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1 April 2020
(Wednesday) - After the Night Shift
Yesterday evening I had this naïve idea that
when I got petrol I might also get some food from Sainsbury's filling station
for the night shift. Oh dear... I got to the filling station in Aylesford to
find that the door to the kiosk was locked. They were only selling petrol (no
food), and all transactions were being conducted via a drawer underneath
a window. There were two people inside the kiosk. One was doing a barely
adequate job of dealing with the public by taking their money; the other just
seemed to be getting in his way. The one who wasn't taking the money was
determined that no one in the forecourt should stand within ten yards of
anyone else, and several times leaned on top of the one doing the work so
that he could rudely bellow out through the serving drawer. It struck me as
odd that this fellow was concerned that I should not be within ten yards of
someone else whilst queuing to pay for petrol, but he was quite happy to be
physically on top of his colleague. Perhaps they were very good friends? Seeing there was no food to be had I went up
to the Sainbury's supermarket where there were two
women guarding the door. One said I had five minutes to get my shopping; the
other said I was too late. I walked away leaving them having an argument
about the time. If nothing else their petrol was fifteen
pence a litre cheaper than it was a month ago. I went into work and did my night shift.
Fortunately I'd brought a sandwich so I wasn't as hungry as I might have
been. Bearing in mind that we needed some bits and bobs I went back to
Sainsbury’s after work. They were apparently opening half an hour early for
NHS staff… I got to the supermarket to find a queue of
dozens of people waiting outside. I marched up to the front and asked if this
was the queue for the NHS workers. “Oh no” I was told with a smile. “In
you go”. Everyone else who was lined up was just waiting for the store to
open properly. It was all rather embarrassing really. I apologised to the
people in the queue and (rather pathetically) explained that I’d been
up all night to which I got smiles and thumbs-up and was told the quicker I
got my shopping the quicker I’d be back to work. So I went into the store and somehow walked
through a portal into another dimension. Outside everyone was happy and smiling.
Inside the customers were all in worlds of their own, and the staff all had
faces like smacked arses. I asked one assistant where such-and-such was. She
turned from the shelf she was filling, told me she didn’t work there and was
a shopper like me, and went back to filling her shelf. When I went to the
check-out to pay, the sourpuss at the till told me that I would rather use
the self-service counter. As I came home I listened to the radio. I did
chuckle when one expert put the pundits on the radio in their place. He told
them that their trouble was that they kept giving air-time to people who were
talking about matters of public health, disease control and epidemiology when
they clearly didn’t know anything about it. I think that fellow had a point. Once home I unloaded the shopping, went to
bed and slept right through until Pogo woke me by treading on my goolies. Pogo is a lump, and when he treads on your goolies, you know about it. I spent a few minutes making a Lego van for
Lego world; I’ve got this idea of incorporating a Lego used car lot but until
my base plates arrive I can’t really do very much with Lego world. I had a
look on eBay to track them. They’ve left China and have an estimated delivery
date of any time between Friday 3 April and Thursday 14 May. That’s rather
precise, isn’t it. "er indoors TM" took a lunch
break and we took the dogs to the park. Why is it that when I go to the park
I meet all the “special” and “delightful” people, but when she
comes along we never meet any of them? As luck would have it, "My Boy TM"
and Cheryl were at the park taking little Rolo for
a walk (Treacle spotted them first). We shouted hellos and walked
together in a socially distanced manner. Not for fear of contracting any
viruses but just in case any do-gooder might squeal us up for being an
unlawful gathering. We came home via the co-op field where
Treacle and Pogo shot through a hedge into someone’s garden where then spent
five minutes eating unmentionable stuff from a compost heap. We came home; "er
indoors TM" got on with her working from home, there
seemed to be quite a kerfuffle with some client who had a problematical
dongle. I put “Bottom” on Netflix and spent a couple of hours doing
the ironing. I hope its dinner time soon. I’m feeling
rather peckish and I bought strawberries and cream when I went shopping
earlier,,, |
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2 April 2020
(Thursday) - A Rant, A Remembrance
You would think that a sensible way to
arrange the bed would be for the larger ones (the humans) to lay down
and then the smaller ones (the canines) arrange themselves around the
larger ones, wouldn’t you? Pogo came to bed, laid down next to me and
started pushing. Once he’d moved me about a foot or so he shifted over making
room for Fudge, then kept pushing me until he had enough space for himself. I did try pushing back several times, but in
the end it was easier just to try to sleep on the space I had left. Over brekkie I had a bowl of muesli which I
scoffed whilst watching an episode of “The Good Place”, then I had a
quick look at the Internet. Yesterday I’d made a throwaway comment on
Facebook suggesting that the current ongoing world-wide crisis is conclusive
proof that the anti-vaccination nut-cases are totally wrong. This morning I
saw that quite a few people had clicked the “like” button and a few
had shared the comment too. That was nice… I had a look at my emails. I had a connection
suggestion on LinkedIn. At first sight I would have nothing at all with an “independent
pharmaceutical consultant” but on closer inspection it was someone with
whom I was at school. I clicked the “connect” button only to be told
that the connection request could not be made. Isn’t Linkedin
crap? It suggests endless people with whom you have nothing on common and
doesn’t let you connect with the people you want to. As I drove to work I listened to the pundits on
the radio who were rather worrying me today. I rarely blog about work, but today I will
make an exception. About fifteen years ago there was a far-reaching
investigation into the provision of diagnostic testing in the UK (blood
tests, smear tests, urine tests... all the sort of stuff that I do every day
to which everyone else turns up their noses and says "yuk"), After
a *lot* of (so-called) fact-finding the chap who ran this
investigation announced that the way forward for the UK's diagnostic services
was to close many of the laboratories and to centralise much of the testing.
No one seemed to think it strange that this was completely at odds with what Lord
Darzi was recommending for the rest of the NHS at the same time (i.e.
building up local services at a local level) but what did we who actually
do the job know? Bearing in mind that many people involved in
doing the jobs that were being centralised weren't high-paid, were (for
the most part) bringing in the family's second wage, and weren't prepared
to relocate, many highly skilled laboratory workers packed it in and went to
work elsewhere. The labs which survived the culls therefore found themselves
with massively increased workloads but with no extra staff to help with that
workload. Effectively the nation made a deliberate decision to shed skilled
staff, close some diagnostic laboratories and massively over-work others. Today we see the consequences of that
decision... So... Do we see if we can get those qualified and
skilled people back into the workforce? Do we try to build up downgraded
hospital laboratories? No. It would seem that the way forward is to open
up diagnostic testing to anyone who wants to have a go. And
that's where I get annoyed. For years diagnostic testing has operated
under the most stringent regulations to ensure the highest possible quality
of results. This isn't protectionist, this is because doing such testing
takes an element of skill and expertise, and the consequences of getting it
wrong are serious (and potentially deadly). Are those volunteering to
"have a go" going to operate to the same standards as the
rest of us? I sincerely hope so, but I can see this being the thin end of the
wedge. How long will it be before the entire medical diagnostic field is
de-skilled and replaced with anyone who fancies wearing a white coat? And how far will this go? Much of the NHS's
transport system has already been replaced by volunteers. When I spent much
of the night at the local hospital’s A&E department on 14
December 2019 I met a chap who had been waiting for over six hours for a
volunteer to come and drive him home. When you turn up at an A&E department
next year will you see a physician who has been to medical school for years,
or will you see a St John's Ambulance volunteer who has done a few evening
and weekend courses in her spare time and thinks that "Holby City" is real? (takes a deep breath...) At tea break my phone beeped with a
notification. A friend had died. We first met Hurksy
through the noble art of hunting for film pots under rocks. Incredibly
dedicated to this pursuit he would not walk away until he'd found what he was
looking for. We'd waste hours hunting for geocaches that weren't there any more. Up until he decided he's rather hunt for
Tupperware up a tree than on the ground we'd go out every weekend. All over
Kent and Essex, with several weekends away in Sussex, and one particularly
memorable trip to Cornwall. He was very jealous of my hat ("the
world's sexiest hat"); he thought I didn't know that he'd set light
to it on a summer barbecue. He earned the sobriquet "Gordon
Tracey" from the time when he failed to completely clear the river
he was jumping one New Year's Day. He'd been ill for some time, and passed away
last night. There's never a good time to die, but what
with the ongoing lock-down his funeral will be a rather quiet thing. I hope
there's a remembrance event at some point. |
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3 April 2020 (Friday)
- High Risk
Although the dogs gave me some space last
night, one of them was having a nightmare in the small hours. Not only did
they wake me, but their plaintive cries were so unsettling that I didn’t get
back to sleep after that. Over a bowl of muesli I watched an episode of
“The Good Place” then peered into the Internet. \With jokes and games
and videos being posted it was nowhere near as dull as often it can be. As I drove to work I listened to the pundits
on the radio who were interviewing yet another vacuous windbag, They do that
a lot. This one was talking about how in the current crisis it has become the
normal thing to be working from home and then made wild speculation about how
society will change in the future, but with absolutely no evidence to
back up what he was claiming. I do wish the people who plan these radio
shows wouldn't keep wheeling on these idiots who seem to live in cloud cuckoo
land where the "might-bes" play with
the "ifs". Is there *really* no actual news they
might be broadcasting at the moment? This was followed by the "Thought for
the Day" section in which someone or other was dribbling on about
how he only went to church to suck up to God, but now that the churches are
closed he misses the other people he meets there. He then wittered on about
how people like meeting other people at church and wasted a good five minutes
of prime-time radio. Whilst there is always a need to pause for thought and
reflection, when you consider that only fourteen per cent of the UK
population actually
go to a church perhaps something that appeals to the majority might be a
better use of the TV licence fee that pays for Radio Four? With a few minutes to spare I went to
Sainsburys for the early opening for NHS workers. I arrived to see there was
already a queue of dozens of normal people which was stretching round the car
park waiting for the eight o'clock opening. At half past seven four of us
"key workers" walked past them and were let in to get our shopping.
EI hadn't given me a list so I got what I thought we needed. Rice, cereals,
sugar, biccies, a bottle of plonk and turnips for
the dogs (they *love* turnip). The woman on the checkout watched me with
suspicion as though she expected me to attack her at any minute. She was
certainly judging what I was buying. As I walked back to my car I thought I might
deploy a cheeky munzee, but the app had gone west.
I whinged about this on Facebook; it would seem the app had gone west for a
lot of people. What with much of the nation on lock-down and geocaching
officially declared to be marginally more dangerous than poking hungry tigers
with a sharp stick (have you seen the geocaching "discussion"
groups recently?) there's been an upsurge in Munzee-ing
amongst those who are allowed out of the house. You would have to work hard
to catch a virus by scanning a bar-code (but I'm sure it could be done if
you tried hard enough). I'm told the app randomly returned to
normality at some point during the morning. A *lot* of people are currently locked
up at home all day long. I'm very lucky that I can got out of the house to go
to work. I did my bit today, but (apart from a Whitby bun in the afternoon)
it was rather dull. Just as I was about to go home my phone
beeped. A text from NHS England. They apologised to me that I wasn’t
officially labelled as “high risk” last week, but they were asking for
clarification before reconsidering my case. Am I at risk of going down with the virus?
There’s no denying that I knowingly come into contact with it many times
every day, but that’s my job. I can’t imagine why I’m being considered to be
“high risk”. I don’t want to be; I don’t want to be stuck indoors for
three months. Once home we took the dogs out for our daily permitted
one bit of exercise. For the first time ever both Treacle and Pogo ran off. I
think they’d got the scent of a rabbit. Poor Fudge was too slow and was
captured before he realised what was going on. I’m going to make the most of these dog walks
whilst I still can… |
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4 April 2020
(Saturday) - A Lithuanian Ale Sort Of Day
"er indoors TM" went to the
loo in the small hours and there was a mass exodus as all the dogs followed her.
