A good night’s sleep was a very welcome treat last night, as was warm toast for brekkie. I scoffed it as my COVID test incubated (negative again) and as I watched another episode of “Motherland”.
I sparked up my lap-top to see how the internet had fared overnight. I had an interesting email. About ten years ago my life took something of a nose-dive. Money became incredibly tight and I found myself trying all sorts of ways to make ends meet. One of my many strokes of genius was to sign up with View Ranger. They promised me the Moon on a stick. Billed as “your ultimate adventure guide” they made the proud boast that “ViewRanger is your digital guide to the outdoors with downloadable route guides, outdoor maps, and powerful GPS navigation features.”. Taken in by the hype, I published one or two walking routes on their website on the strength of their promise that people would pay to download them, and the money would just keep rolling in.
As the years passed I rather forgot about them, but this morning they sent me an email. The nice people at View Ranger aren’t selling routes any more and so are settling all their accounts. In ten years of having people downloading my suggested walks I have earned the frankly disappointing sum of one pound fifteen pence.
I’ve donated the lot to View Ranger’s favourite charity (mountain rescue).
I also had a message from “Kaitlyn Olivia” who was “seeking for serious submissive slave that will be dominated by me”. Much as I do like much that Facebook gives me for free, it does bother me that dominatrices can openly tout for trade with impunity, but complaining that they are doing so breaches the Facebook community standards.
I also had a string of “did not find” emails about several of my geocaches which was rather frustrating bearing in mind that the caches *are* there.
As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were interviewing the Welsh First Minister about the proposed trade deal the UK is negotiating with Australia. Welsh sheep farmers are up in arms about the matter as it was alleged that it is cheaper to ship a joint of lamb half way round the world to my dinner table than it is to drive one down from Cardiff. It would seem that the Brexit we've got isn't the one that the Welsh sheep farmers voted for. At no stage did they ever seem to want to contend with market forces in which the British public would buy the cheapest thing on the market rather than what they were selling.
There was also talk about the reunification of Britain's railways and a rather amazing admission that the break-up of the nation's railway system really had been a mistake after all.
With a few minutes spare I stopped off at Aldi. I've not been there for a while. It was much as it ever was. I went in for jam and biscuits and nearly came out with Lego and pyjamas. But they didn't have pyjamas in my size, and the Lego was cheaper on-line (and I didn't want Harry Potter Lego anyway). But I did get a bottle of Uruguayan red wine.
I got to work; I did my bit. As I worked a colleague was arguing with his insurance company. He's got a new car. The insurance company were happy to either change his existing policy to cover the new car, or to have him start a new policy. However they were utterly unable to explain why changing the existing policy was three hundred pounds more expensive than starting a new one.
He started a new policy.
This might be something to bear in mind when getting a new car; I often wonder just how much longer my one is going to run for. It gets me to work (and home again) every day, but we are doing sixty miles every day and the thing is now fourteen years old. I've always said that I shall run it into the ground, and it can only be a matter of time before my car finally throws in the towel.
The plan was to walk Sid round the block this evening as er indoors TM” would take Treacle and Pogo to the co-op field. But the heavy rain put us off of that idea.
er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we devoured whilst watching Adrian Edmonson in “Ade in Britain” at the highland games. We washed the dinner down with that Uruguayan red wine. It was rather good… the three glasses of amaretto that followed it might (just possibly) have been a mistake…
No comments:
Post a Comment