So after the project I was on a high and then came crashing down to a low and now I’m back. You know those ones when it seems like there’s a curse following you, whatever you do, bad luck chases after you like a bad smell.

First there was man child boss. I have just about had it up to my back tooth with him. Its just got to the point where just looking at his face or hearing his voice makes me want to hurl. He is the poster child for contraception, are you getting how much love there is between me and him.

I needed a break, if only for a day or two. However end of the month so had to prepare for presentation. I needed a bit of help with a report, his nonsense report which doesn’t add any particular value. So useless in fact that it was rubbished when it was presented at the meeting. Well he said no, he would not, it wasn’t even a big part just add a figure and he said no, because I should have done this since. When man child boss speaks he’s not very clear, and he kind of trails of mid sentence, never got it myself but the dormant among my group seem to. We have to have a meeting after every meeting we have with him to clarify what he just said. Every time he makes any changes to a template we end up with 5 or 6 versions of what we thought he had said. He is even worse at talking to women, when my sister came to a works dinner with me she had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting next to him. “Not very refined”, I think were her words. Poor dear, its not totally his fault, being a 30 year old virgin must be quite tough, but I digress.

So he would not help but instead decided to distract me while I tried to get said useless report done and finish my presentation and then once he was finished he started asking when will we finish. I had my earphones in at this point so as not to be bothered him when all of a sudden this huge belly comes brushing up against my arm. It wasn’t sexual harassment, he just has the stomach of a 8 month pregnant woman so was not to close. “When will you finish”, I say I don’t know. “Well you should have an idea (bearing in mind I used a day to do what everyone else took a week to do). I try to explain that I am only literally just sitting down to start (this was the day of the opening ceremony), but he wasn’t having any of it. I got very wound up at that point, I prefer to do stress with at least 6 hours sleep behind me but at that point I hadn’t slept at all, in the end I got up I told him he should do it himself, got into the car and went home (me too, sometimes I dey craze).

I get a message later that night, school prefect. She understands my point but what I did undermined his authority as a leader and sent the wrong message to the team. Sorry he’s a manager but leader he is not, I just thought idiot get off my line. If he lead the team into a gutter would she follow just because he’s the leader. I tried to explain but then thought what’s the point, she like the other numptees in the team have the attitude not to challenge your boss for no other reason than because he’s the boss so that was that. Did the presentation the following day and then went on leave.

The first three days of the leave did nothing for my stress levels. A faulty cable or transmitter meant that I had 3 days without light. That was the day that the builders decided to turn up and do my kitchen and wardrobes. Yep 9 months after receiving the deposit, they finally arrived. The job was supposed to last a couple of days, it took them 2 weeks. Then when they finished the boss came to ask me for 200ghs for transport back to Kumasi. My dad was around when they first arrived but had to leave before they finished. He had given the guy enough money before he left including cost of transport, but this joker spent it thinking that my dad was father christmas or something and had left money with me to give to him. I only had 100ghs on me so he got that and a lecture on managing money. 100ghs down and hadn’t even left the house, imagine.

So they finished, then had to wait for the plumber to fix the sink, it took him a week to arrive, had to wash up old school style with a large bucket of water for a week. That was the first couple of days, but then I got bored of the whole washing up thing so my diet consisted of fried yam from the local seller so I didn’t have to bother with plates and stuff.

While all that was going on, I got dumped, well I assume I got dumped anyway. I started seeing a guy in April. It was something that came out of no where. I was at home and this guy adds me to his facebook page, I check the mutual friends and its like a friend of my cousin. I didn’t really think nothing of it, but then he sends me a message, we get chatting and we met up. We seemed to hit it off, we laughed a lot, talked a lot, in fact we spoke everyday. I shouldn’t really have been surprised. We would meet up on Monday and some Thursday evenings. Never on weekends or public holidays due to family engagements, work obligation or the boys. Actually tell a lie he did invite me to his house once on a Saturday, I had fallen ill and had told him earlier that day, I don’t know if he didn’t believe me or if it was just convenient, but he turns up at my house with a bottle of wine. I think it was an expected booty call, but when I’m ill, I am pissed off, and when I’m pissed off I am not good to be around.

The meetings and the phone calls started getting infrequent after that then one day he says let’s meet up. So we do, we chat, I ask what’s up, and he says oh nothing, I can’t remember exactly what was said but I do remember him asking when was the last time I saw Kwame, and he heard that I was all over him during the christmas. Now if you would recall I briefly had a flirt with short stuff Kwame, but thought better due to his martial status and vertical challenge (no offence). I totally forgot they were friends and to be honest it was such an insignificant part of my life, no bodily fluids were involved so I forgot about it.

I was a bit surprised by this statement, because, we chatted and everything but all over, that’s laughable. But I digress. After the final meeting it went dead, I did notice but was so busy that I didn’t let it bother me. But then when I sat back and thought about it all and with the lights off, cowboy plumber, crazy builders, and bully boss, it was the final straw. It could be the Kwame saga come to bite me on the arse, or it could be that he is just a jackass, but at least tell a sista that you don’t want to see her again.

It made me sad because although he wasn’t my type to begin with, I had grown to like him, and actually used to look forward to our Monday nights. He had spent a substantial part of his life in UK, this was a big plus for me, no “what do you mean its cold, you’re british”, or “is the pepper too much for you”, and we could just relate. I just thought he was a nice guy, and I missed him. Especially since my mum and dad left, they got on my last nerve but I do miss the company. But oh well, he’s gone, over it now.

I dealt with everything by staying in bed, did that for 5 days, then I got up, painted my room. Then I went back to bed, took out a lot of frustrations on the poor ECG call centre. Then I wallowed in self pity, then I got a call from my best friend, had a 3 hour conversation with my sister. Then I put Lauryn Hill on the IPod, danced around the house and now I can face the world.

So that’s what its all been about. I’ve made a plan, by christmas I should be in London. I have become very nostalgic for the place, I haven’t been there for 2 years but I miss it, I miss walking down the high street, sitting at Eat or Starbucks with a skinny vanilla latte having a chat with friends, I even miss the old folks, I miss M&S and Tesco value, I miss it all. I know that there was a reason I left but the longer I am here the more vague those reasons are becoming. So I am going to see what that was.

In the meantime I need to make some extra income. If I can get the $400 for my mortgage from another source of income, I could live quite comfortably in this country. So any ideas?

Speaking of cash, need to go work for my salary.

Until the nextime…