I sit here with another gig under my belt. This might explain the unsightly bulge, but with each one, I feel I’m getting somewhere closer to the standard required. We played a charity gig last night, and despite it being a little chaotic in the early parts, once we got set up and playing it was good fun. It’s always nice to get a good reaction and we did. The fact that most of the audience had been drinking all day had nothing to do with it I’m sure.
By the time we got on it was bloody cold and we made a lovely meal for the entire midge population of Bolton too. It was good fun though and I was home at a much more reasonable half twelve as well.
The only other bit of news this week is one that we’ve been sitting on for a while. You may remember my hysterical over emotional rant back in April when Emily came home from the Cultural Representative Programme? It seems half the internet got involved and some of the nastiness and abuse I got, both publicly and privately was truly a bit scary. I didn’t share any of that on here as I didn’t want to fan the flames, but trust me, it was vitriolic and worrying. This meant that when I posted an update to that rant a few days later I was suitably vague about how Disney had redeemed themselves.
This was mainly because I felt that had I shared what had happened, certain parts of the internet may have exploded in disbelief and outrage and with our emotions still all over the place it was the last thing anyone needed, especially Emily.
With considerable water under the bridge now and my blog visitor levels back to the usual readers (mainly) hopefully I can share the news with you without having to check under my car each morning before turning it on. Crucially, this week Emily decided to blog about this so I feel it’s OK now for me to mention it here. It would always be her call.
So when I said that Disney had been in touch, they had. The Head of Recruitment called Emily about three days after she got home and said that they had found her a role in Merchandise (where the offending tattoo can be covered) and gave her a range of dates to consider. Surprisingly, they even offered to fund her flight back to the States. So after a lot of thought she chose to start this August and finish next June. We are hopeful that she can fly out with us when leave for our holiday. We’re just waiting for confirmation from Disney that this will be OK and that they have booked it for her.
I really, really, don’t want to open up any more debate about the rights and wrongs of what happened. I’ll say now that I won’t publish any comments (nasty or nice) about the rights and wrongs if they go any further than wishing Emily well. It is likely those so intent on abuse last time will come across this update and want to continue to call me anything from a liar to much, much worse. My blog, my rules. Only Emily and to some extent us know everything about what happened and nobody was without blame. Hopefully, this news can just be taken for what it is, which in my view is just a good end to a not very good situation.
I have another request. If you are connected to Emily and want to send her a message, please avoid doing so publicly on her Facebook. Her current managers, who were kind enough to immediately take her back on when she returned would see that.
So for those who have asked recently if Emily was coming on holiday with us etc, this is why I have avoided answering you. Sorry!
Obviously we are very pleased that Emily has a second chance at this experience and I thank those at Disney who were gracious enough to make it happen. We are also very proud of Emily who handled the issue better than I did at the time and has had the courage to go back and try this again despite the experience she had last time.
It certainly feels good to have shared that at last!
Till the next time….
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