I got up for the loo an hour later. No one followed me, and I came back to
find all the dogs had made themselves comfortable in the warm space where I
had been. With the on-going lock-down our usual weekend
walk was out the window, and with absolutely nothing on the agenda we didn’t
wake up until after nine o’clock. I made myself some toast; rather paranoid
about using bread. With "er indoors TM"’s
car being in the garage for the foreseeable future and shops having massive
queues and keeping 1970s hours I’m rather paranoid about the shopping at the
moment. There’s no real need for this; being a “key worker” I am
allowed to jump the queues (provided I get there early enough) and we
aren’t short of anything really, but still I worry. I had a little look at the Internet. There
were posts on Facebook from some rather thick people who (having totally
misunderstood scientific papers which are clearly beyond their understanding)
were advocating eating very acidic and alkaline foods to defend themselves
from corona virus. The idea is that corona virus cannot survive in any pH
below five or above eight so taking your own body’s pH above or below these
levels would stop the virus from infecting you. It is a brilliant idea in theory… in practice
your lungs and kidneys would thwart any attempt to alter your body’s pH so
right up to the point where trying to do so killed you. We took the dogs out for a walk. "er indoors TM" wanted to carry on
working on the series of geocaches she started planning last weekend. I
wanted to test out using “Hannah” (my GPS unit) to plot where
we’d walked onto a map. And the dogs wanted a walk. So we all went out four a
four-and-a-half mile wander. The walk went well; it was a bright day. We
saw quite a few other people but managed to keep far enough away to prevent
spread of virus (they can only jump so far, you know!). We met several
other dogs and Pogo only barked at one. We came home; after a quick Whitby bun and a
cuppa we went out into the garden where I made my video for the “Really Skillful Angling/Toilet Roll Challenge”. It would
have been easier with the dogs not in the way, but that’s my world these
days… I then popped over the road to the shop. They
have a rather impressive international beer selection, and I (possibly)
bought far too much beer. "er indoors TM"
sat by the pond and had a bottle of Russian lager; I sat half-way up the
garden and drank a rather interesting selection of Lithuanian ales whilst
reading Alexei Sayle’s autobiography on my Kindle
until it was too cold to sit in the garden.. "er indoors TM" baked some
bread and made some soup. It was rather good; we scoffed it whilst watching “Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”; Lord Lloyd-Webber has arranged
for some of his musicals to be available free to the public on You-Tube for a
limited time during the ongoing coronageddon. There’ no denying that today wasn’t quite the
day I was planning; I can’t pretend to like the current lock-down, but I
understand the rationale behind it, and if I have to abide by it, I will make
the most of it. |
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5 April 2020 (Sunday)
- Early Shift
I had a relatively good night; I *think*
one of the dogs might have had a growl in the night, but they do that. I watched an episode of "The Good
Place" as I scoffed granola then had a look at the Internet. Silly
memes and jokes were in abundance, but unfortunately so was utter
misunderstanding (again). One vague acquaintance was posting messages
of stark terror having drawn completely the wrong conclusion from the fact
that there is more than one strain of the corona virus, and this left me in
something of two minds. On the one hand there is no denying that many
people aren't that well educated and really should try to better themselves.
On the other hand some people do themselves no favours by reading stuff they
really don't understand, confusing themselves, and then showing their
ignorance by trying to tell the world something which is factually wrong. Am I really being that judgmental when I
can't help but think that if more people had paid attention at school they
would know better than to believe the drivel posted on-line by other people
who had paid even less attention at school. There was a surprising amount of traffic
about as I drove to work at seven o'clock this morning. More so than most
Sunday mornings. Where was everyone going? (bearing in mind it was seven
o'clock on a locked-down Sunday morning). As I drove to work there was something on the
radio about how maggots can be used as forensic evidence. I would have liked for
the people presenting this information to have explained how, rather than
having them continually repeating themselves. But I suspect that this
information might have turned the stomachs of the very few people who were
listening to the radio at that time in the morning. The news then came on. There was talk of the
new leader of the Labour party having a go at the government's handling of coronageddon. I suppose he has to have a go at them;
that's his job. But realistically no government would be able to do much more
than the current bunch have done (without declaring martial law). My
main concern with the new leader of the Labour party is that we might have
yet another one determined to make himself unelectable. The Labour party have
a habit of doing that. Jeremy Corbyn, Gordon Brown, Neil Kinnock, Michael
Foot… Sometimes I wonder if the Conservative party gets to pick the Labour
leader, or whether the idiotic choice of leader is a clever move on the part
of the Labour party in that they get to criticise the government of the day
safe in the knowledge that they will *never* actually have to
put their money where their mouth is. I got to the works car park. With a few
minutes spare I walked round to Tesco for bread and margarine. I went to pay;
the woman on the counter pretended to be busy so I used the self-service
thingy. When I went to shove my card in the slot I saw just how grubby the
card reader was so (bearing in mind just how hygiene-mental the world is
right now) I asked the woman at the tills how often the card reader was
cleaned. She (rather contemptuously) replied "I don't know - I
just work here". Well, if she don't know... I've seen a lot of people posting on social
media about how much abuse shop workers are getting at the moment. But from my
own experience shop workers aren't helping themselves very much right now. I went in to work and did my thing As I did I
found myself whistling all the songs from "Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolour Dreamcoat" that were going through my head after last
night's TV performance. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the
glorious day outside, but I wasn't missing much today. With the world on
lock-down none of my friends were doing anything more adventurous than
sitting in their own gardens. I sat in mine yesterday; it's not that exciting
an activity really. With work done I came home, and we took the
dogs round the park for our daily exercise. There were quite a few “normal
people” in the park. One rather idiotic child stood on a bench and
started some odd fidgety dance whilst making strange noises. Apparently he
didn’t like dogs… I considered telling him that if he didn’t like dogs then
he shouldn’t try to deliberately attract them, but I thought better of it. The people who hide painted rocks had been out;
we saw a few, but decided against moving them. Not for fear of the virus, but
from the public backlash of doing something (supposedly) so reckless. In a novel break with tradition the dogs were
terribly behaved. Fudge wasn’t too bad, but Pogo and Treacle ran off twice. This evening we watched the Queen’s address
to the nation. Apart from her annual Christmas speech, the Queen rarely talks
to us in this way; coronageddon must be serious for
her to do so. I must admit I was disappointed. I have no idea what I was expecting, but just
to have Her Majesty repeat what we’ve all been told (in an address which
was recorded a few days ago) was something of a disappointment. Mind you,
on the plus side, the Queen looked well. |
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6 April 2020 (Monday)
- This n That
After a better night I watched an episode of
“The Good Place” before having my usual peer into the Internet. This
morning I had a rather snotty message from the chap who sold me a Lego model
Cadillac last September. On the day when I put the thing together I wrote
here “To be honest I could have made the car in a fraction
of the time had I not needed to keep popping to my Lego store to get spare
parts. Am I being unfair in expecting that when I buy a Lego set from eBay,
it should be complete?”. I gave the chap
neutral feedback about it on eBay, and now (seven months later) he’s
got the hump and wanted me to contact Facebook to amend what I wrote. As the day went on I found myself exchanging
emails with this seller. He maintained that what he'd sold me was a complete
set. I took the line that bits were missing (because they were). From his point of view I was in the wrong for
not giving him a glowing report. From my point of view he sold me something
that was not as was described and then took seven months to respond to my
complaint which he then denied entirely. In the end I offered to contact the people at
eBay and ask them to change my initial neutral feedback of "Item was
not complete" to a negative feedback of "Item was not
complete. Seller took seven months to respond, then did so with a stream of
confrontational messages". I think this has effectively closed the
matter. In over six hundred transactions on eBay I've
only had a handful of bad experiences, but I suppose no matter where you shop
there will be instances when things don't go smoothly. But doesn’t this sum up all that is wrong with the “feedback”
mentality? The accepted etiquette is that you give full marks no matter how
crappy the goods or service received. Whenever I buy an e-book on Amazon the
thing always comes with a plea from the author to give them a five-star rating.
I know of a few authors whose e-books have got such five star ratings from
their mates (who haven’t even read the books that they’ve rated). I
can’t help but wonder how many people gave my eBay fellow a good review
because that is the expected thing to do even though their purchase wasn’t
what they were hoping for? I saw my father-in-law was still posting
misinformation on Facebook about the dangers of 5G technology. There is a
crackpot group in Hastings who are trying to scare the masses about the possible
dangers of 5G technology despite their so called “scientific evidence”
showing a really fundamental misunderstanding of science. What they are
saying is akin to claiming that all insurance is bad because a third-party
insurance policy on your motorbike doesn’t cover water damage from a leaking
washing machine. I have a theory that the person leading this
campaign doesn’t wasn’t a 5G mast built near her house because it might block
her views. I might be wrong… I wonder how I might find
out. As I drove to work this morning the pundits
on the radio were talking about the Prime Minister having been admitted to
hospital last night. His bout of illness with the corona virus had taken a
turn for the worse, and I found myself thinking about the chap today. Boris Johnson would seem to be making a fair
stab at being Prime Minister; better than I thought he would. Several times
over the last few years I said that Teresa May had made such a stuff-up of
Brexit that whoever took over would be seen as the saviour of the nation, and
judging by his election victory last year Boris was certainly seen as that.
His recent firm stance about social distancing has shown him to be a decisive
leader where others might have dithered. Now he's gone down with the disease
himself, self-isolated, been admitted to an NHS hospital, and with reports
that he's been given oxygen he really is being seen to be suffering with the
rest of us. Rightly or wrongly, unless he deliberately
makes a total tits of things, he will probably go down in history as one of
the most popular Prime Ministers ever. With dog food being in short supply at home I
went to Sainsburys before work where there was already a queue forming. I
joined the queue to find that (yet again) my "idiot magnet"
was working at full power. I was directly behind a "rather delightful
fellow" who was loudly ranting about how he'd come to get the
shopping even though he had no idea what to get. He was not at all happy that
Sainsbury's have announced a policy that only one person per family needs to
go shopping. Everyone knows (so this chap was telling everyone) that
both he and his wife have to come shopping together. Apparently (like most
women!) she can't be allowed to drive, and (like most men!) he
can't do the shopping because it is "women's work"(!)
He explained in great detail and at great volume to everyone within fifty
yards how he'd made a decision. Because she would stuff up the driving more
than he would stuff up the shopping, he'd left his wife at home whilst he
came out. (I would have thought that he could have driven her to the car
park and then stayed sitting in the car whilst she shopped, but I wasn't
going to get into a conversation with the chap). After fifteen minutes of this idiot repeating
the same old tired misogynistic drivel the supermarket doors opened, and a
call went out to NHS workers in the queue who were invited in half an hour
before everyone else. It was with something of a sense of relief that I was
first one through the door this morning. As I went in I could hear the idiot
arguing with the Sainsbury's staff claiming that because he should be
regarded as a "key worker" because his wife wasn't with him
and it takes him ages to do the shopping. I got what I needed; dog food and spuds.
Heavy stuff. As I passed the bakery counter I saw yet more supermarket staff
doing themselves no favours at all. One chap had asked a question of the
woman behind the bakery counter. She replied "We don't answer
customer's questions any more". And the supermarket staff wonder why the
public get cross with them. I went in to work. It was a colleague's
birthday today. We had cake. And with my bit done I came home. "er
indoors TM" is out with the dogs. I wonder what’s for
dinner… |
7 April 2020 (Tuesday) - Ten Albums?
I
woke feeling full of energy and raring to go only to find it was a few
minutes before two o’clock. I then lay awake for much of the rest of the
night. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep and got up to check the news. Had
the Prime Minister died overnight? He
hadn’t. He
remained in intensive care. Although the Foreign Secretary has stepped into
the breach for the time being, the running of the country is all a bit vague
at the moment. There is no “official” chain of command. And there
isn’t really any historical precedent. Although seven British Prime Ministers
have died whilst in office, the most recent one to go was over a hundred and
fifty years ago. I
then watched an episode of “The Good Place” whilst scoffing granola,
then had a look at the Internet. I took a deep breath when I saw I’d been
tagged in a post on one of the geocaching pages. “Here’s a fun project for
you to spend your time on” was the caption… Why is it that I get tagged
to work on the fun project for the benefit of everyone else on that group
whilst many others have been posting on Facebook about how bored they are
during the on-going lock-down? In the last three weeks I’ve created a
fifty-cache series and written four wherigos. I’m
planning more cache series whilst I’m still working full time across two
rather busy hospitals. But I still had a look-see to find out what the “fun
project” was. It turned out that the Geocaching Association of Great
Britain are running a competition. They want stories of geocaching
adventures. I immediately thought of an epic trip round the Sussex Downs from
two years ago, or the trip to Cornwall, or our European road trip, or two
separate weeks in the New Forest. I
might just write a story or two. I
walked seemingly miles to my car. Last night I'd had to park it half-way up
Bond Road which is (in terms that some of my loyal readers might
understand) three geocaches from home. As
I drove in the general direction of Tunbridge Wells the pundits on the radio
were talking about coronageddon. They don't talk
about much else at the moment really. A
*lot* of concern was expressed for the Prime Minister's health. There
was talk about if and when the lock-down might be eased. It
was suggested that shutting schools might not have achieved much in stopping
the spread of the disease. But
what I remembered most about the morning's news was that in the middle of
concern and opinion about the worst public health crisis to have hit the country
in a hundred years and our Prime Minister in intensive care, they had a
ten-minute slot in which Prince Charles presented some pompous and
pretentious drivel about the poet Wordsworth. The pundits on the radio said
that Prince Charles had recorded what he said some time ago. They should have
saved it for another time I *really* think it should not have been
played this morning; it made the heir to the throne seem to be utterly out of
touch with reality. As an ardent monarchist it bothers me that I listened to
the radio this morning thinking of our future king as an irrelevant idiot.
