2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

PollyWollyDoodle

I’m still using the cutlery set my parents gave us! 35 years on, I used to keep it for best but now I use it every day and as it’s Viners stainless steel it still looks good. I think all the other stuff I took had come from my parents when they downsized, he didn’t like it much anyway. 

Laura_Elsewhere

It amuses us both that we still use the cutlery that was a wedding present for M.I.'s *first* marriage, a short, relatively-amicable mistake in his youth, and still on terms of FB-birthday-wishes with his ex... Had we been going to invite guests, we both thought it might be quite funny to invite her and her husband from her second far-better-suited marriage to ours  

Laura_Elsewhere

Well, we both really enjoyed going to our final gig of the season last night (the Human League, in Bath) but it did mean a 2am bedtime and then of course I woke in the night and then woke early so a bit dopey, to say the least... thinking of Gran and Nana through the war, I suppose it would be like being woken by sirens with no raid eventuating - although, come to think of it, they wouldn't know at the time of course, so no, nothing like; we didn't spend several hours last night wondering if we might be bombed... 

But I know they Kept On Keeping On when they were very sleep-deprived so I am thinking of them both today as I stumble vaguely through the housework - and I do seem to have accumulated All The Housework, when I had thought I was keeping on top of it - where has it all come from!?

One thing about seeing the Human League play live - Susan and Joanne's costumes are soooo fabulous that it reminds me how much I want to make lovely clothes... definitely a boost to my needlework-appetite seeing all those fabulous sequins and lurex and lamé and chiffon...! Not that I would be making those exactly but oh, it felt good to see those two wonderful women singing their hearts out for us and looking so incredibly wonderful! 

Cherryfudge

I'm also a bit sleep-deprived but mine is because I sat up late getting the tricky bits of the knitted intarsia out of the way, only to find this morning that I've gone wrong and need to take a row back. Never mind, the fiddly work on the elephants is nearly done!

I do hope the government keeps funding layettes or my coupons will all be gone. Coming baby now has a couple more outfits and a bobble hat to add to the snowsuit and matching leggings set. I need to keep away from the shops, evidently. I can't think that I've spent any coupons, though. This challenge has definitely steered me away from them though DH has bought a sweatshirt for DD's fiance.

PipneyJane

Must have been something in the air last night, or the air-raids got to all of us.  I slept from about 11:30pm until 2:30am and then fitfully thereafter. 

Part of the cause, I suspect, is that DH worked all night in order to get something done for a training session this morning. (DH is the trainer.) He was in his study (the box room).  At one point, yesterday evening, he was the closest thing I have ever seen him to tears of frustration.  The muppet who organised the training did not bother to give DH time to actually learn the program and write his notes, nor did he bother to establish whether that part of the program was fully available in the training environment.

DH left at 5:30am to go to the office to print off his notes and got to the client's, in a county on the other side of London, at 9am. I am hoping he'll have a nap in the car before heading home.  (That's his plan.) 

- Pip 

Laura_Elsewhere

"muppet"?! You are restrained... M.I. has been in similar situations but nothing so extreme as that - how ludicrous and stupid... 

I hope both he and you have lovely quiet peaceful evenings and sleep very soundly tonight!

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

"muppet"?! You are restrained... M.I. has been in similar situations but nothing so extreme as that - how ludicrous and stupid... 

I hope both he and you have lovely quiet peaceful evenings and sleep very soundly tonight!

When he came downstairs at about 7pm, while I was cooking dinner, and told me the situation, I immediately told him to phone his boss (and, if his boss didn't answer, his boss's boss).  That's when he was nearly in tears.  He couldn't get hold of his boss - what's the point of a company phone, if the phone isn't answered? - but spoke to someone in the organisation he trusts and got a call back at 8pm then went back to work.

Thanks Laura.  

- Pip

florianatwobob

@PipneyJane glad it’s ‘sort of’ resolved. Having been a professional trainer (before escaping to project management) myself I’m constantly astounded by the perceptions that trainers don’t need prep time. 

Apparently the ability to pull training material in a suitable format happens in the blink of an eye (or maybe they think we stash it in somewhere about our persons!)

Hopefully peaceful nights sleep will come
to all this evening with no sirens or air raids. 

PipneyJane

florianatwobob said:

@PipneyJane glad it’s ‘sort of’ resolved. Having been a professional trainer (before escaping to project management) myself I’m constantly astounded by the perceptions that trainers don’t need prep time. 

Apparently the ability to pull training material in a suitable format happens in the blink of an eye (or maybe they think we stash it in somewhere about our persons!)

Hopefully peaceful nights sleep will come
to all this evening with no sirens or air raids. 

Thanks @florianatwobob.

I'm beginning to think that I was very, very lucky, back when I was Finance Systems Trainer.  (I spent 4 years as a trainer in the early 2000's.)  Of course, I was "in-house" and not client facing, which makes a big difference, and I was always at the heart of the project.  OK, it started with a baptism of fire but we never felt overwhelmed, just busy.  (We had four months from the date that we joined to learn everything and write our documentation, to the date that we started training our end users, which was 2 months before the scheduled "go live" for the ERP.  Amazingly, that only got put back by a week.) 

- Pip

Gem-gem

florianatwobob said:

@PipneyJane glad it’s ‘sort of’ resolved. Having been a professional trainer (before escaping to project management) myself I’m constantly astounded by the perceptions that trainers don’t need prep time. 

Apparently the ability to pull training material in a suitable format happens in the blink of an eye (or maybe they think we stash it in somewhere about our persons!)

Hopefully peaceful nights sleep will come
to all this evening with no sirens or air raids. 

I am now an education consultant and much of my job is writing and delivering training / facilitating work groups. I have an agreement with my contracts that if I am delivering eg a day's worth of training then I am paid for a day's worth of planning and that pushing it. 

@PipneyJane, I hope it went well today for your DH and that you both have a relaxing evening.