RATINGS RATINGS RATINGS

Naive of me really to think that having gained my blue badge I was qualified to work in tourism. I was but, as they always say, you are only as good as your last tour. This means that the ratings people give you in their questionaires are all important and, in a competitive business, they are bound to be compared between different people.
Now my ratings are down from 1.2 to 1.3 - a small difference and hardly a terminal decline but not one I find I can easilt shrug off - and I now find that my ratings are worse than they were when I was a relatively new tour director. The first time I was told my ratings they were 1.1 and I even got a Well Done! from the managing director at the bottom of the letter (very proud).
So why the 'crisis'? Well, people judge you not on your knowledge or your organisational abilities so much as how they perceive you as a human being and I don't seem to come over with the warmth that other tour directors have. I am not 'symatico' in the way they are and, although I am actually a very helpful td (marking the route on peoples' maps, labelling theur seats for seat rotation) I don't rate highly ont he human qualities. I cannot win over people who don't seem to like me v much.
And, do you know, I really don't care that much. If they say that I have not run a good tour, have been rude or have treated them badly I would be concerned but sometimes it is just a question of chemistry, so I will hold on to mine and accept the consequences.
As Shakespeare has Polonius say, 'To thine own self be true and thou canst be false to no man..."

THE GREEN IMPRINT

There is something about working in the garden when there is a break in touring that makes a great contrast with working as a guide. In guiding, particularly on extended touring, your carbon footprint (the amount of global warming per day, week, etc) is huge. You are on the move in carbon dioxide emitting vehicles - planes, buses, boats - and you are always staying in different places, using bars of soap and towels once or twice before they are discarded or recycled, sleeping in hotels where lights are left on all night in the corridors. I doubt many hotels have proper recycling and, even if you leave a note for the chambermaid, saying that you wil reuse your towel on the rare occasions you have a two night stopover, they almost invariably replace it with a clean one.
Talking of cleanliness, touring in hot weather makes you take showers more often (twice a day usually) and in cold weather baths (once day but with a shower at the other end of the day) than at home, when I shower once a day and have a bath once in a blue moon as an indulgence.
Having a week off between extended tours, I kept my alarm on for six (it is usually seven at home) and have just come out from a vigorous two hour gardening session feeling self-righteous as I get some exercise, tidy up my anarchic and overgrown patch and prepare to recycle all the garden compost, having done the same with the household rubbish.
Now it is time to recycle some of my earnings - to the Inland Revenue. Tax return time...