The average person in the street is (at best) utterly indifferent to
poets from two hundred years ago; someone really should have a word with
Charlie. I
got to work; I did my bit. As the day went on we followed the Prime
Minister's progress via Google News. He seemed to be on the mend.
Interestingly with all the excitement of the virus and the lock-down and Mr
Johnson being ill, no one seemed to notice that a secret alien base has been
discovered six kilometres underneath
a volcano in Mexico. I
stopped off at the little shop in Sissinghurst on
my way home. I had this idea that a country village shop might have some
rather good cheese. They did. They also had something of an attitude, but
that goes with the territory of a country village shop. I
got home just as "er indoors TM"
was taking the dogs out. As they went so I watered trees and shrubs in the
garden, gave myself a haircut, and had a ponder. A colleague had nominated me
on one of these Facebook things; to choose ten albums that greatly influenced
my taste in music. I have to post one album per day for ten consecutive days.
No explanations no reviews, just album covers. I eventually came up with a
list (listed alphabetically by album title and only allowing myself one
album from any group); it took some doing… |
|
8 April 2020 (Wednesday)
- A Day's Leave
"er indoors TM" had quite a
bit of space on the bed last night. I didn’t. Is it so much to ask that dogs
sleep parallel to me (so we all have space) rather than perpendicular
to me (so that I do not)? I got up later than I would usually get up (but
earlier than I had planned), set the washing machine going, and peered
into the Internet as I scoffed toast. The first fruit of my loin has changed his
Facebook cover photo to a photo of him and a waxworks dummy of the Prime
Minister Boris Johnson. Yesterday a good friend of mine posted good wishes
for Mr Johnson (whilst he is unwell) and said that anyone who
disagreed with him could crawl back under their rock. The Prime Minister is
clearly loved… I must admit that when he came to office I
had very low expectations of Boris Johnson… look at his track record. We all
expect politicians to lie, but he surely takes the biscuit. He has been
sacked from three jobs for telling lies. The Brexit campaign he led has been
shown to be based on a pack of lies. And since he took office… Don’t take my
word for it. Type the phrase “list of Boris Johnson’s lies” into
Google, then use Snopes or any other fact-checking website to trawl through
what you find. He finalised his divorce less than two weeks
before announcing that his girlfriend was pregnant. Call me old-fashioned but
am I the only person who feels that it is questionable (at best) that
the Prime Minister’s girlfriend is only six years older than his oldest
child? But still the public love him. And I must
admit to a sneaking admiration of him despite the damage he and his
government are doing to so many aspects of our national life. History will
probably record him as one of the nation’s better Prime Ministers. Boris
Johnson is an amazing figure; he puts on a show for the masses, and the
masses lap it up. I can’t help but liken him to Zaphod
Beeblebrox who was the Galactic President in “The
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; a role that involves no power
whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to draw attention away from
those really wielding the power. I also had an email which made me think “what
if”. Five years ago I had the opportunity for a secondment to the medical
laboratory in the South
Atlantic island of St Helena. I turned it down, but this morning I had an
email from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office asking if I would like to go
out to St Helena for three to six months (all expenses paid) to assist
with the COVID-19 preparation and response in St Helena. The simple answer was “Yes!” I *would*
like to go out to St Helena. But how practical would it be? Having given the
matter some serious thought in 2015 it was a pipe-dream at best then. Now
with a global pandemic kicking off is no time to relocate to a rock in the
South Atlantic miles from anywhere. I told Facebook about today’s choice of
album, popped the leads on to the dogs and we walked into town. Last year I
was awarded five geocaching Adventure Lab caches. The idea is that you go to
a location, answer a simple question and move on. I found five rather obscure
places in Ashford and set it all up. Since then those who like to spoil the
game blagged the answers and published them on a spoilers page together with
instructions on how to trick your GPS into thinking you are half a world
away. Today I took the dogs to the five locations
and worked out new questions that can’t be blagged from Google Street View. We came home via the park where I had
something of a shock. A young lady was doing her exercises on one of the
footpaths. Part of her exercise routine involved having some elasticated band
around her thighs. However from more than five yards away it really did look
as though her knickers had fallen down. One home I had a go at the lawn. As always
strimming the lawn’s edges took an age. I really need to get some strimming
line that doesn’t keep snapping every twenty to thirty seconds. With that strimmed
I drove "er indoors TM"
to the garage where she rummaged in her car for something or other, then I
drove her to the co-op so she could do the shopping for a change. For all
that I’m having a go at shopping I’m not convinced I’m doing it at all well… Seeing my new blue marker pen had arrived I
took it up to the loft and coloured in the heads of what will be Lego Bill
and Lego Ted. The blue statue seems to work. I then spent an hour or so
sorting Lego; the sorting would have gone much better had Treacle not jumped
into the middle of it all. At six o’clock I sparked up my lap-top. We’d
arranged a virtual meet-up for the Kent Association of the Hunters of
Tupperware, and used the Zoom software. We had twenty-three people on screen
at one stage; it was good to catch up. I ironed shirts, I watched “Bottom”…
not a bad day’s leave really… |
|
9 April 2020
(Thursday) - More Cake
I had some Sainsbury’s own-brand muesli for
brekkie. I have to wonder whatever possessed me to buy two bags of the stuff;
it isn’t that good. I watched a little telly as I scoffed it,
then sparked up my lap-top. I sent out birthday wishes to three friends, and
had something of a little existential crisis. My old schoolfriend Dave
Thornton was fifty-six today. Fifty-six. Where have the years gone. How can
he be that old? Is it really that long since we went fishing, or walked miles
to get chips? He was the chap who introduced me to the Electric Light
Orchestra, and now he’s old? And then I realised that I’m two months older
than him, and suddenly all was well again. What was that all about? I told the world about my third album choice.
As luck would have it, having decided to list alphabetically by album title
meant that of the albums I’ve chosen, the two most mainstream and most
remembered ones went out first. The last eight are rather more obscure;
particularly now some forty years after most people have forgotten about
them. Take today’s choice… do any of my loyal readers remember BA Robertson? Having completely forgotten where I'd left my
car yesterday I spent quite a while this morning roaming the streets to find
it. It came to light where I'd left it. As I drove to work the pundits on the radio
were talking about the ongoing moves to form a "land army"
to harvest the crops of fruit and vegetables that have been planted but have
seemingly no one to pick them. This problem was originally brought up four
years ago when all the East European fruit pickers went home after the Brexit
vote, but no one in the media really wanted to say anything about it then.
But now we have coronageddon to blame it all on, it
looks like a small army of workers will be mobilised to get the harvest in. Odd how the public will come together to sort
out what is being billed as the aftermath of the corona virus, but no one did
anything for the last three years as Brexit was seen as too political. I got some petrol on the way to work, and
then went on to Sainsburys where there was some consternation in the queue.
The idea was that everyone forms one queue outside the store, and then the
NHS workers come forward (when called) when the doors opened at half
past seven. What actually happens is that everyone comes forward when the
doors open at half past seven and every person who is in the queue has an
argument with the staff on the door when they can't show a valid NHS staff ID
card. Having seen this happen before, several NHS staff formed their own
queue this morning, and when half past seven came, a row kicked off between
those in their own queue and those NHS staff in the main queue (like me).
In the middle of all of this was some old bat who announced that she was
going in anyway as she's an old lady and no one was going to stop her. She
got rather irate when she was stopped. Interestingly for all that the Sainsburys
staff (both at the store and the petrol station) are very quick to
ensure that the general public maintain social distancing, they certainly
don't do it themselves. It's got so that I don't so much go to
Sainsburys before work for the shopping as for the entertainment. I got to work; I did my bit. As we worked the
boss was singing the praises of a certain source of continuing professional
development. I'm not sure who was the most impressed; her to find that I
was the author of that website, or me to see that the boss had a shortcut to
my CPD blog on her phone. At tea break we had cake (again). Some
grateful member of the public had sent in a load of "thank you"
buns. I scoffed mine as I finished my current e-book... I must make a
confession here. the author of these books is a friend of mine. This must
affect how I view them... His writing style is very reminiscent of the works
of John Wyndham; whilst dealing with rather up-to-date concepts in
astrophysics, they do read as if they were written fifty years ago. The books
are billed as a series; and realistically that's how they should be
considered. It's a shame the last one hasn't been published yet. I thought it
had been; I wouldn't have started reading them had I known that. I don't want
to be critical, but together each book is rather short (to my mind). I would say that I would sack the
proof-readers... there were more typos, punctuation and grammatical errors in
these three e-books than in anything I've read for the last year. I spent quite a bit of today thinking about
yesterday’s video-meet-up with over twenty geo-mates. Would it be *that*
difficult to organise an on-line quiz night for the weekend? I could come up
with some questions easily enough and then have (say) a dozen teams (it
would have to be households because of the lock-down) each of which could
log in on the Zoom software. We’d have a round of questions; everyone would
email me the answers. We’d have another round of questions… The winner would
have bragging rights. I wonder if there would be much interest… The new Red Dwarf special starts in a minute… |
|
10 April 2020
(Friday) - Good (?) Friday
Over a bowl of Sainsburys muesli I watched
the last episode of “The Good Place” (which as rather good, really)
before posting today’s album choice. Today’s choice was “Journeys to Glory”
by Spandau Ballet; their first album from back in the days when they were
mean and moody and not “disco-crappy”. There wasn’t much else on Facebook at six
o’clock this morning really. As I drove to work the pundits on the radio
were talking about coronageddon. They were
interviewing some very irate woman who had the hump because her mother has
been asked (by her GP) to give some thought to her end-of-life
choices. This woman's mother apparently went hysterical at the thought of
dying. I can't help but wonder why. Did she think she was going to live
forever? Now a lot of people don't like to think about death. A lot of people
deliberately ignore the matter and pretend that death is something that
happens to other people. When you think about it, that is a really stupid
line to take. In this uncertain world, an eventual death is one of the very
few things that we all have in common. This irate woman's mother is in the COVID-19
"high risk" group for several medical reasons. Surely it
makes sense to make your end-of-life plans when you have time to do so,
rather than waiting until you are extremely ill, hooked up to a ventilator
and surrounded by busy ward staff who are rushed off of their feet? With a
global pandemic going on, surely anyone with any sense should be thinking
about what might happen in a worst-case scenario *before* the worst
actually happens? There was then talk of the communities
minister who has caused upset by ignoring the stay-put rules and travelled
half-way across the country to go visit his
mum and dad. Perhaps this lock-down needs to be enforced a bit? I travel
a round trip of over fifty miles a day to work and have never once been
challenged, or even seen the police out and about. This was followed by an interview with the
Prime Minister's father, Stanley Johnson. With the Prime Minister out of
intensive care the nation seemed to be breathing a sign
of relief. Mr Johnson (senior) is always an
entertaining figure when on the telly; he rather blew it on the radio this
morning. As older posher men so often do, he didn't so much speak words as
huffed-and-puffed. and one of the very few intelligible things he said was a
quote from Shakespeare, which only showed how out of touch he was with the
average person in the street (or in their house now we are all locked down). I got to work, I got myself a croissant from
the small branch of M&S in the hospital and (once I'd scoffed it)
got on with work. I knew that what with lock-down I wasn't missing much, but
I couldn't help but think about the what-ifs. In the past Good Friday has
been an epic booze-up at the Chambers Bar beer festival. It has been a really
good walk out into the countryside with friends. This one was supposed to
feature me being picked up by "er indoors TM"
after work and driving up to Cambridgeshire for a weekend away, but that was
not to be. I came home and we took the dogs round the
park on our one allowed outing of the day. We had a good walk; we didn’t
upset too many normal people. I was rather impressed with one chap’s having
set up a mini-gym of his own in the park, with pull-up rings hanging from a
tree. We walked on to the dog beach where the dogs had a rather good
splash-about in the river. "er indoors TM"
recorded
a video. Once home "er
indoors TM" boiled up a rather good bit of dinner, and
then seeing how it was Good Friday we watched “Jesus Christ Superstar”…
or tried to. Last weekend Lord Lloyd-Webber made the
musical “Joseph” free to the public, and this weekend he did the same
with “Jesus Christ Superstar”. We settled down in front of the telly
and the thing wouldn’t play through the Amazon Firestick. After a *lot*
of fighting we eventually got it going through the Youtube
app and the ChromeCast. We’d not seen the musical
before; it was a shame that it was something of a disappointment, and it was
even more of a shame that half-way through the video bit stopped and it was
singing (howling) only. Have you ever seen “Jesus Christ Superstar”?
