You see it in children the fine line between joy and woe and how quickly laughter can become tears and vice versa. I guess we are all still a little the same and haven’t lost that inner child, still vulnerable, still exhuberant and still prone to moods. Today was a normal day but at the end of my working day I had a meeting with my boss about a meeting I have tomorrow which is significant. We discussed things and at the end he told me some observations that had been mentioned to him, firstly someone in management (tho’ under my boss) complained that I had been advertising a camera for sale on one of the email lists of the college, apparently the complainant did not feel this was appropriate. This did surprise me as there is a noticeboard on the college website which I could use but I thought I’d offer my stuff to the Mac users as first refusal. Actually my boss said he really wasn’t bothered but I realise that he has a duty to pass this sort of thing on to me and I do appreciate that he has done so, it just surprised me that someone should be that way and not come for example to me and say, you might want to be aware of this. I shouldn’t be surprised this sort of thing goes on everywhere I guess I’d just been lulled into a false sense of security that everything was going fine and everybody likes me..that childish naiveity. My boss told me the other thing that had been mentioned by 2 people older members of staff, he didn’t say which dept. or anything but it is of course mostly my department that I have come into contact with, was that my dress code, rugby shirt and black jeans, was regarded as a little casual. It was more an observation that I might be regarded as a technician and that CS dept. had a tendency to be regarded by members of the Uni as the poor relative but again it surprised me and I am by no means the most casual in the dept. there are a fair few combat trousers and t-shirts and plenty of jeans and assorted shirts and tops. I guess though that part of my status as a Specialist goes the responsibility to be a little more formal…pity I like rugby shirts! Anyway I felt quite chastened by it all rather like a child with the quivering bottom lip! One of the positive things to come out of it was that I feel that my boss takes a rather detached view of it all, I had feared after my first meeting with him that perhaps he was going to be like a boss I’d had at my last place that I didn’t get on with but I think that is just his superficial manner and actually we seem to get on well.

Time for bed now ‘cos it’s late and I do have to be on erudite form tomorrow or I’ll look a plonker.