31 December 2020 (Thursday) - New Year's Eve (?)

Despite a rather vivid nightmare in which I had been charged with running the work’s pantomime (Avenue Q) at incredibly short notice I slept well, waking only a minute or so before the alarm.

I came downstairs and chivvied Sid round the garden where he tiddled, wandered around, then bimbled back into the kitchen; finally dropping turds as he came in. Just as I finished clearing up so Fudge came downstairs. At least he is capable of going outside unsupervised.

 

I did my COVID-19 test; despite having been jabbed I still have to do them every four days. Then as I scoffed brekkie I watched an episode of “Motherland” before having my daily morning perusal of the Internet. There was a minor squabble kicking off on one of the local Facebook pages in which a well-meaning young mother had tried to organise a charity cake sale and was getting rather harsh criticism from some misery-guts who clearly had no intention of doing anything public-spirited. As I have said before, no good deed ever goes unpunished.

My Facebook feed featured adverts for a local milkman. I suppose he’s not *that* much more expensive than the supermarket, but I can remember walking to school back in the day when doorstep deliveries of milk were commonplace. For those of my loyal readers who are too young to remember, back in the days when dinosaurs walked the Earth, milkmen would drive round at silly o’clock in the morning delivering milk. They would leave it on your doorstep so that when you got up you’d have milk waiting for you. However the local blue tits would peck open the bottles to get at the milk, and bottles on the doorstep were fair game for passing schoolkids – not to drink but to throw around.

I sent out birthday wishes, and got ready for work.

 

Just as I was finishing scraping the ice from my car one of the normal people came past walking his dog. I was rather impressed - I couldn't see my wolf-pack getting their arses out of bed quite so early in the morning. I said "Hello Pup" to the dog (as I do to most dogs), and that clearly put the wind up the normal person. He sort-of squirmed, and with a very sickly smile muttered "good morning sir" and hurried off as quickly as he could.

 

I drove half a mile out of my way to Hawks Way where there was a geocache I'd not found before. Bearing in mind there is usually an e-souvenir to be had for logging a find on New Year's Eve I thought a quick find wouldn't hurt.

I found the cache - I didn't get an e-souvenir. After a little farting about I found out that this year the e-souvenir wasn't just for New Year's Eve - it was for any time in the last week of the year and I'd actually received it on Monday afternoon whilst rummaging in a hedgerow five miles from my mother's house.

I've rather got out of geocaching recently. Since all the lock-downs and tiers we've not been able to meet up, and the on-line geo-places have been invaded by the keyboard warriors.  So many hobbies are spoiled by those who don't actually do the hobby but stir up arguments about it instead. When lock-downs lift things will improve as there is no way any of the rather nasty people seemingly infesting cyberspace would ever want to meet anyone in person, but for now hunting Tupperware has become something of a lonely pursuit.

 

As I drove up the motorway the Education Minister was being interviewed on the radio... I say "being interviewed"; "being harangued" might have been a more accurate description of what was going on. For all that he is a bit of a tit, he did sum up the frustration I was feeling when he (rather tersely) snapped at his inquisitor "... if I could be allowed to finish a single sentence". However at that point the interviewer actually closed her mouth and let him speak more than a few words, thereby allowing him to prove what a twit he was. Not only did he claim that black was white and shit was sugar,  he said that schools both would and would not re-open in January. He claimed that all the problems of the schools would be solved by the troops that were being deployed to assist, even though there would only be one thousand five hundred troops spread out over the nation's three thousand four hundred (and something) secondary schools. Having a degree in mathematics, I've worked that out to be one soldier for every two (and a bit) schools. And the minister was rather vague about exactly what these soldiers would be doing in the schools anyway.

But, as I've said before, it is easy to knock the government. How many of us have ever stood up for public office? Personally I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. Throwing rocks from the sidelines is so much easier.

 

I got to work rather later than usual and (as ever) did my bit. Today I had something of a "platelet clumps" day and may well wax loquacious about the things elsewhere on the Internet over the next few days.

 

I came home to a very clingy dog. Fudge was very quiet and subdued and wouldn’t leave my side. I think he’s sickening for something.

"er indoors TM" boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we washed down with probably far too much giggle juice. Usually New Year’s Eve is a gathering of the clans in Folkestone for Spanish New Year, but COVID-19 had put paid to that for this year. The plan is a Zoom cyber-meet-up for midnight… if we are still awake.

 

And that’s it for another year… At the beginning of the year I wrote “Here’s hoping for the future…

This last year has been an odd one.

It started very well with a bracing walk on New Year’s Day. I ran what I thought was a very good geo-meet in February. We had a particularly good few days away in Cambridgeshire over my birthday. We had a very good week away in Wiltshire over the summer. Interspersed with this were quite a few weekend walks.

I could have done so much more if not for that global pandemic which rather pissed on everyone’s chips… Realistically it will pogger up 2021 probably just as much as it did 2020. I have a naïve optimism about life. I try to hope for the best whilst expecting the worst. It is a philosophy which seems to work… and I think that it will be rather applicable for the next few months…

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