Foggy in my Heart

I struggle with Christmas, in fact any season where jollity is "enforced", perhaps because my nature is melancholy. I was on this bridge on Friday, in London from the Midlands to get a bit nearer the festive spirit, but even the Christmas lights didn't inspire. So what did, the charming manners of all and sundry in M&S today. The knowledge that we were all shopping for Christmas gave a good natured feel to an expedition more akin to queuing on the M25! Well done Fosse Park M&S for organising your food ordering collection for Christmas sooo well. XXX

The actual trip to London made me look up *anal retentiveness. The trip had been organised by 3 of us for 4 of us but the 4th couldn't come. I happened to be talking about it in the presence of another colleague (V) who said she would like to come. It wasn't an exclusive invite, I just would never have wanted to go anywhere with that person, but I haven't been with the team long and others might have found her easier company than I. I had a good idea that one of them (J) didn't but was told by (yet another colleague!) that the A did get on really well with her. When I asked A about V (in her absence but during the trip) she said there must be people in the world that think she gets on well with them that she doesn't at all. V had driven me mad in the planning stages of the trip, wanting to sit down and plan it appears sensible, but none of the rest of us were planning anything. We had 2 shops we definitely wanted to go to and the rest evolved. V has to eat at a certain time which meant not searching out somewhere nice for lunch and later not going somewhere unusual but ending up in a franchise of a chain we have in our home town.

F***king hard work but I did good work and I don't think she knows how difficult I find her. I might find a way to confront specific issues in the New Year. I won't go on more but learnt a lesson, well nearly, I mentioned on the way down that I have Springsteen tickets for May in Manchester but might want to go with someone more enthusiastic about him than my partner. Guess who volunteered, not A who I would want to go with, but V. A didn't even hear the question & now I couldn't go with A because it would look like I have snubbed V, which I would have done.

Obviously there are always going to be people at work one gets on better with than others, there are going to be people we make actual friends with, and invite to our weddings for example. This team would be inviting the whole team not to leave anyone out of anything. In fact, someone who is my friend felt left out of the trip because seeing V coming, she thought I must have asked the team, because otherwise it would have been a very odd combination. I take responsiblity for all of this, not finding a way to indicate the trip was not open to all comers, not wanting to hurt V who is nice and kind and well meaning, I just don't get on with her. Resolutions looming are finding a way to be direct without hurting someone and not tangling myself up in my own senstivities which result in doing something I don't want to do at all.

*Sigmund Freud believed that in a child's psycho-sexual development there is an anal stage (during the second and third years of life) in which the child's main concerns are with defecation. His responses to his parents' demands for bowel control may have far-reaching consequences. Should a person become fixated in the anal stage he may become a noticeably orderly, frugal, and obstinate adult.