Pumpkins and pretty things

 

Well Halloween is all done and dusted. Turns out we did our first lot of pumpkins a little bit too early. I had them on the side in the kitchen waiting for the big day and on halloween morning they both collapsed into a pile of melting fur and pumpkin juice (yuck). So I rushed down to the local shops - there were 2 pumpkins left both small and a bit scummy - but they were duly purchased and seemed to keep son happy. That's them in the photo.

The new ones have started to go hairy so I've put them in the garden so they can implode without me having to clear them up.

You may be impressed by the pretty purple flowers in my garden - despite the fact it's so late in the year. This is where one of my dirty little secrets comes in. I'm absolutely rubbish at gardening. I have never planted anything that has grown. So basically I let my garden go somewhat feral. However, I do miss having flowers. A couple of years ago I decided to sort that out by going online and buying loads of fake flowers from companies that do stuff for weddings.

End result, my garden has pretty flowers in it 24x7x365. My mother is utterly appalled at me, she loves gardening and actually volunteers at the local Royal Horticultural Society centre. My dad is never happier than when he is moving a tree from one end of their garden to the other (yes really - whole trees!). I suspect their amazing gardening skills are what gave me the love of nice flowers in a garden. Sadly I didn't develop the same gardening skills through osmosis.

Lots of other things going on with business. I've had to purchase a new mobile phone. I'm going to say something shocking here.... I hate mobile phones. As a result of this I've accepted charity for years and whenever a friend or colleague has thrown a mobile phone away I've gratefully taken it and used it as my own.

As a result my mobiles have always been a bit flaky - not something I can have when the phone will be the heart of my business. I researched for literally days and in the end I wimped out. I've got something quite basic and I'll stick on a pay as you go tariff. If and when money starts to come in with the business I can always change it. I think I'd rather that than get myself tied into an expensive contract and then in six months time be stuck with that and no money coming in. I suspect this proves that I'm a phone Luddite - I can live with that. You never know I may become a fanatic like the rest of the world.

I've also set up 3 twitter accounts, one for the real me (ie. the person writing this blog), one for the business me and one for my new business. Twitter has always been a bit like mobile phones for me. I never really got it, but I need to get my head around it so I can get a handle on promotion. I spent quite a bit of time on there yesterday looking at tweets about the US Election. I'm still quite lost about what I'm supposed to be doing on there. I've got to get a handle on it though, so watch this space as I try to become more competent.

Don't get me wrong - I do use social media, but I'm no spring chicken and it wasn't around when I was a teenager, so I only do the things that I can see a real purpose in. For time wasting I'd rather do gaming. However, LinkedIn and WhatsApp are the things that I feel really at home on. I've also been a lurker on TikTok from when it launched in the UK - but I guess the telling thing about how old and scroaty I am is that I heard about it from the BBC News website and thought it sounded interesting. I'm a bit uncomfortable about giving away my privacy - which, in case you wondered, is why this blog is largely anonymous.

Another thing I've done is get a free photo editing tool. When I was employed we had licences to posh tools, but I don't have money to throw around now. The tool I've gone with is called GIMP and it's free. Anyway, that's why today's photo is so psychedelic. I had a 10 minute play to see what I could do with the tool. Though I did have moment of fear. I couldn't work out how to save as a .png so actually had to type into a Google search the following legend 'How do I save my gimp image as a .png'. I literally squared my shoulders as I hit return worried about what would come back. I didn't need to worry - it new exactly what I was talking about (phew).

It reminds me of a time years ago when I worked in sales and was going out to do a pitch. It was for a training solution that would have some online bits and bobs and some face-to-face role play. I was sitting in the middle of an open plan office doing my sales presentation. I needed some good images to support what I was saying. In the online photo library the company used I typed the search ..... 'role play'. I'll leave it to your imagination the type of images I was suddenly presented with. I was thrashing around at my keyboard trying to get rid of them and ended up having to just slam down the lid of my laptop. A moment that's stayed with me for years - mainly because of the images I saw.

Still far from the most embarrassing things that have happened to me in the workplace - but this has been a lengthy blog - so perhaps I'll save those for another day of brain wandering.