I
felt like death warmed up when I woke this morning. Had I not been told how
short-handed we were going to be at work today I would have phoned in sick. I
made some toast and watched an episode of "Better Than Us" on
Netflix, then watched "the queue". People had been queuing
overnight to pay their respects to Her Majesty, and the queue was coming to an
end this morning.
I
didn't go up there... it wasn't really practical. However had I known that
people were allowed to carry luggage in (which had been expressly forbidden
according to the radio last week) then I might just have had a look-see.
People were even carrying dogs through this morning...
Now
that it is all over I feel I missed out.
Still
feeling grim I set off to work. The roads were quiet, but not as quiet as they
might have been. There were still loads of lorries going to and fro. Despite
the radio being nothing but talk about today's Royal funeral I listened to it
out of a sense of being part of history... Sadly there was absolutely nothing
to be said that hadn't been repeated ad-nauseum over the last week or so, and
the morning's presenter was doing nothing but repeat himself which rather
detracted from the occasion.
Mind
you I did chuckle when there was talk of a leaked Foreign Office
document
advising on how to deal with the foreign dignitaries attending the funeral. The
official advice was: "Keep apart leaders who hate one another, watch what
you feed them and make sure that President Macron is near the front to avoid a
hissy fit".
I'm
sure the French are going to love that one...
I
got to work and found the chap on the night shift had done most (pretty much
all) of the setting-up tasks that I would have done this morning. And
within a very short time several colleagues who weren't supposed to be working
turned up. With nothing to do at home they thought they'd come in to work and
take a day off another time when it suited them better.
I'd
only come in today because everyone else had said they wanted the day off...
Having spent quite a bit of time watching the Laying in State I would have
liked to have watched the funeral, but by then I was already at work and it was
far too late to be changing plans. So I just spent much of the day constantly
grumbling about what a waste of my time today had been.
As I was about to come home “er indoors TM”
sent a message; she was taking the dogs out, and one of the pond's filter boxes
was leaking.
When I got home I had a look at the filter. Having
spent three hundred quid on the pond's new filter system, it simply isn't
working. A few weeks ago I bought two smaller filters and spread the water
between them. The water isn’t spreading evenly. I *think* each filter
needs its own pump. I shall have a look in the pond shop tomorrow…
With
“er indoors TM” and the dogs out I had a little tidy-up and
loaded a carful of rubbish for a tip run in the morning. As I pootled “er
indoors TM” sent another message. Bailey had run off, and
Treacle had eaten a dead mouse. Amazingly Morgan wasn’t guilty of any crimes.
With mouse eaten and
Bailey recovered “er indoors TM” and the hounds came home. We
had a rather good bit of dinner watching a film. I can remember going to the
cinema to watch “Blackball”…
nearly twenty years ago.
Oh
– and it was International Talk Like
A Pirate Day
today. That’s something that died a death, isn’t it? Mind you it would have had
some serious competition today.
And
I still feel rough…
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