And then there was the bomb!

So much excitement over the temporary new addition to the family that I almost forgot to update you on the other big event of the week. To current readers you will be pleased to know that our short term, four legged guest has been returned to his home courtesy of the PDSA who confirmed that he had been chipped and identified his owners who had been frantic for 3 days wondering where he had got to. After breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, dog food, dog biscuits, dog chocolate and I don't know what else I suspect he left the bodybuilder's flat heavier than when he arrived. He certainly didn't want for company as there appears to have been a stream of visitors cominig to meet him during his short stay.As regular readers know, Santa has to do a bit of moonlighting during the year to make ends meet between the busy seasons each November and December. Christmas seems to come earlier every year with the first card arriving last week - from Royal Mail appropriately - I suppose that allows them to say that Christmas deliveries are being made on time. Decorations have been in the shops since October, jostling briefly with halloween stuff and now in full swing. I may be getting old (about 1200 years actually) but Christmas just isn't the same as it used to be. Now 2,000 years ago - that was a really special one - and before that the Romans had a pretty jolly time at Saturnalia.Anyway, back to the plot. With the changes in tendering and procurement legislation various statutory bodies are now providing training courses for the "third sector" on the new requirements to ensure that they are still able to bid for business beyond 2010. I had just sat through two fascinating seminars on "personalisation" which seems to run along the lines of "you have a choice of three things on the menu but two of them are off - unless you want to pay privately of course" and "Equal Opportunities Impact Assessments" - riveting - when my name was called out. I won't tell you my alter ego but it is always a surprise when someone uses it out of context. Aha - another seminar choice I thought but instead there was a telephone call for me.Panic from the Chief Elf who I had left in charge as a second world war bomb had been unearthed just yards from the grotto. He had set the evacuation plan in process and all the little elves and their helpers were moved out to the overflow grotto but the dwarves that run that were getting very grumpy and so I had to leap on the silver sleigh and go and calm everyone down. When I got back to the seminar the head of adult social care - Peter Blister - had just finished his address which concluded "and so now you know the sort of things we will be assessing you on when we carry out our inspections at the beginning of the new year". EOIAs will defintely feature but as far as the rest of it I will just have to wing it and hope that a little bauble or two might ease the workings of bureaucracy. Hey ho or EO IA