We have had a friend of my daughter staying with us for the past few weeks. She is a very easy houseguest, cooks and cleans and is quiet, well behaved and funny. It’s nice having another friendly face around the place, to help us get over the aching loss of whats-her-name and the other one, now they’ve left for university. Her most entertaining stories are from her work. She is an engineering student, working in a building firm over the summer, and is the only woman there. It’s been hard, but she’s managed to do very well, and was awarded this week a grade 6 welding certificate, which is a very impressive feat to achieve over only 3 months, in spite of her habit of incinerating her working gloves. I think she’s on her fifth pair (“See where the nail polish is missing there? It got melted off”). She had to resubmit her final piece after the original pipe was found to have a mysterious 6 mm crack in it. Her boss thought it was probably good for her to have this knock back, to stop her getting too cocky. In any event, her resubmitted piece was perfect, and now she is legally allowed to weld together pieces of stainless steel pipe with a diameter of between four and ten inches. The whole business is absolutely fascinating to me. I’ve obviously been steeped in healthcare for so long that I have no idea how anything else works in the world. Her story of accidentally knocking a bottle of shampoo into the work toilet, and overflowing the bathroom in suds was also very funny. Best wishes for the future, B, and we will miss you.