If not, I wouldn’t bother… Such a shame… |
|
11 April 2020
(Saturday) - A Locked-Down Quiz Night
Last night I posted on Facebook asking if
anyone fancied doing a quiz on Zoom… there seemed to be quite a bit of
interest so I created a Facebook event, and this morning enough people had
signed up to make the event plausible. I spent a little while this morning
coming up with some questions. Having started off by blagging some ready-made
pub quizzes I then tweaked and changed the questions so that I (for one)
would have had a hope of getting a few right. I then posted up today’s album choice. ”More
Filth Dirt Cheap” was Ivor Biggun’s second
album. Filled with puerile, childish smutty innuendo it still makes me
chuckle forty years later. We got the leads on to the dogs, and went for
our daily government-sanctioned walk. We went through South Ashford where the
first fruit of my loin had put out a bowl of water for the dogs, and we left
them some shopping and some Easter eggs. From there we walked round to
Singleton Lake and out through to where once there used to be something of an
unkempt jungle. Now there is a rather pretty area of woodland with waterfalls
(fish ladders?). Ideally we might have picnic-ed there… ideally we
wouldn’t be in lock-down. We came home past Singleton lake where (like
everywhere) fishing is now banned. Isn’t that silly? When you go fishing you sit
on your own away from everyone else. Ideal social distancing, but (like
pretty much everything in this lock-down) it wasn’t thought through. As we walked round the lake we saw a couple
of rather large pike basking in the shallows. Maybe an afternoon’s pike
fishing there once the lock-down is lifted? We came home, and with absolutely nothing
else to do we sat in the garden. I read more of Alexei Sayle’s
biography on my Kindle whilst drinking Czech dark lager and Dorset plum ale
before falling asleep in the glorious sunshine. I eventually woke; "er indoors TM" boiled up a rather good
bit of dinner and then I sparked up the lap-top for the “Zoom” quiz. I
was rather pleased to see we had nine teams taking part; a manageable number.
I thought it went rather well for only the second time I’d used the software.
The questions were rather tricky; some of them were rather obscure. But it
wasn’t so much about the quiz as it was about getting to see friends. At
least I can go to work every day. There are a *lot* of people who’ve
not seen anyone outside their household for weeks. I wonder if this on-line video quiz thingy
might become a regular event all the time we are in lock-down. After all, it
isn’t as though anyone has anything else to be doing at the moment… |
|
12 April 2020
(Sunday) - Locked Down Sunday
I woke at four o’clock feeling rather
restless. I got up, had a shave, then went back to bed and slept for five
more hours. Over brekkie I sparked up my lap-top. I had a
message from my professional body. The Institute of Biomedical Sciences have
recently made their Facebook page public rather than private. They’d made
some comment about how the page wouldn’t be regularly monitored, and as you
can guess the thing had immediately become a sea of petty squabbling and
bickering. I’d messaged them to say that they really needed to monitor it.
They messaged back and said they felt that they shouldn’t have to. I agreed
that they shouldn’t have to… but told them that they did need to. It didn’t help that some of their most senior
figures were those who needed the most reining in. There was also a squabble kicking off on the
“Geocaching in Kent” page. A puzzle had been set for people to solve.
I wouldn’t say it was a “difficult” puzzle. Geocaching puzzles aren’t
“difficult”. A third-level differential equation is difficult.
Geocaching puzzles require ridiculously convoluted and imaginative thinking.
One of these might start off with a little story about fishing…so… Jack
Hargreaves was a famous fisherman from the seventies… Glam rock was about in
the seventies… One of the prominent glam rock band were Slade… so far from
being about fishing, the puzzle is actually all about Noddy
Holder. And it doesn’t matter that hardly anyone can
solve it… once one person has solved it, the answer soon gets shared. I still haven’t solved this puzzle. I then told the world about today’s album in
my list. My Sparks album of choice - “No 1 in Heaven”. Rather an odd
one for sixth place? Anyone who knows me would have thought that
Sparks would have appeared *much* earlier in the listing and more than
once. But I did say that my listing will be listed alphabetically by album
title, and only I’m only allowing myself one album of any group, But why choose “No 1 in Heaven”? It’s
not really high on anyone’s list of favourite or well-known Sparks albums. To
be honest there’s probably half a dozen Sparks albums that I actually prefer.
But the challenge is to list albums “that greatly influenced my taste in
music”, and “No 1 in Heaven” was the first Sparks album that I
ever bought… more than forty years ago in 1979. We took the dogs out for a walk – up through
the Memorial Gardens and back through the park. We met Bernie as we walked,
and had a socially distanced chat, and sparked up the WhatsApp to speak to
Jose in Folkestone too. I saw that a friend had long-distance
deployed a Munzee in the park with me in mind too… We came through the co-op field and Fudge and
Pogo were decidedly un-moral with a passing Jack Russell. I then spent another afternoon reading Alexei
Sayle’s biography whilst drinking a variety of
eastern Europeans beers until I finally dozed off. "er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good dinner which we scoffed whilst watching an episode of “The
Heist” and being long-distance reiki-ed. I must admit I was rather
sceptical about reiki, but my knee has been giving me gyp for a few days.
What with the GP on lock-down and A&E having far more than me to worry
about, I thought that a dose of long-distance reiki couldn’t hurt. I don’t think it did any harm… |
|
13 April 2020
(Monday) - Easter Monday
I was woken by a loud
crash as Treacle jumped off the bed at seven o’clock. I heard her come
downstairs, and after a few minutes I could hear her crying. I came
downstairs to let her into the garden, but not before she’d had a little
accident. As she “did
business” in the garden I cleared up the accident. I was rather surprised
she’d tiddled inside – it is very unlike her. We
shall have to keep an eye on her. I got the washing
machine and dishwasher doing their things, then scoffed a bowl of muesli
whist watching an episode of “Bottom” before having my morning rummage
round the Internet. I told the world about my seventh album choice. “The
Fine Art of Surfacing” by the Boomtown Rats was a firm favourite from the
same time when I was particularly religious... I’ve shed the God-bothering,
but still kept a love of the Boomtown Rats. I then rolled my eyes
at what others were posting on Facebook. There are half a dozen local groups,
the participants of all of which were competing to out-do everyone else in
squealing up their neighbours for perceived breaches of lock-down. With a few minutes
spare I lifted down a huge box which has sat unopened in the back bedroom for
years. I was very pleasantly surprised to see it contained several Lego kits,
and a *lot* of loose Lego. I spent a little while looking to see what
was in the loose Lego, then I drove "er
indoors TM" up to her boss’s house to collect a
consignment of dongles (!) We came back past the
Home Bargains shop. I thought that "er
indoors TM" might like to do some shopping. For all that
I’ve been having a go for the last couple for weeks, it has been a tad
haphazard. I’ve been buying what looks interesting and what I think we might
need, with no regard for what we actually do need. And so we’ve ended up with
six jars of marmalade but no chips. We have turnips and swede for the dogs,
but no vegetables for the humans. Shopping today was
dull. When I go to
Sainsburys there is usually at least one “special” one kicking off in
the queue, or one memorable idiotic member of staff. Today – no one. With shopping
unloaded we walked the dogs round the park. Again we met no idiots; in fact
we met hardly anyone at all. As we walked my right
knee got rather tender. Yesterday I might have spoken too soon when I said
that the long-distance Reiki hadn’t done any harm. We came home; I
ironed for a little while whilst watching more episodes of “Bottom”
then had a closer look at the Lego I’d found this morning. I was rather
disappointed to find that what looked like sets to make a motorbike and a
truck were just boxes of random bits, but random Lego technic bits are good.
I’ve long been planning to have either a carousel, Ferris wheel or windmill
in my Lego world. So I spent a little while making a first attempt at a sort
of carousel. I was quite pleased with what I eventually came up with. It
worked find in trial runs. So I put a few minifigures on it, got out the
camera, video-ed it and met with utter disaster. You can see the disaster by clicking here. But “nil
desperandum”… the next one just needs a heavier base. As I played Lego so "er indoors TM" tidied the bedroom. She’s
chucked out the manky old chair I used to pile my clothes on, and given me a
nice box in its place. It is a very nice box. Apparently I’ve got twenty
pairs of trousers in that box… "er indoors TM" boiled up
dinner, and we watched a couple of episodes of “The Heist”. I didn’t
stay awake for all of it. It’s been a “different”
Easter… I worked Friday, the weekend was glorious sunshine, and all I did was
to sit in the garden. Today the weather was rubbish and we did loads. Back to work
tomorrow… |
|
14 April 2020
(Tuesday) - Easter's Over
As I scoffed my Sainsbury’s muesli I watched
the first episode of “Tiger
King: Murder Mayhem and Madness” on Netflix. You must have seen the
memes about “Carol Baskin” all over the Internet? As I watched it I remembered the politics of
animal activism from my snake-keeping days… When I kept snakes (about twenty years ago)
I found it harder and harder to do so because the RSPCA was slowly but surely
closing down all the local pet shops so I could not get any dead rats to feed
the snakes. You might wonder why the RSPCA would be against pet shops… I
won’t say that they were barking mad, but when we moved to Folkestone in 1984
our landlord’s partner was one of the hippy-trippy happy-clappy
left-wing extreme-animal-rights crackpots who were rife back then. She would
spout all sorts of frankly ridiculous nonsense and seriously believe that
because she had said something was enough to make it a self-evident truth.
She and a gang of like-minded loonies were involved in all sorts of extreme
animal rights groups, and at the time she told me that her groups would never
be respected like the RSPCA, so they would infiltrate it and use its good
name. And that is what happened. The extremists
took over the RSPCA and other similar mainstream animal welfare
organisations. An example of my own experience was that at the turn of the
century the National
Canine Defence League would have collecting tins in a tattoo studio, but
would refuse to allow one in a pet shop. In the early 2000s the RSPCA had a policy of trying
to close down every pet shop that sold animals. To them, a pet shop (subject
to all sorts of legal controls) was a bad thing, but an unlicensed
individual breeding and selling animals (doing their own thing with no
control whatsoever) was perfectly acceptable to them. Go figure! I’m looking forward to seeing the next
episodes of this show. I sparked up my lap-top and told the world
about today’s album choice. My eighth album is the soundtrack to the 1980s
movie “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” by the Sex Pistols. It has to
be said that the Sex Pistol weren’t very good. In fact they were rather crap.
But much of the album was by produced by others, most notably Tenpole Tudor and Malcom McLaren. And it evokes a
different era… when I used to be someone else. I walked up to Torrington Road to find my car
only to realise I'd actually walked past it. I'd left in in Whitfeld Road which runs parallel. I seem to be making
hard work of finding where I've been leaving my car lately. I wonder what
that's all about? As I drove to work the pundits on the radio
were talking about coronageddon (as if they talk
about anything else at all right now). Today they were broadcasting a
recent interview with Donald Trump which was rather embarrassing. Far from
wanting to talk about the global pandemic, the chap wanted to dribble on
about what a great fellow he is, and how mean the media are for daring to
insinuate that he's anything less than utter perfection. In many ways he
reminds me of the more simple-minded eight-year-olds who we used to have in
the cub scouts. Utterly oblivious to the world around them, they would be
totally self- obsessed in worlds of their own devising. You have to ask how this chap every got into
a position of power. There was also talk of how the National
Exhibition Centre in Birmingham went from an exhibition centre to a hospital in
only nine days. It is particularly impressive when you
consider how long the NHS traditionally takes to do things. I can remember
back in the day when I was a manager I was deliberately slowed down. When
building a new department (which took about eighteen months longer than it
needed to do), the last thing the management wanted was to actually have
the new department. Once it was built there would be no need for endless
meetings. This pandemic has certainly lit a fire under
some people... I got to work and made a start on the early
shift. As early shifts go, it wasn't bad. Half-way through the day the
hospital's top boss came round dishing out free Easter eggs to all and
sundry. I certainly had one!! An early start made for an early finish. I
came home, and "er indoors TM"
and I took the dogs out to the park and back home via the Memorial Gardens.
