Over to Pam

Those who aren't from the UK may not be fortunate enough to have heard of a comic genius called Victoria Wood. Those who have heard of Victoria Wood, and who have enjoyed her various sketch and stand up routines, and the discrete little one-offs that she produced in the early 1990s, might just remember one entitled Over to Pam.

Ring any bells? How does "Chuck a sausage", "It's a low fat yoghurt!", "Can I budge by, I'm borderline hypoglycaemic!" help? Not at all?

Fucking philistines.

Anyway back to today's stuff.

Labels
I don't like labels, I don't like being labelled. When you can be labelled as loads of different things, you tend to lose the person underneath and only see the label(s).

However, my main gripe about labels is related to clothes labels. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. No, but a badly stitched label can make your day almost unbearable!

My new pulling pants (yeah, right) have a label stitched in to the inside of the waistband, but it seems to have been stitched in with that bloody plastic thread. As a result, it has really scratchy corners that really dig in and hurt. Fucking things. Forty quid they cost me, you'd have thought they could've put a comfortable label in at least.

There are some labels on t-shirts that are stitched low down into the side seam. They itch and scratch like bastards too. They put them in knickers and everything. Why? Why can't they make a garment that is worn next to the skin comfortable? Hmmm, HMMMMM?

Another label problem is when the inside neck label sticks up above the collar of a jumper. However, this can have its advantages if some kind soul puts it in its proper position for me - that nice brush against the back of neck feeling is always guaranteed to cheer me up.

So that's labels covered, what next?


Health and safety
Health and safety in the workplace should be the numero uno priority, always. Look after yourself, your colleagues and any visitors to your building.

On construction sites and transport depots and things, an aid to health and safety is high-visibility clothing - you know that bright yellow or orange stuff with the luminescent striping?

You can't miss somebody out of the corner of your eye if they're wearing a hi-vis vest. In fact, walking or driving round the streets of England at the moment and you'd be forgiven for thinking that EVERYBODY works in the construction industry since just about everybody you see seems to be wearing high visibility clothing.

• Construction workers,
  
• Traffic wardens,
  
• Street wardens,
  
• Street cleaners,
  
• Police officers,
  
• Plastic police officers,
  
• Cyclists,
  
• Wagon drivers,
  
• Construction site visitors,
  
• Public transport drivers,
  
• Transport workers,
  
• Delivery people -
  

They ALL wear the same yellow vests and coats. It's really borin'.

You're in a panic, you're on the lookout for a copper, you can flag down any number of people before you find somebody who can help... and then they just give you a crime reference number for your insurance claim.


Nosy colleagues
I have a colleague who , since starting her job almost 3 years ago, has done nothing but complain about the workload while ensuring that most of her work gets passed on to other people, leaving the minimum for herself to do. A "team player" she ain't, but she seems to me to be conniving, self-centred, manipulative and a just a bit devious. She has taken to complaining about when other people are having a chat (forgetting her incessant rabbiting at times), saying that she's "really snowed under, but nobody else has anything to do".

It's not our fault if she's ineffective with her workload and time management.

Anyway, everytime she hears voices from our office, she finds some excuse to come in and earwig, trying to butt into the conversation. Another colleague was talking to me this afternoon and she just waltzed in with some stuff that I'd sent through to the printer in her office.

Wow, thanks, I've never known you to help anybody else out before. Or did you just come in here to see if we were talking about you?

I've taken to closing our office door.

Nice too that she's bagsied all her holidays without consulting with any of her colleagues first.

Ewww, slagging off colleagues, I'm losing it. Perhaps she's just exhibiting the symptoms of stress, but she's probably gone about things the wrong way if she wants to endear herself to people.


Connie's performing breast
She's still in hospital, but she's happier than she was. Apparently, they put a big magnetic control unit over the pacemaker and they can alter most of the things without having to go back in an tweak them. They've altered it once and they're going to do it again tomorrow.

Although I am absolutely delighted that she's not as distressed as she was, I'm very disappointed not to have captured her performing bosom on video.