In time

Sorry it's been so long since I posted.  Lots to fill you in on, as inevitably, all things work themselves out in time.  Firstly, I am enormously happy to say I passed!  I was sat on the plane hiding my phone from the stewardesses and praying for the pages to load faster before I absolutely had to to turn off the phone because we were taking off when I finally saw the magic green word satisfactory.  I passed both the AMK with a score of 28 and the EoY1 with a score of 50.  Both comfortably above the pass rate and the cohort mean.  I was so happy, I was grinning madly all the way to Lanzarote, and every now and then whilst on holiday I would suddenly be struck with the thought that I was a second year, or a fifth of a Dr.

Playa del Papagayos

The holiday was amazing.  7 days of blistering heat with enough of a breeze to just about stop Mr from melting, beautiful scenery, a couple of days on the beach or by the pool and the rest was spent sight-seeing.  We went to a couple of amazingly well done landscaped gardens and houses, took a trip around a volcano and down lava caves and saw a natural lagoon in one of the lava tunnels in which lives the only colony in the world of small, white, blind crabs.  Very bizarre!

Cafe in Jameos del Agua ( near the blind crabs)

Evenings were spent in the bar playing cards with Mr and indulging (sensibly) in the free bar, or wandering round the local town and harbour front.  We ate sausages cooked over the heat of the volcano and had the nicest squid I have ever tasted.  We had ice creams in the shade over looking the beach whilst small lizards ran between our feet, and on our last night one of the cats at the hotel came and curled up to go to sleep on my lap.  It was bliss.  I'm not sure what it was and can only speculate it was the minerals in the water from the volcano, but my hair has been the nicest, shiniest, softest it has ever been.  It's like I've stepped out of a Pantene advert.  Unfortunately the Lanzarote for Beans fund couldn't raise enough money to keep me there for the sake of having beautiful hair and finally being warm.

Lazing on Playa del Papagayo, enjoying the sun

It was lovely to be able to spend so much time with Mr, and time where I'm not rushing from place to place, not worrying about things, not thinking of the enormous piles of work to be done or trying to recall nerve tracts and muscle names.   I heard news from home that my office job were going to take me back, so once I got back I had one last week at the GP's and I have just finished my first week back at the office job.  I have been promoted to senior and had a small pay rise which is nice.  I have been tasked with setting up control environments for them, so working out how things should be done and constructing spreadsheets with control elements for people to fill in as they progress through tasks to ensure nothing is missed and it is easy to see where hold ups are and where they are with tasks.  I also have 40 30-page documents to write on how administration has been going on some of the schemes and am head up a task to ask all the trustees of schemes whether they want to adopt new government rules about pensions or not.  All in ten weeks.  Except most of this week has been spent completing tasks my boss has emailed me that are due out urgently today this minute now!  It is nice to be back though.  The knowledge of how to do things is slowly trickling back to me, and, I won Thursday cards! I was very happy.

After many phone calls, threatening to get my MP involved like I had to do last year, threatening a formal complaint, having some outright lies from them, hearing each person I talked to tell me something different, I finally managed to get Student Finance to give me money, and an apology letter.  I shan't entirely believe it until I see the money in my account in September, but things are looking hopeful.  All in all things are going pretty well at the moment :)

[All photos taken by me]