Apart from nearly tripping "er indoors TM"
flat on her face the walk went better than most. I wonder what’s for dinner? |
|
15 April 2020
(Wednesday) - At Tesco
Watching “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and
Madness” over brekkie again had me thinking about my days in the “Ashford
& District Exotic Animal Society” all those years ago. The events and
people on the TV show were just like how the snake club used to be. Weird,
odd and quarrelsome. I kept snakes twenty-odd years ago; I had
quite a few including one which was twelve feet long. Friends at the time
kept all sorts of animals. Although I never knew anyone who kept large cats (like
those in the TV show), I *think* we could have got hold of one had
we wanted to do so. I certainly could have obtained a crocodile (and
seriously considered doing so). It was rumoured that a friend from
those days had a rattlesnake as a pet. When he was found dead at his home (for
no reason that the coroner could explain) no rattlesnake was ever found,
but the door of one of the vivariums was open. Looking back, the exotic animal scene was
madly out of control. I’m glad to have done the “exotic animal thing”,
but I’m well out of it, and quite content with dogs and fish now. I sparked up my lap-top and told the Internet
about my penultimate album choice. “The Kick Inside” was Kate Bush’s
debut album. I originally got it on tape cassette. I also had some notifications about something
I’d posted onto one of the work-related Facebook pages. Yesterday at work
we’d been asked to perform a rather obscure test for a rather odd reason. It
seemed a very strange request to me and all of my colleagues so I thought I
might ask the wider blood-testing community their opinion. The responses came
into three broad categories. There were a lot of rather stupid and
irrelevant animated gifs. There was a lot of opinion from people who clearly
didn’t know the first thing about the blood test in question. And there were a few posts which addressed my
question whilst showing some understanding of the matter. But only a few. This morning I managed to find my car right
away. But the time I saved in not wandering the roads desperately trying to
remember where I'd left my car, I wasted in scraping the ice off of it.
Despite what the weather forecast had said, there had been quite the heavy
frost. I drove to work listening to nothing but the
pundits on the radio scaremongering about coronageddon.
In their desperation to wind up the public about the shortages of protective
clothing for NHS workers, this morning the shocking revelation was made that
NHS laboratory workers are now wearing washable laboratory coats. I can't
help but feel that I'm missing something here - as an NHS laboratory worker
I've been wearing washable laboratory coats for nearly forty years. Just recently I've been shopping in
Sainsburys before work. There is no Sainsburys in Pembury, but there is a
Tesco. Unfortunately the protected shopping period for NHS staff is
mid-morning just after we'd all started working(!) But there weren't that
many people at Tesco at eight o'clock this morning so I didn't have to queue.
I went in and got what I needed. I tried not to laugh out loud at the people
in ill-fitting face masks and torn rubber gloves, but I did have a laugh with
the chap in the check-out. I made a point of going up to the only check-out
manned by someone not wearing gloves and a face mask. I loudly suggested that
he might like to go get one of his colleagues to serve me; without personal
protective equipment he might well be dead before he'd run all my stuff
through the till. We both had a chuckle at how obviously ineffective the PPE
on pretty much all of the customers was, and I wished him well for the rest
of the day. As I walked out, some managerial-type thanked
me for shopping at Tesco. I smiled sweetly, and asked him what the funny
smell was. He said he'd been wondering that too. I made the observation that
if he could smell it, then that face mask of his wasn't worth having. I don't think he understood my point. I did my bit at work; I came home. We walked
the dogs round the park, and then "er
indoors TM" unpacked the shopping I’d got and went
through the cupboards… Oh dear. Six unopened jars of jam, seven unopened jars
of marmalade, more peanut butter than sense (four jars), far too much
red wine and dog food, and no brown sauce… I might open a bottle of port in a minute… |
|
16 April 2020
(Thursday) - Late Shift
I slept like a log, finally being woken (rather
earlier than I would have liked) by "er
indoors TM"’s alarm. I got up and had some Tesco muesli
for brekkie. It’s a lot more like sawdust than the Sainsbury version of the
stuff, and interestingly the packaging says it has no added salt. You have to
ask why anyone would add salt to a breakfast cereal. I sparked up my lap-top and told the world
about my tenth (and final) album choice. “Time” by the Electric
Light Orchestra. It’s that rather rare thing - a concept album. ELO’s second
one. It tells the tale of a chap from the year 1981 who is launched over a
hundred years into the future. Whilst I was at it I had a look on-line to
see what I’d missed overnight. I hadn’t missed much really. As I do when on a late shift I took the dogs
out. We didn’t have time to play in the river yesterday evening, so I thought
we might do that this morning. So as we walked I picked up stones and sticks.
Treacle and Pogo saw this and got very over-excited; jumping up trying to get
the sticks. Pogo managed to yank one stick from my hand. As he pulled the
stick so it cut me; there wasn’t *that* much blood really, We played in the river for a bit. As we
walked on we then met a “rather delightful lady” with two massive
uncontrolled dogs. We were about to go into the Chinese garden when this
woman shouted “my dogs will have your dogs – I’m just saying”. Now
there’s no denying that with my hand still dripping blood I wasn’t in the
best frame of mind. I waved a foot in the air and replied “my boots will
break your dogs’ ribs – I’m just saying”. She clearly wasn’t expecting
that, announced “oh, it’s like that is it?”, put her dogs onto leads
and dragged them away. As we headed past the play-park we met
OrangeHead. I told her of what had just happened. She said she’d had similar
incidents recently. She said something I’ve been saying recently; this
lock-down has brought out all the dogs who never normally get walked from one
week to the next. Mind you I would rather have had my morning
that OrangeHead’s. She said she’d just walked past
a family sitting on a park bench. They had bicycles laying on the ground five
yards away and her dog had just peed in Grandma’s cycling helmet. She
chuckled as she told me, and I laughed too. I suspect that this is really
funny for pretty much everyone except Grandma. Once home I harvested a bumper crop of dog
turds from the garden, then fed the pond fish. The pond is *really*
clear at the moment; you can see right down to the bottom (over five feet
deep) at the moment. Fudge stopped round the pond trying to get the fish
food before the fish did. As he does. Bearing in mind I’d used the last of the milk
on my muesli I popped up the road to the shop to get more. The nice lady on
the till was wearing her rubber gloves. With Herculean effort I restrained
myself from asking if she realised the things had (at least) three
large holes in them. Usually I would go off on a little
geo-adventure before the late shift, but what with the country in lock-down
that wasn’t an option. I spent a rather dull hour writing up CPD, then set off
to work. The roads were quiet as I drove off to work.
Not as quiet as they have been, but quiet enough that I was only stopping for
traffic lights where usually I am stopping and starting all the way to work. I got to work; where in the past I would have
to hunt for a car parking space, today I had a choice of where I might like
to park. I showed my pass to be allowed into work.
Perhaps I'm over-sensitive; I do realise the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic
running riot through wards of critically ill patients, but I can't help but
feel that there is something fundamentally wrong about having security guards
controlling the entrance to a hospital. I did my bit, and during a lull in
proceedings I tried to log in to this evening's Zoom virtual geo-meet using
my phone. It didn't really work as well as a lap-top, and after a couple of
half-hearted attempts I gave up. Some things just don’t work on the phone… |
|
17 April 2020
(Friday) - Stuff
Over a bowl of Tesco muesli I watched the
third episode of “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”. I watched
it with a wry smile. Did Carole Baskin feed her
husband to a tiger in 1997? Like so many of these cases, how will we ever
know when the event is so long ago? I sparked up my lap-top and gave Facebook my
last posting in the “ten albums” thing. Having put up ten albums that
greatly influenced my taste in music, today I put up ten more that didn’t
quite make the top ten. I then had a little look round some of the
Facebook pages. Much as I’ve been very active on the “Geocaching
in Kent” page, I’m on the point of coming off of it. It is boiling my
piss too much. Those who only a few short weeks ago were publicly lambasting
me for taking my dogs for a walk and demanding I stay in the house were now
showing off how they’ve found software to map the miles of walking they are
now doing. Others who having had a pop at "er
indoors TM" over the weekend were now trying to shame
people for going hunting geocaches because (despite the official guidance)
they have decided that people shouldn’t be doing so. The roads were rather busier than they have
been as I drove up the motorway at seven o'clock this morning. As I drove the
pundits on the radio were talking about the new leader of the Labour party.
Sir Kier Starmner is calling for details of how the
government is planning to have the nation recover from coronageddon. The chap is an idiot. With yesterday's
announcement of three more weeks of confirmed lock-down, and anyone with any
understanding of microbiology expecting serious restrictions on our
lifestyles for months to come, why is this twit worrying about something so
far into the future? Unless he hopes to be vote-grubbing amongst those so
thick as to not understand why we are having to have all the social
distancing and lock-down in the first place? They then wheeled on the mayor of London
Siddiq Khan who didn't come over anywhere nearly as badly as sometimes he
does. I got some petrol. As I filled my car so
another car pulled up at the petrol pumps. The woman in that car sat in her
car and waited for me to go pay before she got out of her car, and as I
walked back to my car so she went back into her car and shut herself in. She
waited until I was driving away before she got out and carried on getting her
own petrol. There is fear of the virus, and there is just
plain stupidity. This was echoed by the woman on the till in
Sainsburys when I paid for what I bought today (I remembered the brown
sauce!). She told me that she liked the NHS workers half-hour as there
was no one coming through wearing ripped plastic gloves or face masks that
obviously did not fit. Work was work; despite the lock-down I came
home via Margate. "Daddy’s Little Angel TM"
doesn’t actually have a letterbox and her new bank card had been delivered to
our house yesterday. She rather needed it, and bearing in mind the police had
closed off Hastings last weekend I rather suspected Margate might be a no-go
area tomorrow. I eventually got home a couple of hours later
than usual. Fish and chips went down well whilst we watched “The Heist”. I quite like the
show, but as it goes on so the police seem to be making rather amazing
decisions and actions with incredibly little reason or evidence to prompt
them. And the thieves seem to be making some rather idiotic choices. Is the show just trying to keep the public in
line? |
|
18 April 2020
(Saturday) - Another Locked-Down Saturday
I woke shivering at half past six; an
alliance of "er indoors TM"
and the dogs had again seized mush of the duvet. I managed to wrestle some
back and got another hour or so shut-eye. Over brekkie I had a look at Facebook to see
what I’d missed. There was a lot of talk about Captain
Tom Moore; a ninety-nine-year-old war veteran who has raised twenty
million pounds to help the NHS. Everyone was saying what a wonderful fellow
he is. I don’t doubt that he is, but is this sort of fundraising ultimately
benefitting the NHS? Bear in mind the UK government voted against a
pay rise for nurses in 2017, and also bear in
mind that many of the nations’ specialist cancer care nurses aren’t funded
via the NHS but are dependent
on charity for their wages It really boils my piss that most people
don’t realise this. No government of any political party is going to fund
anything that people are already paying for. When the fruits of my loin were
at school we were invited to take part in fundraising events to buy their
text books… I’ve heard it said that “charity is the
failure of government”… an interesting point of view. My cousin had raised a rather interesting
point… what *does* happen when coronageddon
drags on? If no vaccine is forthcoming, do we carry on socially distancing
and working for home for years? Given that there’s no vaccine immediately
available, it’s not entirely impossible that those who are susceptible to the
disease will die whilst those who aren’t will survive… this sort of thing has
been happening for millions of years – “natural selection”. We’ve rather got used to the (wrong)
idea that humanity has beaten the concept of infectious disease. There were some fun memes and fun games
circulating, which was just as well. It lightened a rather depressing and
negative toast and coffee. And I was rather pleased to see that a new Munzee had appeared just down the road – called “For
Fudge”. It was raining this morning; "er indoors TM" tuned in to a podcast
from the League of Candlemongers whilst I played
Lego. Last week’s carousel didn’t quite go to plan, so this morning I built a Ferris wheel.
It was more of an experiment than a “proper” build, but I was quite
pleased with how it turned out. The rain had stopped by mid-day so we took
the dogs round the park for a walk. We met some other dogs and we had no
fights whatsoever. Mind you Fudge wasn’t overly pleased at being humped by
some other dog; maybe he will now stop doing it to others? Somehow I doubt
it. We had a good walk; only marred by Treacle’s paddling in the stagnant
mire and eating poo. It wasn’t sunny, but it was warm enough to
sit in the garden. I downed a couple of bottles of ale and read more Alexei Sayle on the kindle. As we sat so quite the conversation
was taking place on Facebook and via instant messages. A lot of people were
discovering (and re-discovering) Munzee.
