Cuppa / Bad Timing

:-) Rosie Lea
When I'm feeling under the weather nothing perks me up like a nice hot cup of tea. My cold is starting to get better but I'm still ill and thus thoroughly deserving of all the sympathy I can get. When you're feeling off colour your outlook on life changes. Factors affecting your immediate personal environment become more important (am I warm enough? Too hot? How do I catch up on the sleep I missed last night and still get my work done?), so in this context the humble cup of tea takes on a whole new significance and becomes something I rely on to get me out of bed in the morning -- literally. I can feel the hot liquid lubricating, soothing and invigorating my insides with each swallow: it gives me the energy to face the day.

I wish I had a bigger mug!

:-( Clocks go back... or do they?
You will all know that everyone put their clocks back by an hour last Saturday night/Sunday morning, to return to normal after six months of daylight savings time. Well, not everyone! Saudi Arabia (and most other countries in this region) do not oberve daylight savings, so the clocks never change here, forward or back. This means that Saudi is always GMT+3, hence three hours ahead of UK in winter and two hours ahead of UK in summer.
This causes havoc with scheduling meetings and conference calls, because the computerised system we use tries to "correct" appointments to account for the change from daylight savings, with the result that everyone except me now has our regular weekly meetings shown in their calendars as an hour earlier than they should be. Now I've got to spend an hour tomorrow re-scheduling all our team calls to the correct times.