March 2003

Tuesday 4th March  Holiday plans

Another two holidays have kind of "materialised" in the last couple of weeks. We are going on a "shakedown" cruise on the new Ocean Village ship in April - just for a weekend and today heard that we have a discounted cruise on Oceana in June. God that's three holidays this year! How lucky am I?!

We find out what our annual bonus will be on Thursday - its announced at 9.30am across the whole John Lewis Partnership at the same time. Exciting, eh? It was 9% of our salary last year - my prediction is 8% for this year... will let you know! Some of it will go on the Palm Tungsten I bought a few weeks back, some on a new mobile (got to have Bluetooth now!) and the rest on the holidays.

Thursday 6th March  10%

Well, we were all surprised by the bonus announcement today - 10% :-) - much better than we all thought. Not quite the 24% that I had in my first year with the Partnership (way, way back in time!) but pretty good anyway.

Wednesday 12th March  Why did I drink so much?

We had our annual AGM last night at the Pavilion in Bournemouth.  It's where all the local branches get together and we find out how the business has done in the last year. WE also get a free meal and disco... although we are only there for the business bit really. Honest!! We had a great night - drank to much as usual. Stuart stayed over afterwards - I really enjoy his company but we were both a bit knackered when we got home, so didn't see up chatting like we normally do.

I feel absolutely LOUSY today - part drink and part still suffering from the headaches. I managed to drag myself out of bed for about an hour this morning - but gave up and went back to bed until mid afternoon. It's now 5pm and I have to get dressed to go to buy some food. This is really unlike me to stay in bed so long.

Friday 28th March  The Big Black Knob!

We had much hilarity at work today - but I guess it might just be one of those "you had to be there" kind of moments. A few weeks back, one of the ladies in the office had to phone a company to order a replacement black handle (knob) for a bit of machinery in the branch. This seemed like too good an opportunity to miss so I had great fun winding her up about this black knob while she was on the phone.

Anyway, the guy finally arrived this morning to fit it and I couldn't resist telling the story of how much fun we had had about getting ourselves a "Big black knob". It wasn't until I got right to the end of the story that it dawned on me that the guy I was telling this story to was actually a big black guy!! Ooops! I nearly died... and it was only then that I realised the reason everyone else in the office was stifling their laughter. Luckily he took it in good spirit and just said "well... you wanted a big black knob and here I am!" Embarrassing or what? At least it proves I'm not a racist cos I hadn't even twigged he was black at all - needless to say I felt awful!