After all (as I described it), it’s a bit like caching but with bar
codes. There's a lot more virtuals, a lot more
structured game play and FAR less squabbling. Eventually the sun went in, and so did we. I
spent a little while ironing shirts whilst watching episodes of “Bottom”,
then over a very good bit of dinner we watched another episode of “The
Heist”. Admittedly it is a TV show, but bearing in mind that if you can
evade detection you stand to win a hundred thousand pounds I for one would
lay a lot lower than some of the contestants would seem to be doing. With nothing else to do we logged in to the
League of Candlemongers’s lock-down quiz. I got
twenty six points out of a possible forty. I might organise another quiz next weekend… |
19 April 2020 (Sunday) - Early Shift
Over
brekkie I watched more “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”. It’s
a rather interesting show; it never fails to amaze me how so many people are
determined not to get along with each other. With
absolutely nothing happening on Facebook or in my in-box at six o’clock on a
Sunday morning I set off for work. Usually
the roads are quiet when I head to an early shift on a Sunday, but this
morning I might have seen half a dozen other cars at most. As
I drove the pundits on the radio were talking of some on-line concert that
was given last night for NHS staff? Whilst it would probably be a matter of
the utmost indifference to me, it would have been nice to have known about
it. Mind you, the Dribbling Democraps are now
calling for all NHS workers to get a bonus of thirty quid a day. Apparently this is in line
with what the armed forces get "when they are deployed on specific
operations in "demanding" conflicts". Whilst I'll quite
happily take anything that is going (and at the moment I'm taking quite a
lot), I can't help but think that all of this thanking and clapping and
praising the NHS is getting just a little bit over the top; after all, that's
the job we all signed up for, isn't it? There
was also a lot of talk about coronageddon in care homes, and how they are lacking vital
necessities. Should
care homes have the same priority for equipment as the NHS? There was quite
the discussion on the radio this morning. Care homes are in an odd position.
On the one hand they are regarded as an extension of the hospital system. On
the other hand, many are not; charging residents a pretty penny for their
stay because they are (quite unapologetically) commercial ventures. I
can remember a friend's father mouthing off (in the late 1970s) about
how there was money in old people, and when his parents died he opened up a
very small care home. This chap now owns quite a few care homes in the South
East, and lives in quite the mansion. He has certainly done nothing wrong; he
looks after his old people and they all seem to love him. But the nation has
let him get rich from the care sector; should we now be subsidising him? I
got to work; I did my bit. I spent quite a bit of the day staring out the
window at a beautiful Sunday. Usually I sulk when working weekends during
beautiful weather, but not so much today. What with the rest of the world
being on lock-down I wasn't really missing very much. As
I checked my work-related emails I had a look at the works intranet, and was
rather amazed to see that the Trust has published a whole load of downtime dances on its own YouTube channel. There
are other NHS Trusts where just mentioning the name of the place on social
media was once a disciplinary offence... how times have changed. With
my bit done I came home. "er indoors TM"
had already walked the dogs round the park. After five minutes excitement as
I came home, they were all soon snoring. I spent a little while getting to
grips with the Munzee map. There was quite a bit of
everyone helping everyone else going on with Munzee-ing.
Meanwhile on the Geocaching UK page there was quite a bit of nastiness being
bandied about following the cancellation of the big geo-meet that had been
planned to be held near Brighton in the summer. "er indoors TM" boiled up a rather good bit of
dinner, then we sparked up the Zoom software and had a five-way gossip. It
was good to catch up. And
with aliens up to mischief in Antarctica and Siberia, International Dark Sky Week starts today. Back
in the day I would have got rather over-excited about this. I suppose I could
get the telescope out. I wonder where it is? |
|
20 April 2020
(Monday) - Late Shift
I had a rather restless night. It started
with a nightmare in which I was both in an unrehearsed theatrical review
starring whoever it was who voiced the Tetley tea folk and also in a
pitchfork-wielding mob who had sprung up to close down that theatrical
review. It was with something of a sense of relief when I woke. I went to the
loo, I came back to bed, tripping over Fudge on the way. I got back to bed
and had to fight Pogo and Treacle to get any space on the bed. I didn’t really get back to sleep after that. Despite "er
indoors TM" having turned off her alarms, one still went
off at half past seven. I got up and made some toast, and scoffed it whilst
looking at the Internet. Not a lot had really happened overnight. There
were still arguments on the geocaching Facebook pages, but that seems to be
par for the course. There seems to be a self-appointed “in-crowd” on
that group who decide what the accepted etiquette is for any given situation
and then judge those who go against their opinion. Even though there isn’t
any “official” position on whatever bit of pettiness on which they are
pontificating this time. I took the dogs round the park. Today’s walk
was hard work. The lock-down has brought out all the dogs who never get
walked from one month to the next. All named “Zeus” or “Maximus”
or “Tyson” or “F…ing-Huge-Death-Hound”
or something else equally double-hard, they are all walked by the same sort
of person. I don’t want to appear judgemental, but who takes a dog for a walk
when wearing fluffy slippers or flip-flops with make-up that has been applied
by a trowel? We met a thug and his painted barbie-doll associate who were not
at all happy when their humungous Staffie rolled
over in terror and submission when Pogo ran up to it. With walk walked I spent an hour or so
preparing for Friday’s Zoom quiz. I mentioned about doing one a couple of
weeks ago on Facebook and sent out invites to anyone who showed any interest.
We had quite the fun evening but looking back the questions were too hard. I’m going to have another go later in the
week. I’ve come up with some easier questions, and I’m going to test the
software to its limits by including a picture round. If any of my loyal
readers fancy joining in, just drop me a line and I’ll send details. The roads were a lot quieter than usual as I
drove cross-country to Pembury. Was it my imagination, or was there really a
lot more dead animals on the road as I drove. Is the reduced traffic causing
the wildlife to venture onto the dangerous roads more these days? Mind you,
in the same way that all the never-before-walked dogs were in Viccie Park, all the never-before-ridden bikes were along
the A28, A262 and A21. Wobbling (quite literally) from one side of the
road to the other, fat lycra-clad forty-and
fifty-somethings were taking their lives in their hands as they sent traffic
scattering in all directions in their wake. But (notwithstanding road-kill and
cyclists) it was a rather beautiful day to be driving cross-country. As I drove I had a phone call. It was Cheryl.
What did my daughter-in-law want? Gripped by panic over all sorts of
imaginary catastrophes I pulled over. I breathed a sigh of relief when she
just wanted me to settle an argument. When a plane takes off, does it leave
the Earth? She said yes, the first fruit of my loin said no. They were having
quite the squabble. I didn't help matters by not committing to either side,
but instead suggested that it all depended on what you actually consider
"Earth" to be. Does "Earth" include the
atmosphere? I wasn't touching that one with a barge pole. Half an hour later "er indoors TM" sent a message wanting
me to tell her what the expected answer should be. I got to work and mentioned the "is
the plane still on Earth" dilemma to a colleague... he asked if I'd
considered boats... I spent a little while thinking about “Gordon
Tracey” today. We first met Hurksy about eight
years ago; he had got into hunting Tupperware about six months before we did.
Over the space of three of four years we had quite a few outings together;
out most weekends, some weekends away in Sussex, a rather good stomp around
London and a particularly memorable weekend in Cornwall. Eventually we sort
of drifted apart; we were more interested in going for a walk. He was into
tree climbing. He developed cancer some time ago, and this
afternoon was his funeral. Ideally I would have gone along, but what with the
pandemic, space at the funeral was severely restricted. I’m told there will be a memorial service
once lock-down is over… |
|
21 April 2020
(Tuesday) - This n That
After a rather restless night I watched an
episode of “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” in which our hero’s
husband did himself in, and he failed in his political career. I then had a quick look at the Internet. I
sent out some birthday wishes, then seeing pretty much nothing had changed on
Facebook I had a look in my in-box. Someone had been out hunting geocaches on
my series round Godinton. I suppose I will get
stick for not having disabled those caches, but I can’t really see the harm.
People are allowed to go for a walk, and there are far more opportunities to
contract the virus than from a film pot I stuck in a hedgerow a year ago. I also had a message from Munzee
HQ. I tried to put a virtual Munzee in the local
memorial gardens a couple of weeks ago. They declined it because they could
find no mention of Ashford Memorial gardens being a historical site. I gave
them some references, and again they’ve declined the listing because they
could find no references (!). I replied suggesting they read what I
wrote, got myself organised, and set off to find my car. As I walked to my car I saw a jogger.
Together with never-walked-dogs and never-cycled-bikes, people are dragging
their never-worn jogging costumes out of the wardrobes to give them something
to do during lock-down. This particular jogger was a chubby woman clad in
skimpy skin-tight lycra and was sitting on
someone's garden wall, sweating profusely and desperately gasping for air.
When she saw me she pretended not to have noticed me, heaved herself up, and
bravely jogged on up the road. She got maybe twenty yards past me before
collapsing again. I drove off to work. As I drove the pundits
on the radio were talking to one of the country's leading dentists. With
English dentists only seeing two per cent of the patients that they were
before lock-down (it is apparently twenty-five percent in Scotland and Wales),
people are now so desperate as to be using pliers to pull their own teeth
out. This was seen as a bad thing (really?!) and there was all sorts
of talk about how dentists might start seeing patients again. The obvious
answer is to make personal protective equipment available to dentists, but
the stuff is in short supply. There was also concern expressed that if the
government recommend people wear protective masks in public, then what little
PPE is available to healthcare professions will soon evaporate. Just recently the pundits on the radio have
got rather good at pointing out the blatantly obvious. I went to Sainsbury's before work. Apart from
the nutter in the queue behind me who was having a heated argument with the
voices in his head, the trip went relatively uneventfully. I must admit I
thought I'd been doing a rather good job of getting the shopping recently,
but I'd not got any tea bags for a month. That doesn't bother me - I
don't like tea, but "er indoors TM"
is rather keen on the stuff. I got tea bags and one or two other
necessities. Fifty quid's worth of other necessities. Perhaps I need to be a
bit more judicious about what I am buying; I must admit I have to wonder if I
really need to buy two bottles of red wine every time I go shopping, and I am
reliably informed we now have more potatoes than sense. With shopping shopped I went in to work and
did my bit, and came home again. As I do. Once home we took the dogs round the block. They
all behaved themselves… mostly. Pogo wasn’t happy at not being allowed to run
in the field where the gypsies leave their horses. I don’t like him going in
that field as he chases the rabbits and gets rather distracted. "er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching celebrity
Bake-Off. We washed it down with a decent bottle of wine. The port might have been a mistake… |
|
22 April 2020
(Wednesday) - Late Shift
I swapped the up-the-nose CPAP
attachment for the full-face-mask last night and didn’t wake with a
sore nose. Rather trivial in the ongoing coronageddon
pandemic, but rather important to me. As I peered into Facebook this morning I saw
that the Rear Admiral has had a little pressie. Having worked for the same
firm for ten years he’s had a couple of bottles of rather expensive gin and
some rather nice glassware to go with it. A month or so ago I got a tin badge to
celebrate my thirty-five years in the NHS (three years late), and
tomorrow night everyone will stand on the doorstep and clap. Admittedly at
the moment there’s quite a few freebies flying about for health care workers.
Only this week I’ve been given home-made flapjack, a loaf of bread, some
hand-milled flour, several cups of coffee and unlimited data for my mobile,
but that is all from private individuals and companies. Is all the talk of
the nation’s loving the health care workers being left to others, or are the
government going to put their money where their mouth is. I then had a look at the local geocaching
page and my piss boiled. People are still paranoid about geocaching being a
route of transmission for the COVID-19 virus. I’m sorry… I’m getting really
angry with all of this. I’m handing samples contaminated with the virus every
day and managing not to drop dead. Meanwhile when I went to Sainsburys yesterday
not a single trolley was being cleaned between uses, and no end of people
were picking things and putting them back on the shelves despite their
wearing contamination-spreading gloves. In all the years of geocaching does anyone
know of any cases at all in which someone caught an infectious disease from a
geocache? I took the dogs out for our morning
constitutional. As we came through Bowens Field we met another of these
never-before-walked dogs that are blighting our outings. This one was a
rather large lurcher (about the size of a small bus) which was
dragging a small girl behind it. This small girl clearly had no control over
the dog at all, and she didn't seem at all bothered by that. She was more
interested in hysterically screaming "Go Away - Go Away" at
anyone who ventured within fifty yards of her. Fortunately we managed to keep
enough of a distance so that she didn't become an issue. As we walked by the river I saw a a flicker in the water. Six rather large fish. All about
the size of my biggest Koi. I phoned "My Boy TM"
to tell him. I thought they were carp, but he thought they might be chub, as
you wouldn't expect to see carp in that river. But if they were chub, they
were BIG chub. As we came through the park so the council's
gardeners were doing some serious pruning of trees in one of the more
overgrown bits of the park. I'm really interested to see how that area ends
up bearing in mind they've done rather well with other parts of the park
which had previously been little more than overgrown jungles. Pogo shouted at
them; they ignored him. Just as we were doing "sit"
prior to crossing a road, OrangeHead came past with one of her associates.
