtful gift to come home to. Katie (to give my daughter-in-law a name) had chosen pictures to illustrate each verse of the poem which added to the personalisation perfectly.

20190104_174743.jpg

The whole situation was made even better when, as an actual ‘step-nanny’ I was immediately made to feel one of the grandparents when Harper arrived. There was no ‘step-nanny and step-grandad’ for anyone not blood related, only three sets of grandparents.

The image above shows my ‘stepson’ Kurt and his fiancee, Katie, with baby Harper. They live just under a two hour drive away and, so far, we have been able to visit them on a monthly basis. When we are not around, and almost every day, Katie sends us photos, videos and text updates, keeping us involved in Harper’s milestones. For example, yesterday brought us a video of Harper sucking happily on her first rusk. Beautiful.

If you want to re-read the poem, you can do so here:

Harper at almost four months

20190104_175638.jpg

Thank you, Katie (and, of course, Kurt and Harper). Xxx

Daily Life, Places to write, Writer's Blog

Writing and blog progress almost a year on…

Julie G

As is traditional at the beginning of a New Year, I have been pondering the progress I have made with my writing and, more so, planning over the past year.

In February 2018, I made the decision to take a refresher course in writing before fully embarking on the planning of whichever direction it took me. I signed up with The Writer’s Bureau and enrolled in their Comprehensive Creative Writing course. I chose to tackle the fiction writing part of the course first, thinking it would be my strongest and, therefore, the easiest, to start with.

download

A published author, Sheila Bugler, was assigned to me as my tutor and I have been infinitely grateful for her kind words and constructive comments throughout. At this stage in the course I am feeling quite pleased with myself, verging on a smugness, as my feedback has been filled with comments such as ‘excellent’ and ‘superb’ and the criticism has been over minor points which I have not found difficult to put right. Much of my grounding in grammar has stayed with me in the many years since I left school, leaving me with the energy to concentrate on content. I sailed through the fiction half of the course, even managing to have some stories and an article published.

The non-fiction side of the course started well with assignments dictating the content but when faced with which publications to write articles for I flailed around wildly. ‘Write about what you know’ was the new mantra. I felt that people wouldn’t want to read about my interests, thought they would find them boring and lacking in pzazz. I am pleased to say I was wrong, and articles ranging from my cravings during pregnancy to my addiction to dancing did spark some interest. I even received feedback from my blog posts about my husband’s kite flying.

Blog posts. Now there was a thing I hadn’t given any thought to. I didn’t even have a blog until midway through 2018. My course advised setting up a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, anything through which I could publicize my future work, even if I didn’t plan on self-publishing. I duly trotted off to my faithful friend, the World Wide Web, researched some blogs and started planning my own. I wanted a neutral colour scheme for my site, so I opted for an almost neutral pH of green/blue. I needed a header which was different but stood out as me. Having cleared my spare bedroom of as much clutter as I could, I had purchased a screen to hide the remainder of my junk. The screen was so beautiful I decided it could be my feature image. And so it is!

img_20180626_124113

In the past few months I have been slowly building my followers and have over 120 blog subscribers, over 1100 twitter followers and my Storytellingdancer facebook page receives lots of likes (when I remember to share my posts). Sharing posts can become a habit and I try to tailor them to the right social media, while trying to build a suitable audience. I follow lots of wannabe authors like myself and it is great to read and share attempts, successes and failures. I started with Pinterest but without having too much to ‘sell’ I have dropped away from the medium, dipping in only now and again when I can be bothered.

In summary, my writing is starting to go from strength to strength, with published articles and short stories accumulating on my desk. My novel, or should I say novels as I have four which I have started, is still very much a work in progress but one day I will settle to it. Maybe when my course is finished and I have more time for it.

Vector-Icons-for-challenges-new-241

I continue to add some of my unpublished poems and short stories to this blog and the relevant pages and the plan is to actually HAVE a plan for my blog in 2019. Watch this space – might still be empty in a few weeks time and then my gears will kick in with a vengeance. All suggestions and tips greatly received from fellow bloggers. I need to plan my blog time, moving between poems, stories, general daily life, dancing, kite flying (my husband not me) and I don;t want to post more than five or six posts a month for fear of driving my audience away rather than encouraging new readers.

For now, as I am on my lunch hour at work, I will be content with one poem per month, one Ceroc dancing post per month and then a topical post too. Even that looks messy – I definitely need to plan this more methodically!

1438677777senator-2016