Oh yes,it has arrived, I never thought it would.... I am ecstatic that in eight hours time I will be out of here for four weeks. I do have to go to our own office on Monday morning, to do a couple of things, but that is it.

Poor Suzette has been banished from the office, her work permit has expired and they are having trouble getting her another one, it can take weeks. So she is at home for the duration, of course she is not supposed to be working, but she is. We will have lunch on Monday, so we can catch up, I miss her when she is not here. Everyone is furious with Inhuman Resources, as we call them - they knew her work permit was about to expire and did nothing. This is so typical of them, they never do anything on time.

I've actually been looking up the regulations regarding 3rd country nationals who are long-term EU residents. These apply to me, as I have a 10 year residence permit for France, and it appears I have very similar working rights to EU nationals, the only countries where I can't work more or less automatically are UK, Ireland and Denmark. I'm going to try and find out what formalities there are, as I know HR will not do anything about it, unless pushed. I've already told the Resources Director (who is nothing to do with HR, he is in charge of staffing the projects) that I am not going to tolerate being restricted in the projects I can work on just because HR cannot be bothered to get work permits. Unfortunately Suzette doesn't fall into the long-term category yet, but there are a couple of other people that I will be telling about this, they can also use the knowledge.

There are other changes around here, Tom is leaving for another project in the Netherlands (lucky, lucky man!), so we are getting a person called Jacques, who is already working for the giant company that took us over. Madame LA is leaving our group and joining another one (of supposed experts, there have been a few comments about this), so we will be getting a Monsieur LA. This will not happen immediately, I think all of them will be here when I come back from holidays, as there is a certain handover period. All I can say is I wish I were going to the Netherlands. Think of all the stitching I could get done on a four hours each way train trip every week! I must try and work on our Resources Director.... in fact, I would rather be almost anywhere but here, the combination of at least three hours travel per day, plus the relentless nose-picking that goes on is not pleasant.

I had some good news, I am going to do the Susan O'Connor (of "Inspirations" fame) classes later in the year, she is coming to Paris for three one-day classes. I signed up for all three, they are broderie traditionelle, not counted thread, but should be fun for a change. They are: monogram in whitework, thread painting and stumpwork, quite different things for me to do. When I used to get "Inspirations", hers were the designs I liked most. I don't get it any longer, because it is expensive to subscribe from here, plus I was finding that some issues had nothing except baby stuff, and that just doesn't interest me. If I see that there is something interesting, I just order the individual issue.

Well, I had better go and finish my work and see what's what.... I hope I can get out of here before seven pm, it would be great.