13 December 2020 (Sunday) - Early Shift

Fudge spent another night on the bed. It amazes me how he can be so still and inoffensive all night long whilst Pogo and Treacle have to stomp about like things possessed.
I got up and scoffed toast whilst watching an episode of “Big Mouth” then had a little look-see at the Internet. I saw that the “Kent Geocacher of the Year” had been announced. I missed all of that – I wasn’t asked for a nomination. Whilst I agree with the winner, it would have been nice to have been asked, but there it is. I sent out a couple of birthday wishes, and got myself ready for work.

The original plan didn't have me working today. But a colleague needed to swap her shifts, and a frankly dreadful weather forecast meant I was only too happy to help out.

 

It was rather cold as I walked to find my car, and there was quite a bit of ice to scrape from my windscreen. With the external ice scraped I was rather concerned to find that the inside of the car's windscreen wasn't clearing. After a rather panic-stricken few minutes (plagued by visions of garage bills) I realised the blowers were set to blowing the warm air at me rather than up the inside of the windscreen. (Dur!) I twiddled the knob, and all was fine (as is so often the case).

As I drove out of Ashford I was amazed at how many buses were driving about - all of which with seats for up to fifty people, and all of which were empty. That's not "only a few passengers", that's "empty - no passengers at all". I suppose that there's not that many people needing buses before seven o'clock on a Sunday morning. Back in the day there used to be much smaller buses - surely it would make sense to run those when hardly any passengers are about?

 

I got to the motorway and found it closed. That was useful... One of the many benefits of Brexit (!) is that the motorway is being closed on a regular basis. So I drove up the A20 instead; I drove up it far faster today than I did when snow closed the motorway a couple of weeks ago. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how president-elect Joe Biden has ordered the White House to be thoroughly scrubbed out before he takes up residence. He's not keen to go in there until it's been deep-cleaned bearing in mind just how COVID-19-ridden President Trump's cronies seem to be, and I think he might have a point.

There was also a lot of talk about some chap and some young lady who found religion over lock-down. One has converted to Islam, one has become a Buddhist. Both seemed happy with their decisions... most religious people seem to be. I pretended that I was happy some forty years ago (until I saw the darkness). The young lady being interviewed said that she'd always been jealous of religious people as they had some certainty in their life that she seemed to be lacking. Looking back I never had religious certainly - I just desperately hoped that my version of crackpot religion was correct as it promised me the creator of the universe as a best friend, and (let's be honest here) that's certainly appealing.

 

I got to work (with about two minutes to spare) where I did my thing. As I worked I kept glancing out of the window at a rather damp and dismal day. I was right to have gone to work today, even if it was a tad busier than I might have liked it to have been.

Having left home in darkness and got to work in twilight I left work in twilight and came home in darkness. Just as I was coming home the pundits on the radio were talking about a recently published book. “The Arrest” by Jonathan Lethem sounds just like the sort of post-apocalyptic fiction that I love… but over seven quid for an e-book? Really?

I got home to find visitors. "My Boy TM" and Cheryl had called round. We bandied insults for a while, then they went dinner-wards.  I opened the Advent Calendar, took a photo with my phone, and managed to get the photo onto my lap-top far quicker than I did yesterday. My phone is far from perfect right now, but I can get stuff out of it which is a vast improvement on what it was, even if I do have to go into the developer options every time to tell it what to do with its USB.
The thing still resists all attempts to unlock it though…

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