Saturday Night....

....was a very catch tune by Whigfield in 1996 as I recall. Apart from that it's Saturday night and I'm facing the night all on my lonesome as Wifey has gone out to a hen party (dressed in a mini skirt and low cut top) where she assures me that her and her girlfriends are going to have a meal at a respectable restaurant and it will alll be good clean fun. He girlfriend who collected her was simliarly dressed and they are one their way to ensure all the enterainment was lined up for later. I thought it best not to ask any further.

I started my job on Friday. I arrived at 08:45 but my colleagues didn't start showing up until 09:30 as it was a Friday...... My boss arrived at 10:00, but then again he did have to drive from Bournemouth. He was gone again by 13:00 and so, after a long lunch I went back to the office to read my induction pack and left for home about 16:30. I have my own office with my name on the door (tastfully done on a sheet of A4 paper...) but It's a decnt size and I even have my own meeting table and lay-up table (for speading architectural drawings out) I also have a view on to the high street. Not bad really, alothough it could do with a lick of paint.

My one dissapointment is that I don't get my laptop etc until I have had my IT induction and that's not until next Friday. I have to drive to Bournemouth for that. The training looks enthralling - 20 minues is set aside for showing me how to unpack and repack the laptop in it's case......

Next week will be the real start - Southampton Monday, office meetings on Tuesday, company wide Development Team meeting in Swindon on Wednesday, shadowing a colleage on Thursday and then off to Bournemouth for IT training on Friday. It doesn't sound like I'll have a chance to get bored.

On another note I was in Horsham today in a well know cookshop when I overheard a comotion; Next I heard a shop assistant call for an ambulance and describe the problem; I also heard the screaming. I am a first aider and so I follwed the noise to see if I could help. I found a six or seven year old boy sat on the floor with his obviously shocked mother kneeling beside him in the entrance foyer of the toilet. It transpires that said boy had grabbed hold of a knife, out of shear instinct his mother, knowing it was dangerous, grabbed the knife away from him, in doing so she sliced his hand open quite badly.

I'm not going to judge the mother; as a parent I know that despite your best efforts you don't always get everything right and this boy seemed well cared for and his mother was beside herself with worry, she also looked like she was coming down with shock. When I found them the mother had been left alone by the shop assistants and was glad of any help. I briefly checked the wound, the resultant scream and drip of blood told me not to investigate further. I simply reapplied the hand towels which were being used as a compress and kept the pressure on - all I could then do was try and keep everyone calm, which I seemed to do. The ambulance arrived and I left the situation to the pros.

Looking back I find myself disturbed by the incident in the following ways; How did this young boy get his hands on the knife? I accept that as I parent I am responsible for my child, but I keep our knifes in a block on the work top away from little hands. Yet in this cookshop he was simply able to pick up a knife. Surely the shop has a responsibility to keep such dangerous items out of reach - their expensive knives are locked in a very large display case yet the cheap knifes were displayed on a rack that went all the way to the floor.

Secondly, the shop assistants offered no help what so ever, they called an ambulance and left mother and child to it. I think the behaviour of the company as a whole and the shop assistants were abominable. What do you think?