They'd just had a run-in with one of the never-before-walked dogs. I
sympathised, and said that I was glad that it wasn't just me who was having
issues with them. It seems that pretty much all of the people who regularly
walk their dogs round Viccie Park are having
problems with never-before-walked dogs. Though (to be fair), it isn't the
dogs, the problem is with those who don't walk the dogs from one month to the
next. I came home to be told that "Daddy’s
Little Angel TM" was out of her pit and that I could
deliver her parcel on my way to work. (Her flat has neither letterbox nor
doorbell so deliveries are problematical for her). Now I don't have a PhD
in geography; if I had I might have been able to work out how Margate was on
the way from Ashford to Maidstone. But when the women of the family give
orders, I just salute and say "Yes Ma'am". It only took an hour to get to the coast.
"Daddy’s Little Angel TM" seemed in fine form and
was pleased to receive her parcel. She was talking about moving to a new
flat. I thought about asking if this one would have a letterbox or a doorbell
but thought better of doing so. Bearing in mind that although I was on the
way to work, I was then twenty-five miles further away from the place than
when I'd started I didn't hang about in Margate. I got some petrol, then went into work. The branch of M&S were offering a meal
deal. Sandwich, crisps and a drink for four quid. Bargain... or it would have
been had anyone told the till about it. To be fair the food was good... just
not six quid good. And, as is so often the way when on the late
shift, the day was effectively all over by mid-day… |
|
23 April 2020
(Thursday) - A Rant
I slept well; I slept through till six o’clock when I got up and
watched another episode of “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” in
which our hero finally went doolally. I then made a start on today’s tasks. What with coronageddon the official policy
from work is (quite sensibly) to work from home if at all practical.
The boss told me that with my managerial experience I would be the ideal
person to review some of the paperwork concerning the departmental procedures
and policies. I told the boss that because of my managerial experience I
resigned from being a manager. We all chuckled, and I took some paperwork
home. I made a start shortly after half past seven and was utterly bored
with it by half past eight. It was with something of a sense of relief when "er indoors TM" said she was
breaking for lunch, and did I want to go out with her and the dogs. We did our usual circuit of the park; apart
from one squabble with a huge dog, it all passed off reasonably well. Even if
Fudge was rather reluctant to leave the river after he’d had a spuddle. We came home… I did more work. This evening we had another virtual geo-meet. It was good to catch up.
"er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner and then… I shall allow myself a rant. As I’m typing this so some of the neighbours
are outside for the Thursday clap-for-the-NHS ten minutes. I went out
to have a look. New-next-door’s dog was cowering and trembling in terror at
the fireworks that were being set off. Again I find myself in a vanishingly small minority in not wanting to
go out and clap. These Thursday evening "support" events have quickly
escalated from being a nice thing to do into something that people are *expected*
to do – reading Facebook this evening it is very clear that those who don't
join in are now being seen as killjoys and haters. Despite the fact that these
people might be sleeping off a busy shift actually working in the hospital,
or trying to put young kids to bed when everyone is outside banging saucepans
waking them up. And (quite frankly) many NHS workers find the whole
thing rather embarrassing. I have to wonder if these public celebrations of the NHS help it. They
encourage an increasingly prevalent portrayal of NHS staff as smiling,
benevolent heroes. NHS staff do heroic things, but they're not enthusiastic
amateurs who put on a uniform or white coat much like Batman or Superman dons
a cape. They are professionals doing a paid job. You don’t clap the postman
or the dustman, do you? This sentimental portrayal of NHS workers undermines their
professionalism and brings them down to the level of the youth club leader or
the brownies’ Brown Owl.
The NHS isn’t something that you sometimes choose to give money to
when you're feeling particularly soppy about nurses.
It matters because movements of this kind are very transitory. They
capture the public mood at a particular moment in time, and then that moment
passes, and people move on to something else (Just look at how Prince
Harry has fallen out of public favour in the last
year). And we are still going to need the NHS once this is all over. (Which
it won't be for ages). There will be a backlash to all of this clapping and cheering. It has
already started in some quarters. Those in the haulage industry, those
working in the shops, those keeping the water and power flowing are (rightfully)
rather resentful for being overlooked. So, once coronageddon
starts to fade, and the NHS is crying out for funding, there will be those (and
there will be many of them) whose instinctive reaction will be that the
NHS has had its day in the spotlight: "What? Them again? I gave £10
to Captain Tom and now you want me to pay more National Insurance?”
Whereas the actual (but much less Facebook-able) truth is that
the parlous state of the NHS is entirely down to a succession of governments
which has spent the last decades running it into a state of deliberate
neglect to the point where its only possible
salvation is to be sold off, bit by bit, to the private sector. Nationalise the risk, privatise
the profit. As ever. But, because the likes of Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson
can publicly associate themselves with a time and a movement in which
everyone loved the NHS, they dodge culpability for their ongoing systematic
dismantling of it. A dismantling which (it has to be said) they’ve
just continued from the Labour government of ten
years ago and the Conservative government of ten years before that…
|
|
24 April 2020
(Friday) - Rostered Day Off
With the CPAP face mask I slept well, and my
nose wasn’t as sore as once it was in the mornings. I watched more “Tiger
King: Murder Mayhem and Madness” in which our hero finally had his
comeuppance. Facebook was interesting this morning – there
was quite a lot of talk about President Trump. Having realised that
disinfectant kills the COVID-19 virus he was wondering why injections
of disinfectant aren’t being offered as a cure. There are a lot of people
who run him down but I must admit to a sneaking admiration of Donald Trump.
He has become incredibly rich and the leader of the free world despite an
obvious stupidity which he makes no effort to hide. I got the leads on the dogs and took them
out. We went up the road. That’s up the *road*, not pavement. The
bin-men had been out and left the pavements impassable again. I wish they
wouldn’t; how much effort is it to put the bin out of the way? We got to Bowens Field where we met another
of these never-walked-dogs. The idiot with this dog had her on an
extending lead, had pulled out all of the extending lead and was rather angry
because the dog had tangled it all around him. He had just started thrashing
the dog when he saw me. He stopped and made some embarrassed comment about
the dog being over-excited. I made the observation that the dog wasn’t the
only one who was over-excited and kept going. As we came past the river I saw the big fish
again. We then saw another idiot with a never-walked-dog
in the park. This one had a ball-thrower and threw the ball about fifty yards
away. However the dog was on an extending lead, and after about fifteen yards
the lead ran out and the dog came to a very abrupt halt. I watched this whilst chatting with one of
the regular dog walkers of Viccie Park. She made
the observation that these never-walked-dogs are invariably never
allowed off the lead… whilst struggling to get her dog to come out of a
thicket into which he’s just chased a squirrel. She also told me that the
council’s gardeners are under orders to remove the specific trees in which
the squirrels are nesting. Apparently the squirrels are relatively new
residents of the park; having been illegally introduced some time over the
last few years. I spent a little while gardening. I managed
to get the lawn done yesterday, so today I weeded the shingle and moved the
shingle to cover the bald bits, buried the electrical cables (again)
and straightened out the lawn edgings which had gone squafty
over the winter. It was at this point that "er indoors TM" phoned. She’d gone
shopping in Aldi and was ready to be picked up. As I drove to collect her I
saw that the traffic going into B&Q was stacked back along the main road.
Having opened for the first time in a month they were rather busy. I had
planned to get one or two garden things from them today; that can wait. After a Belgian bun and a cuppa I put “Bottom”
on the telly and ironed for an hour or so before spending a little while working
on the geo-series I’ve got in mind. Eventually I fell asleep. This evening I hosted another on-line quiz.
Three rounds including a picture round and nine people taking part; I was
rather pleased with how it all went. I shall run another at some point… |
|
25 April 2020
(Saturday) - Another Day In Lock-Down
After a relatively good night’s sleep I
watched the last episode of “Tiger King: Murder Mayhem and Madness”
which was a “where are they now” following what has happened to the
major protagonists in the story. It was introduced by Joel McHale. I was
rather intrigued by this choice of presenter… he obviously felt he should be
on camera; I had no idea who he was. Apparently he is big in American TV? I had a quick look at Facebook to see that
not much had happened overnight, and with no emails worth having I drove to
B&Q. I thought my monkey puzzle tree could do with planting properly so I
thought I might get some new ground membranes, shingle and plant food. I got
to B&Q twenty minutes before they were due to open and saw the queue went
twice round the car park. That tree can wait… I thought I might spend a little while working
on the web pages for the new geo-series I’ve been working on. Whilst the
things can’t go live for months, I can get all the admin and paperwork ready.
I had a look-see to check over what I’d done so far and saw that I’d put the
wrong hyperlink into fifty web pages. Oh, how I chuckled as I put that right, and
two hours later I was effectively ready to start again. Rather than starting
again we took the dogs for a walk. We walked through the park out to the newly-landscaped
area behind Singleton Lake. As we walked though the
park we saw Cheryl and Rolo. As always Rolo got very over-excited wen
he saw our dogs, and picked fights with humungous dogs safe in the knowledge
that if anything kicked off, then Pogo would back him up. We met old family friends Maxine and Beryl at
Singleton Lake; it was good to have a little (socially distanced)
catch-up. With walk walked we came home, and spent the
afternoon in the garden. With the sun shining and Alexei Sayle
on my Kindle I poured a selection of beers down my neck. Having spent a small
fortune and endless hours on the garden I really don’t spend anywhere near
enough time in it. "er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching very old episodes
of “Blankety- Blank” on Challenge TV. I’d forgotten just how lame that
show was… |
|
26 April 2020
(Sunday) - Locked Down Sunday
I slept for an amazing ten hours last night.
That’s quite unheard of. I must admit that in many ways sleep is just a waste
of time, but in these locked down days there is very little else to be doing
really. I had a look-see at the Internet and couldn’t
believe the row that was kicking off on the Geocaching UK Facebook page. With
the hobby effectively banned and all talk of coronageddon
forbidden on that page, they were arguing about the BBC’s charity night that
took place in the week. Some people just want to squabble. The local Facebook page was warning of a scam
in which some local crook was selling face masks for thirty quid and not
delivering, and the local funeral director was touting for trade. I also saw that a lot of the Munzees I’ve deployed recently have faded. That’s a pain
in the glass (as "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM"
would say). The print-my-own Munzees haven’t
really worked; I’ve spent out and bought some proper ones. I wonder how long
they will take to arrive? As I waited for "er
indoors TM" to emerge from her pit I cracked on with
sorting out the web pages for my planned geo-series. I’ve finally got all the
admin stuff done; I just now need for the lock-down to be lifted so I can go
out and hide all the pots. We took the dogs out for a walk. Thinking we
might try a different walk we went up towards the civic centre, through the
north park and back home along the black alley. (None of which will mean
anything to anyone who doesn’t know the back streets of Ashford). But it
was a good walk if only for the fact that not one of the dogs kicked off for
any reason whatsoever. Once home I had a quick look at the monthly
accounts. Bearing in mind I bought most of the shopping last month I could be
a whole lot worse off. I could be a lot better off… but I’m not grumbling. If
I can afford to shell out on bar codes to stick to lamp posts I can’t be
doing that badly. Then, as the sun was shining, I sat in the
garden for a bit. Rather more abstemious than yesterday I only had one beer
as I read my Kindle. It was a shame that Treacle had to get so possessive
over the tennis ball she’d found this morning. I don’t mind her and Pogo
having play-fights, but Fudge isn’t up to it these days. "er indoors TM" cut up some
swede for the dogs – you can see the
video of it here. There are some rather impressive crunching sounds. And
then we had our scoff. It was rather good. As we scoffed it we watched “Joe
Lycett’s Got Your Back” on the telly; a modern-day version of the old
favourite “That’s Life”. All it needed was a dog saying “Sausages!”
and Ester Rantzen brandishing a willy-shaped
carrot. At eight o’clock we sparked up the Zoom
software and had a seven-way met-up. It was good to catch up… |
|
27 April 2020
(Monday) - Subordinate Clauses
Over brekkie I watched the first episode of
the second season of “After Life”.
