5 November 2018 (Monday) - Late Shift



I actually had an early night last night, and apart from a minor disturbance when a wet nose was shoved into my left armpit in the small hours, I slept for eight hours.

I stood on the scales this morning. For all that I haven’t been dieting recently I’ve not put on *that* much weight. Maybe a pre-Christmas diet might be a good idea though.
Over brekkie I peered into cyber-space. I read something which was a sign of our times. Apparently youths had been using an air-rifle to take pot-shots at cars in one of the better parts of town. Naturally pretty much everyone was up in arms about it. But… Back in the day decent people would have gone out, taken the air rifle from the brats, snapped it as they watched, given the kids a smack round the earhole, and that would have been the end of it. Nowadays everyone just posts indignation from the safety of their keyboard and the brats wallow in the glory as they boast to their mates. And everyone acts surprised when the copycats start up.

I took the dogs for a walk. Over the years our morning walks would involve meeting loads of schoolchildren on their way to school. The pavements would be awash with them. Over the last year something has changed. We still see half a dozen secondary school youths on bikes, but we don’t see *any* primary school kids any more. Do they all go to school by car? Do they start earlier or later? Mind you we did see “Little Miss Cheerful”. I first met “Little Miss Cheerful” nearly thirty years ago. She lives just down the road from us and has a son of the same age as "My Boy TM". Over the years I’ve bumped into her at play schools, schools, cubs, youth clubs, in pubs and clubs, in shops… so many places. And on every single occasion she has a face like a slapped arse. The act of smiling *must* cause her physical pain; why else would she have appeared to be thoroughly miserable ever since the early 1990s?
We also saw a squirrel which probably wouldn’t have had an ecstatic expression on its face bearing in mind the turn of speed the poor thing had to have to evade the hounds.

After our walk I ran round the house with the Hoover. Our Hoover is a Dyson.

I set off to Tunbridge Wells. Being seconded to Tunbridge Wells for the late shift I'd found myself a few geo-targets to keep me out of mischief on the way to work. I say “found” – “I saw their locations on the map” might be a more accurate statement.
My first target had me solve a little puzzle based on a post box on someone's house, do a few sums, and then set off to a location a couple of hundred yards away. The hint was "behind tree". The sat-nav took me straight to a large tree. However behind this tree was a garden fence. And sitting in the garden was one of the normal people who was watching me in the same way I might look at dog poop on my shoe. I gave up and drove on to my backup geocache which (after doing some sums) had me rummaging fruitlessly in an orchard (to coin a phrase). After a while I gave up and drove in to work.

After twenty minutes driving round a rather full car park I eventually managed to park my car, and went to the canteen for lunch. Usually the works canteen(s) are very good. Unfortunately today was some sort of "burger day" and I wasn't impressed. But dinner is dinner. I scoffed it and walked in to my department to find a "red alert" in full flow. That is one of the troubles with my line of work. I have sometimes (in my more flippant moments) described what I do as "hours of boredom interspersed with moments of stark panic". A ruptured aorta is usually something which makes people sit up and take notice, as are antibodies to the Kidd blood group system.

After that, the rest of the day was something of an anti-climax.

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