Ady and Davies went off Christmas shopping this morning together. Scarlett was pretty engrossed in Barbie.com for ages but finally decided to put on her 12 Dancing princesses film for us to watch and we settled down to make Christmas cards for Ady and Davies. She copied letters to write inside hers to Davies and I was slightly surprised to realise that despite having still fairly unformed letters she does indeed already have a handwriting style. I would be able to pick out hers or Davies’ letters and it definitely a style thing rather than a maturity of letter formation thing. I guess it will change over the years but I will keep her card to Davies this year and see if the future echos of a handwriting I glimpsed today do indeed come to pass. She drew a Christmas tree, with candy canes on it and a star.
Davies and Ady arrived home soon afterwards, me and the children painted a mug for Frazer’s Christmas gift from them which was a collaborative effort – Davies painted ‘Frazer’ on it and Tarly did lots of embellishing (our new favourite word round here 🙂 ). We had lunch and then I got all libraried up and they dropped me at work for the afternoon.
It was rather busier than it has been with most of the sections being crammed full of books (particularly the children’s area) and the large print and spoken word being very empty with lots of older folk who are clearly going to be alone for Christmas stocking up on things to read / listen to. Bit tear-jerking that. I spent quite a lot of the afternoon on the counter and really enjoyed talking to customers, bantering and wishing them Merry Christmas. I’d almost forgotten that actually one of the main reasons I did so well in Retail is that I am indeed a ‘People Person’ – a phrase I have always loathed but is probably really quite accurate in describing me, I do enjoy dealing with people, building relationships and enjoying the company of others. I am also a self-confessed people watcher, so the great mix of folk coming through the doors of a small town local library is people-watching fodder galore :). I am enjoying being more and more competant on the counter system too and being able to be helpful rather than dumbly scanning books in and out. I am also finding, to my utter surprise, that having previously always avoided small children while at work, I now actually do know how to deal with them. Plenty of the books and films they are borrowing are ones I have read with D & S so I am able to chat with them about them when they return them and even recommend other titles. Yesterday a small boy and his mother returned Were-Rabbit so I was able to say that it was my son’s favourite film and ask him what bits he had enjoyed. While he was in the library choosing more books someone brought back another W&G film so I was able to tell them that when they left and pff they went to get that out too. Today I had someone ask me where to find books about cats because she has been ‘adopted’ by a cat which has moved in with her. She found her book but when I checked it out for her we chatted some more and I suggested that the children’s reference area would be equally as good for ‘beginners guides to cat ownership’. I’m really enjoying the being new at the job but being able to offer advice already aspect to the job. 🙂
I am also starting to find my feet a bit more with my colleagues. It is always tricky to know quite where to pitch oneself in a new job and particularly in this one I have struggled somewhat with striking the right tone. I am getting customer service advice off people who have dealt with about 1% of the volume of customers I have done, and I am learning, to my relief, that many of the other staff are far less well read than me. Today we talked a bit about my previous career in Retail and I think I rather surprised the woman who is nominally in charge of Lancing library with some of my career history. I have a huge amount to learn from my colleagues but as the women who interviewed me said I may well be able to teach my colleagues a few things as we go along too. 🙂
At about 4.30pm I decided that my feet were aching way too much from wearing high heeled boots and spending 2 hours putting books back on shelves including going up and down the stairs countless times and two hours stood on the spot behind the counter to go shopping after work so I rang Ady to ask him to bring my jeans and my DMs but he had just pulled up outside the library! So he brought the children in to choose some books for the last 20 minutes of so of my shift. They were so well behaved, I was really proud of them :). They chose a film and a couple of books each, Ady chose a cd and when I finished I went to grab my stuff. I came down with my bag and coat and the children were all disappointed as they’d wanted to see where the behind the scenes things were so I took them back up to the staffroom and showed them my locker, where I hang my coat and where I have my teabreak. The staffroom is full of chocolates and treats at the moment, so they got introduced to my two bosses who happened to be in there and offered a chocolate biscuit each. 🙂
We left there and headed to Tescos. We are Home Alone on Boxing Day and had already promised the children that if Ady got a Christmas bonus then we’d take them to the supermarket and we’d choose lots of lovely food for Christmas (we’re at my parents on Christmas Day for lunch etc.) so tonight was the night to do that. It was really busy and the children – well actually Scarlett, were not terribly well behaved (influence of Daddy being around I reckon, she’d never behave like that with just me) but we selected all sorts of lovely luxury food and drink then I took them next door to McDonalds for dinner while Ady queued up to pay. I had a McFlurry (probably the only thing in McDonalds I would willingly eat!) and they had a Happy Meal each. Davies did really well as picking out a large amount of the words on the Happy Meal box (Flushed Away at the moment) and then we met back up with Ady in the car park.
By this point my feet were at the burning pain point of eyeing up the slippers for sale in Tescos and deciding that actually walking barefoot in December wouldn’t be that unacceptable! We arrived home, put the shopping away, got the children to bed. We had a bath and watched Torchwood with me cooking pizzas during the less action packed clips.
We have about 6 card which need delivering locally tomorrow, one of the recipients emailed me tonight to say they are expecting their second child which is fabulous news so they might well be one we knock on the door to deliver rather than shoving it through the letterbox. I have some mince pies to make, a couple of very low key home made gifts to make (bath bombs for my Mum, chocolate ginger truffles for my Dad) and our Christmas cake to ice (I’m going to give Davies a load of the ready to roll icing in various colours to make some cake topper models to go on it, he’ll love that 🙂 ) and we have been invited to a party tomorrow night but I really don’t think we’re up for it. And that’s about it. 🙂