Starring Ricky Gervais I thought it was rather good. I suppose it depends on
where you stand on Ricky Gervais. I quite like the chap, but I know there are
those who don’t. I had a little look into the depths of the
Internet; very little had happened overnight, but I finally heard back from
the neighbourhood watch people. They sent me a letter touting for trade back
in January but I had no reply from the email address or from the phone number
they gave. Yesterday I saw someone was talking about it on the local Facebook
group. I asked for details, and my inbox has a few messages about what they
are up do. I *think* Neighbourhood Watch is going
to be something of a disappointment. I had visions of being part of a
vigilante mob guarding the streets form the forces of lawlessness and evil.
But I think the reality is that I get to act as a collection point for all
the local whingers, and forward their gripes to a disinterested
community-support police assistant. I shall give it a go before dismissing the
thing completely out of hand. As I drove to Pembury on a rather foggy
morning the pundits on the radio were talking about how there have been loads
of reports of people being poisoned by bleach and disinfectants all over
America over the weekend. Last week President Trump mentioned the possibility
of using bleaches and disinfectants as a medicine against the COVID-19 virus,
and many people took him at his word. Anyone with any sense can tell that the
bloke is an idiot, but there are lots with even less sense than him. Which is
rather worrying. There was also talk about easing the
lock-down in the UK... or if not easing it, at least making sense of it. For
example florists cannot operate from an open market stall in the high street,
but can do from inside a supermarket. People with no gardens are
prosecuted for sunbathing on their own in public parks but can work in
factories where people are crowded in like sardines. What's that all about? I must admit to rolling my eyes as I came
through the "-dens" and the "-hursts".
Where only a few short months ago there was a *huge* "Vote
Conservative" placard, today (in exactly the same place)
there is an equally enormous "We Love the NHS" poster. Am I
the only one who sees a contradiction here? There are those who would
question me "bringing politics into everything" - to those
people I would suggest they find out what politics is all about. I stopped off at Tesco to get some
supplies. Plant food, washing gel, dishwasher tablets... As I shopped I
very nearly pointed and shouted at the silly old bat who was wearing tatty
latex gloves and picking up and putting down pretty much every item in the
shop. Most of the checkout staff also had tatty
well-worn latex gloves. except one who was wearing woolly ones. I didn't
quite point and laugh, but I came close. I went on to work; I did my bit. At tea break
I had an Easter Egg. Over the weekend the Nestle corporation had delivered
loads of Easter Eggs to the hospital which was kind of them... Part of me
cynically wonders if this was some sort of tax loss operation. We also had home-made cake from a well-wisher
who realised both just how important blood-testing is to healthcare and how
much blood testers like cake. I also had an email claiming to be from DWS
investments who had "a genuine investment offer for Health Workers
and Individuals". They were "offering genuine Investment
opportunity to individuals to invest as low as £250 and get a minimum 10-fold
profit interest value of £2,500 within 3 working days." If any of my
loyal reader know of anyone who is so thick as to be taken in by this scam,
please send me their two hundred and fifty quid and I'll invest it for them. As we worked a colleague told us all of the
fun she'd had last week home-schooling her locked-down children. The school had
instructed her to educate her children in the intricacies of subordinate
clauses. Much like my colleague did, I looked it up on Google. A subordinate
clause is one which, typically introduced by a conjunction, forms part of and
is dependent on a main clause. One lives and learns... I must admit I can't work out how I've
managed the last fifty years without knowing what a subordinate clause
is… |
|
28 April 2020
(Tuesday) - Soap Dish, Gin...
Having spent much of the night laying awake listening to the rain on the window I’d
finally nodded off when the alarm went off. Over a bowl of the Tesco granola
I’d bought yesterday (not bad) I watched another episode of Ricky
Gervais’s “After Life” which was again rather good. I had a little look at the Internet. There
wasn’t much happening on Facebook really. Having joined the “Crap Animal
Photography” page yesterday I left it this morning as there are only so
many out-of-focus photographs you can look at before losing interest. Seeing I had no emails at all I put some
plant food onto my monkey puzzle tree and set off work-wards. I drove to Pembury through a damp and dismal
morning. The roads west-wards can be quite pretty in the morning sunshine,
but were rather tedious in this morning's gloom. As I drove the pundits on the radio were
talking about the parlous state of our economy following the impact of coronageddon. I say "our" economy; from
this morning's reports it is plain that the economy is clearly the property
of an elite. There were reports of the HSBC bank wanting to lay off thousands
of workers since their quarterly profits have plummeted to only three billion
quid. And closer to home several ministers and MPs weren't interested in
bailing out UK ferry and haulage firms who may well go bankrupt following the
collapse of their businesses. Am I the only one who sees something awry
here? Years ago the government sold off the nation's assets because they
didn't want the aggro of running them and felt that they would be more
efficient in private hands. And now when these vital services are about to go
belly-up, the government says it is not their problem. Surely the country needs
an infrastructure in good times and bad? If nothing else, this pandemic has
shown that a system of government which is dependent on greed falls flat on
its face when there is no profit to be made. I got to work. I did that which I could not
avoid. There were a lot less cakes and Easter eggs than yesterday, which was
a shame. But an early start made for an early finish, and I was home in time
to go round the park with "er indoors TM"
and the dogs. The walk went well. Pogo didn’t shout *that*
much and he played nicely with other dogs. Fudge did his usual trick of
straggling and looking pitiful until he met another dog at which point he
started a game of “rude-piggy-back” which totally made a mockery of my
worrying about his bad back. Once home I was amazed to see that "er indoors TM" had got us a new soap
dish. It self-drains – how cool is that? I then tried to pay for some Lego with
PayPal. PayPal is crap. Whenever I use it I just get the “spinning blue
wheel of death”. The only way to resolve it is to clear all the cookies
and reset all the passwords. Which is something of a pain in the glass (as
"Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM" would say) "er indoors TM" boiled up a
particularly good bit of dinner which we washed down with some rather
over-priced red wine, port and gin whilst watching yesterday’s “SAS: Who
Dares Wins” and today’s “Celebrity Bake-Off”. I expect I shall have a headache tomorrow… |
|
29 April 2020 (Wednesday)
- Late Shift
I slept like a log and woke feeling full of
energy and raring to go at twenty past three. I then lay awake listening to a
medley of snoring from "er indoors TM",
Treacle and Pogo. Fudge had gone downstairs to the sofa for some peace and
quiet. I should have joined him. I peered into the Internet to see what had
happened overnight. My new soap dish had generated quite a lot of interest. I
saw that Cheryl had tagged me into one of those Facebook things: I now have
to post (on Facebook) a scene (no title, not a poster) of a
film that had an impact on me. Every day a new film and a new nomination for
ten days. Today I went for the best film in the history of the universe (I’m
trying to get rather obscure piccies - if you want to know what film it is,
just ask…) The last time I did something like this (influential
albums) I nominated family members… only one had a go and he gave up
after four days. This time I’m nominating people who I’ve known for at least
forty years from my days in the Boys Brigade. I don’t suppose or expect any
of them will join in, but there is a method in my madness here. It can be
difficult to pick people for these Facebook meme-things without giving
offence to those who don’t get picked. At least this way I have some
defendable criteria. I took the dogs out for a walk. As we went
round the park we met the little old lady who goes about on a frame with her
blue-eyed dog. (Dog owners don’t know other dog owners by name, we know
each other by dog). She had a rant about the young family who use the
park so little that they actually had to be told not to play in the flower
beds, and she loudly announced that she would be glad when lock-down is over
and all these people who have never before used the park all go back indoors.
She then told a passing normal person that the face mask they were wearing
would have been better used at the hospital by someone who actually needs it
and wouldn’t waste it in the park. I was so glad that it isn’t just me who is
getting fed up with the antics of all the locked-down idiots. We went on; Pogo shouted at the dog of a
normal person, then played with new friends “Biscuit” and “Dorothy”
before coming home. Once home I saw that the postie had been.
He’d delivered the Munzee stickers I’d ordered at
the weekend. They’d arrived quickly. Usually I would then waste a little time
watching telly, but with "er indoors TM"
working from home I didn’t want to disturb her. And with the nation in
lock-down, a geo-adventure or an hour’s munzing
wasn’t really on the cards. So I wrote up a little CPD (which
was on the dull side) whilst the dogs snored. As I drove to Pembury the pundits on the
radio were talking about how the pandemic has affected the religious. A lot
more services are taking place virtually, and the chap being interviewed was
rattling on about how "all sorts of possibilities are being considered".
It never fails to amaze me how one possibility that never gets considered is
that the righteous have got it all wrong, and their god is (at best)
utterly disinterested in getting humanity out of whatever disaster has
befallen it this week. There was also talk about how overworked
Muslims in the NHS are struggling with Ramadan this year. There was
speculation on relaxing the fasting restrictions, but the favoured option (of
those seemingly in the know) was to allow anyone following Ramadan to take
the entire month off work. How is that going to work? I got to work where there was a definite
absence of cake. I did my bit (as I do). Coming home was something
of a game as the A21 was closed. Navigating home cross-country in the dark
took some doing… |
|
30 April 2020
(Thursday) - Another Late Shift
I didn’t have the most restful of nights. I
had a nightmare in which I had been drafted back into the scout organisation
and given command of a cub pack based near my mother’s house. All the
children had various illnesses and maladies, and the parents were all glad
that they could dump their kids on me. I wonder what prompted that? Fudge was particularly clingy as I scoffed my
toast and peered into Facebook. A friend had posted a picture of a card he’d
received which was enclosed in the packaging of a recent Amazon purchase. He
was being offered ten Euros credit to his Amazon account if he wrote a
five-star review of what he’d bought… I follow an author page on Facebook (having
had minor literary success in the past). People on that page write good
reviews on the e-books of others without ever reading them, as a bad review
is the kiss of death for a writer. I recently wrote a less than glowing
report on an e-book I read. I said it was not the best and gave it three out
of five. Had I been honest I would have written the one word “shite”
and given it zero. But I still got a message from the author bleating that
bad reviews are bad for business. This is the world of on-line reviews. I also saw that I’ve been made admin for the Munzee “Cup of Cocoa” clan for May. That’s quite
impressive (if sticking bar codes onto lamp posts is your thing) I used Facebook’s new “care” emoticon
on a photo of "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM",
told the world about my second choice of film, and took the dogs out. We took one step outside, turned round and
came back in for my coat; it was pouring hard. But the rain stopped in
minutes and we had a good walk. There was only one “episode”; a jogger
coming toward us stopped and broke out into a rather vigorous workout routine
when only ten yards in front of us. Treacle was terrified, Pogo saw it as a
threat, and Fudge thought it was a game. Fortunately a jogger coming behind
us saw it all happen, and agreed with me that the chap had picked a very
silly place to start his thrashing about. We came home and I harvested all the dog dung
from the garden. Bearing in mind how much they “do” when we are out on
our walks, they “do” an amazing lot in the back garden. I then spent a little while going through my
credit card statement. Being a meanie I always go through it and account for
every penny, but what with the lock-down I’ve not withdrawn any cash since a
week before my birthday. I’ve done every single transaction on card, and so
there was a *lot* to go through. Mind you it was well worth doing.
Amazon never took the payment for that rather bad e-book I whinged about
earlier, and the hospital in Hastings never took the payment for car parking
when I visited my mum. Treacle had "dumped" just as
we were coming home. I'd bagged it and left it on the doorstep to dispose of
when I left for work. So I picked up the poop, walked up the road to the bin,
and eventually found myself going in completely the opposite direction to
that in which I should have been walking. It was a shame I didn't realise
this earlier; I was in something of a daydream. But I did get to have an experimental deploy
of one of the new Munzees that had arrived
yesterday. I replaced one that I'd put out only a couple of weeks ago which
had faded to the point of being unreadable. It worked fine, which was a
result. As I drove to Pembury the pundits on the
radio were droning on about the pandemic. If they had anything worth saying I
would have listened. But they were just repeating that which has been
repeated endlessly and making wild speculations with no evidence to back up
their suppositions, so I turned the radio off, and listened to my (arguably)
rather odd choice of music. The roads seemed rather busy this morning.
Nowhere near as busy as usual, but certainly busier than they have been. I got to work, and thought I might see what
the works canteen was doing. They were doing a rather good lasagne (with
chips) and a very good spotted dick (with custard). I tucked in,
and gave myself a belly ache which lasted all afternoon. The late shift was much as late shifts are. I
was glad to see the relief arrive, but driving home was something of a game.
With the A21 closed I again had to go cross country through Horsmonden to Goudhurst, and then navigate the gamut of
road works which was infesting much of the A262. I do like working at
Tunbridge Wells, but the journey can be iffy. As it was this evening… |
