Adrian Phelan

Post 6

Thoughtful beginning | What the fire extinguisher | Bonfire night | Delicious Tray Bake| This week’s films| Do Good Well | Rounding off

Sending thoughts 

I want to start this week’s post by sending love to a number of friends who have very recently said goodbye to close family and to others tackling health issues. My own Dad is going through the mill currently, so I also want to give a shout out to my siblings who have been doing a great job navigating his various medical appointments and then feeding back. My light words in this blog pale into insignificance against the seriousness of some people’s lives at the moment. We will crack on, but you are in my thoughts.   

Mandatory training – bloody fire extinguishers  

I must have done mandatory training about eight times over my career, and I can never get the questions about fire extinguishers right. I would normally be too catholic to photograph the correct answers and cheat, but as I’m now lapsed…I’m also questioning my moral judgement as to what qualifies as a conflict of interest. In fact almost every module of the training had me questioning some of my long-held beliefs. If I’ve ever offended you, I apologise. Take comfort in the fact that at some point I may put out an electrical fire with a water fire extinguisher.  

I’ve started dealing with customers for real now. I have to say that doing customer services as a 23-year-old [I once did it for a publishing company] and doing it as a 49-year-old are two very different experiences. I honestly think you have more empathy at this age, and you certainly have more life experience. The world including technology has also moved on quite a bit. I’ve had to get used to a number of new software packages so training has been fairly full-on. But I’ve been very well supported by my new colleagues and that has been a big help. The hunt for that more substantive post continues however and I have a couple of applications to complete this weekend.  

Bonfire night  

I hope everyone enjoyed bonfire night. At about 6pm on the night I passed a guy heading to my local shops in a t-shirt and shorts. When I moved to the UK first, we used to freeze our bits off on bonfire night. Now we’re burning our toes for wearing flip flops. You’ll always see people in shorts in garden centres and Costco no matter what the time of year. We can add bonfire night to that now.  We’re going to a late one this weekend and I’m looking forward to it. We don’t have it in Ireland (We do fireworks on Halloween instead) so it’s always been a novelty. I ignore the fact that it’s about burning a catholic. As I said above, I’m lapsed anyway.  

Bake-off 

I did some baking this week. I made tray-bake which is a sweet treat made up of coconut, chocolate and raisins (egg, sugar and margarine). My Mam and aunties used to make it for us when we were kids. It was always a favourite so it was nice to have a little taste of the past. The picture above is what they came out like. If you would like the recipe, drop me an email. They are quick and easy to make. I’d also welcome other recipe suggestions if you care to share. We’re all over banana bread and blueberry muffins already in our house but anything else you have, do send on.   

This week’s film 

I saw Bugonia on Monday and I’m still trying to process it. It’s one of those films that saying anything about it will spoil it, but I will say it’s a whole heap of weird. The same director did Poor Things with both films starring Emma Stone ,so that gives you an idea of what to expect. If you saw Sinners earlier in the year you will know about films with surprises and it’s suffice to say this film is in that territory.  

Back to the Future is also in cinemas celebrating its 40th birthday. How is that even possible? Me and my brother saw that without our parents. That’s how old we are now and now that I think of it, it came out in the same year as Live Aid. What a year ‘85 was. In case you’ve ever wondered 1.21 gigawatts is 1.21 billion watts. Wonder no more.  

Do Good Well 

Actor Pauline Collins sadly died this week at the age of 85. She had Parkinson’s Disease for a number of years so in honour of her life and other sufferers of the disease I’m signposting to Parkinson’s UK and Parkinson’s Ireland. A number of my grand uncles also had the condition. Support if you can.  

Bye for now and thanks  

As ever, thanks for stopping by. I’m going to try and get a weekly post of some sort out by hook or by crook and I hope the content continues to amuse.   

Please do get in touch if there is ever anything you would ever like to reach out about.  

Adrian  

adrianphelan@hotmail.co.uk 

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