26 July 2017 (Wednesday) - Stuff

At the weekend I was whinging that the catch-up TV had forgotten every mention of the program “Uncle”. Overnight the Sky-Plus box recorded two episodes of the show. That was kind of it. I watched one over brekkie. As I watched, the puppy came downstairs looking very proud of herself; she was chewing on a plastic coat hanger. I got said plastic coat hanger off of her (before she hurt herself), but she saw that as the opening gambit in a game of “attack!” and I then spent ten minutes fending off a furry shark.

With a few minutes to spare I had a little look on Facebook. An old pub in Ashford (which has been closed for years and has had a fire) is to be demolished and a block of flats will be built on the site. Quite a few people were complaining on the local Facebook pages about how the town is losing more of its heritage. How does that work? The place was boarded up for years and looked frankly awful. And following the fire it looked like something awful that had had a fire. Is that the heritage that people want to preserve? Or are they talking about the pub itself? If people want local pubs they’ve got to use them. Much as I like a trip to the pub, it is a treat these days, not the regular occurrence it was for people all those years ago.

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were still banging on about Princess Diana’s death. Today they were interviewing her brother about the eulogy he gave at her funeral, and asking if it really was a dig at the Royal Family. The poor chap was really in a difficult position; pointed questions from the radio presenters were trying to make him run down the Royals.

There was also a lot of talk about the Charlie Gard case. On the one hand are health professionals with years of experience of such cases. On the other hand are vulnerable parents egged on by foreign medics who had never seen the child until a day or so ago, and who presumably hoped to profit from the suffering of others. This case reminds me of so many other cases. The word is full of crackpots offering cures that proper medicine cannot offer. The chap who was best man at my wedding has a hereditary form of blindness. The NHS said as much, but when he was a teenager the people of the town raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to send him to a clinic in Switzerland (several times). Needless to say it achieved nothing, and the clinic has long been exposed as a scam.

I got to work and had a rather busy day. Ernie was fine, but Eric was troublesome. It’s an echoing problem…

I feel rather tired now. I seem to be getting more and more tired in the early evenings…

25 July 2017 (Tuesday) - Free Food

I slept well, I didn’t wake until nearly 6am which was something of a result. Over brekkie I watched an old episode of ”Dad’s Army” then sparked up my lap-top to have my usual morning rummage in cyber-space. With nothing going on in there I set off to work.

I went to get petrol; having filled the tank I joined the queue at the till. We waited. And waited. Rather than taking money the person on duty at the petrol station was sweeping an already clean floor. After a few minutes one of the chaps queuing with me asked how long she’d be. She looked up and did a double-take. Did she *really* have no idea how many people were waiting?

I got to work and did my bit. Yesterday I mentioned how happy I was at work; today I was rather surprised to hear that a chap who started only a few weeks before me was actively seeking work elsewhere. He isn’t at all impressed with the early starts and late finishes. It is a discussion I have had so many times over the years. Having a shift pattern which effectively covers every hour of every day is an integral part of working in a hospital. Surely people realise this when they first consider applying to work in one, and if that doesn’t occur to them, then don’t they pay attention when the working pattern is described at interview?

At lunchtime we had something of a treat… or so we’d hoped. A rep was coming to tell us the latest developments in the world of von Willebrand’s disease. The chap turned up, put up a PowerPoint presentation that someone else had made, and read the slides to us in a dull monotone. I slept through most of it. I’m told I didn’t actually snore.

Although we got free dinner, it was forty-five minutes of my life that I would like back.

As I came home my phone beeped with a Facebook notification. A chap with whom I’d once worked had died. I was rather amazed to read the glowing obituaries that some of his other colleagues had left for him. No one liked him, and now people who wouldn’t have pissed on him if he was on fire are now crying for the loss of their best friend in the world.

I realise it is bad form to speak ill of the dead, but is it really? Why paint the chap to be some sort of wonder-saint? He was a scout leader at the same time that I was. Scout leaders make a promise to keep the Scout Law. The very first part of it says “a scout is to be trusted”. I don’t think this chap said a true word ever. I certainly lost count of the amount of lies he fed us at work; I wouldn’t trust him to tell the time.

I still ache from the canoeing… Being in constant pain is making me *such* a misery-guts…

24 July 2017 (Monday) - Love Mondays

For some inexplicable reason the puppy had a woofing fit in the small hours which set Fudge barking too. I so wish they wouldn’t do that. I had only just nodded off, and I saw pretty much every hour of the night last night. I gave up trying to sleep shortly after 5am, and got up and watched the brand-new episode of Game of Thrones which the Sky-Plus box had recorded at 2am. I had considered waiting until this evening before watching it, but so many people watch the show that it is just impossible to avoid spoilers about the show.

The episode was quite good, blood and tits abounded. Perhaps too much blood. I’m struggling to know who is who in the show, and more importantly who has fought with or against who and who has porked who. Mind you the thing is obviously building up to a big climax; I just hope they give it a good ending rather than dragging it on for as long as there is money to be made from it.

As I watched it I combed Fudge. He likes being combed. The puppy came and bit me for a while before going off to do her own sweet thing.

I then sparked up my lap-top to see what had happened in cyber-space overnight. Not much really. Nor had I had any emails worth mentioning.

I set off to work on a wet morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were again raking over the death of Princes Diana. How long had she been dead? Surely it is time to move on? They then interviewed one of the top knobs at the airline Ryanair who are looking set to move all of their business from the UK into Europe as they are convinced that the British economy is about to go tin-pot following Brexit.

There was then a lot of hot air and bluster about Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed promise to wipe out student debt. Was his policy misrepresented or has he worked out how much it would cost? Who knows.

I got to Aldi. As I pulled up I noticed there were three police cars parked up by McDonalds. A gaggle of coppers came out, laughing and joking, and drove off. I would have thought that in these times of reduced police numbers, having the shift going for brekkie together isn’t a good idea, but what do I know?

I got to work. Work was good. It is mostly good these days. Today marks my six-month anniversary in my new workplace. It is not perfect; nowhere ever is. But for the last six months I haven’t felt physically sick at the thought of going in. There is no policy to have your colleagues go through everything you’ve done with a fine-toothed comb actively looking for fault. The bosses don’t stand over your shoulder watching your every move hoping to catch you out. I’ve not been asked to do the supervisory work for which I was turned down for promotion but the chap who was given the job was unable to do.

I’m happy at work, which is more than I’ve been for several years.