Waking far too early
this morning I had a stroke of genius. I tiddled the puppies, settled them with
“er indoors TM” and checked my phone. On Tuesday a new
geocache had gone live five miles from home and last night still hadn't been found.
This morning at silly o'clock there was still no find logged, so with the
chance of a cheeky First to Find I drove out to Wye, acted very suspiciously in
the back alleys, found what I was looking for, and was feeling very smug and
driving off to work before dawn broke.
As
I drove to work the pundits on the radio were discussing the news of the day. A
lot of consternation was being expressed
by the government's announcement that it
is overturning the ban on
fracking.
Those whose homes will be destroyed by fracking weren't overly keen on the idea
(and I can see their point), but does the UK have much alternative? With
energy prices going through the roof we need cheap power now. And I can’t help
but feel that as a nation we’ve left it rather late to ask if picking a fight
with the world's biggest exporter of natural gas was such a good idea. Fracking
it is, then… or are we content to live by candlelight?
There
was also talk of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer's plans which have widely
been described as a
mini-budget.
Apparently there was very little "mini" about it; being
described as the most radical shake-up to the UK's economy for years. Those
being interviewed (who seemed to understand finance) either loved it or
hated his plans, but all described it as a gamble. The Labour party spokesman
said it was a crap idea, and sat on the sidelines throwing rocks and offered
nothing constructive (as is their way these days).
Ironically
as I drove up the motorway through the rain, the weather forecast talked about
the dry day in the South East.
With
a few minutes to spare (and having forgotten to make lunch) I went to
the petrol station for fuel for the car and for myself. And then it was on to work where I did my
bit. During the morning I discovered a new case of hereditary elliptocytosis.
Hereditary elliptocytosis is actually a range of conditions ranging from "you don't know you've got it and it is
found by chance" through to "extremely debilitating".
Fortunately this patient was one in the "you don't know you've got it
and it is found by chance" group.
I'll
go into tedious detail about it
elsewhere,
but It is precisely for these incredibly
rare instances that I stare down a microscope so much.
The
rain lasted pretty much all day; it slacked off as I left work, but got heavier
as I came home. I had planned to take the dogs to the woods, but they didn’t
want to go into the garden because of the rain.
So
I sparked up the lap-top and started looking at the arrangements for Dad’s
funeral. The funeral directors had set up a rather good (if somewhat generic)
tribute page. I added a slideshow of pictures of Dad (rather than the stock
photo of a sunset) and removed all mention of “Thomas” and replaced
it with “Dick” as he never went by his real name. That only took two
hours.
We’re
now leaving it overnight and if my brother and I can’t think of anything more
to change, it will go live tomorrow…
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