Pressure

Here is Leo. Tied. Wanting to be free, to run off & see what Gom is up to. Gom is repairing a small section of fence he put up to stop the dogs going & snuffling under the fence, upsetting noisy barking neighbour dog. He barks quite enough, without our dogs egging him on! It is a dull overcast day, & I had thought to get more photos, with perhaps less glare. Not having much luck, but this Grevillea is not too bad. Same old, though. Sorry I have no exotic flowers to show. Nor any exotic birds, or even interesting bugs.

We have these 'free' Begonias. They just come up whenever & wherever. I think in America, they are known as 'Volunteers'?

There were some sweet little ferns growing by the makeshift fence. Gom made short work of them, & alas, they are no more.

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I wanted to post about pressure today. I am feeling under pressure to get some sort of sewing done. It is me that is pressuring me. I need to get off here, stop admiring everyone elses nice quilts & get sewing! if there are any puncutation police reading this, you will note I have left the apostrophe off elses- the truth is, I am not sure where it should go.

Back in the day, when I was living other lives, I found I hated pressure. A lot of people thrive on pressure, they love to be 'on a deadline'. Somehow it gets the adrenaline pumping & they assure me it gets the best out of them.

It has the opposite effect on me. I loathe pressure, just feel flustered & upset by it. I like to take my time, spend as much time as I need for a project or task. Deadlines make me very nervous.

A large part of Hotel life was pressure. One minute the bar would be empty, the next a line of thristy drinkers would all be clamouring at the bar. Gom loved it. He shone when he was under pressure. He loved the hustle & bustle, the excitement of it all. We had an excellent bar maid, who was just so efficient under pressure. Nothing got her flustered, & she could cope as well as anyone I have ever seen.

When we were in the Inner City Hotel, for a time I was manageress of the Restaurant. When it first opened it was at the forefront of Bistro style meals, in our city. It was busy beyond our wildest dreams. Opening for lunch & the evening meal, it just boomed, & we never had time to stop or think.

I would stagger upstairs at the end of the night, & just fall exhausted into bed. If I sat down in the afternoon, I would instantly fall asleep. I could understand that sort of pressure. I didn't really enjoy it much, but I could see the point of it all, & with great staff we could have it all running smoothly.

Cooks were probably our biggest worry. Many of them did not work well under pressure. Some of them threw tantrums, & walked out. One poor boy lost most of his hair, & his skin began peeling off. Pressure, we decided, as he told us he needed to leave. Another wore Army clothes, & made huge lunges with his personal giant knives. I was terrified he would kill someone. He had to go. Another argued hysterically with customers, telling them he would never cook a well-done steak! No matter that we told him the customer can have his steak cremated if he likes.

Some of the cooks were fun. We had one with fiery red hair. He talked non stop, & told us all sorts of intimate details about his life & times. He wore very tight jeans, & he told us he didnt wear undies. Our barmaid told him he would end up sterile. He was so worried he went out & bought undies & some looser jeans.

We called him Cookie, & we once backed a winning racehorse called Excessive Talk, in his honour. It wasn't named in his honour, we just backed it in his honour.

Back to pressure. When I worked in an office in a huge company, & had to send off telexes (remember those? I wish we had had email!) & organise conference calls, I was always furious when, at the last minute executives would come begging for 'urgent' calls, tickets, telexes, faxes to be sent. I knew those execs had been sitting about on their rear ends all day, drinking gallons of awful office coffee, or in the case of the MD & the Financial Controller etc, the coffee in the percolator that we organised every morning. Just as it was time to be getting on home, in would come a flustered exec, full of pleases, & BS about why they had to get this or that done urgently. To me that sort of pressure was just infuriating.

Mostly it was rot anyway. It was to go to Europe, & most of the countries we dealt with were happily alseep, & unaware of any urgency. To his credit, my immediate boss, who was Swiss, was the most unflappable person you could meet, & he had a wonderful calm pressence. He would take the steam out of the pressure.

How do you find pressure? Do you thrive on it? Or do you fold under it?

Queen, Under Pressure.