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28 December 2022 (Wednesday) - (Would Have Been) Mum's Birthday

I woke (with a backache) at five o'clock and realised that Christmas was over for another year. Still, I've had two clear days away from work so I mustn't grumble. I got up and took the puppies into the garden where they did their things, then ran back inside. They don't like the rain.
 
As I had my morning shave I used some of the "Harry's" eucalyptus shaving cream I'd got for a pressie... it has to be said that you don't get much of the stuff in the tube.
As toast cooked I loaded the dishwasher; I seem to have done little else but eat and load the dishwasher over the last few days, and then I scoffed toast whist watching another episode of "Star Trek: Prodigy" which was again very good. I then had a quick look at the Internet. The squabbles about my old school were still going on; having now descended into personal name-calling and the instigator of the squabble being accused of being "attention-seeking" and "bi-polar"...  Everything eventually becomes an argument, doesn’t it? Such a shame.
Facebook also told me that today was my mother’s birthday. I told it that she died nearly two years ago. I asked them to memorialise her account – I think it looks better now rather than just hanging about with nothing happening to it like it was.
Mum would have been eighty-seven today; what with work I rarely got to see her on her birthday…
 
I put on my watch which thought I’d walked over a hundred steps when I picked it up (?) and set off to work through the rain, and had to brake sharply when a car flew out of the filling station. I wouldn't have thought it possible to accelerate so much in so short a time; the idiot behind the wheel looked to be truly shocked and surprised to see that there were other cars on the road. Mind you more and more people drive that way these days.
I stopped off at the co-op to get lunch; my sandwich box has been co-opted by “er indoors TM for use as a biscuit barrel. The woman behind the counter seemed to be as pleased to be working this morning as I was. In a spirit of camaraderie  I explained I'd only had a short time off for Christmas too, and she immediately saw this as a challenge and tried to start a "who's worked most over Christmas" argument.
I smiled sweetly and conceded defeat.. she would only take it out on the next customer.
 
The motorway was surprisingly busy. I eventually lost the idiot Frenchman who kept overtaking me, then slowing right down to thirty miles per hour in an attempt to encourage me to overtake him. What was that all about? With him finally left behind I activated cruise control and glided through the rain at a stead forty-nine miles per hour whilst listening to the radio.
This morning there was a lot of talk about Afghanistan.  Apparently the crackpot religious government have ordered all female aid workers out of the country because women offend their silly ideas of religion (or some other stark nonsense). The United Nations Security Council have told them not to be so silly. You would think that a country dependent on foreign aid would realise that beggars can't be choosers, wouldn't you? By the same argument, you would also think that anyone with any sense would realise that if their god was all it was cracked up to be, they wouldn't be living in a tin-pot third-world backwater. Wouldn't you? It never fails to amaze me just how strong a grip crackpot religion has on so much of the world... and how the so-called educated parts of the world feel it is an inalienable human right to be able to believe in stark staring nonsense.
There was then an interview with the chair of the government's select committee on something or other who wanted the public to be aware that Iran wasn't so much a country as a gang of terrorists.
Mind you today's guest editor on the morning's radio was Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff, so that probably explains a lot.
 
I got to work and sulked that I had to be there rather than at home. As I pootled about I phoned the bed company. After twenty minutes I got through to someone to whom I expounded my theory that their mattress has given me a permanent backache. The bloke was polite enough, but said that unless the mattress was physically broken, their policy is that I persevere with it for forty days before they will even consider replacing it. I suggested I spent the next month sleeping on the sofa as I'd get a better sleep and he would be none the wiser, but I think the sarcasm was lost on him.
Perhaps we should have looked at the company's reviews on Google *before*  we spent good money with them. One point three out of five as an average score... and other review sites don't rate them with reviews.io giving them an overall customer satisfaction rating of "Terrible", and sitejabber only gives them one out of five.
I think I will be lugging the mattress to the tip in the new year, writing off the money spent, and getting another one from a less crap company...
 
With work done I came home to dog excitement. Usually after an early shift we’d go for a walk, but it was dark and raining so I just watched as the puppies ran round the living room like loonies. They had the opportunity to go outside. Treacle and Bailey went willingly; Morgan had to be hoiked out.
 
“er indoors TM did her usual decent bit of scran… but my innards are still recovering from the excesses of the last few days…

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