16 May 2024 (Thursday) - Rainy Day

As I scoffed toast and peered into the Internet I rolled my eyes. One of my colleagues had posted a photo of a Costa cup in the lab and had commented “working eleven days in a row. I live at work, I just go home to sleep.” Many friends, other colleagues and managers had clicked the “like” button… Where I used to work I once got a formal disciplinary warning for posting a selfie at six o’clock and commenting that I was tired.
How things change.
With little else happening on-line I filled out an on-line request form to see my GP. My left knee is becoming a worry. I can and do walk miles with no problems, but having walked miles with no problems I get excruciating pain from the knee when I then get into the car. Getting up and down hurts, and all the kneeling about when gardening is very painful. Back in the day you would just go to Dr Mitchell’s house, sit in his front room and wait to be called to see him. These days things are rather different. I filled out the on-line form, and thought about a dog walk. Sadly the rain was hossing down, and was forecast to do so all day. So I got dressed, and we went for our walk anyway.
 
After navigating some rather busy roads we got to Kings Wood. The car park was rather empty. Not surprising really bearing in mind the rain. We walked a shorter route than usual, but when we got back to the car my watch still said we’d covered a couple of miles.
As we got to the car so some thug was parking in a white van. I opened the car’s boot and said “Boot Dogs” to indicate to the pups that they should jump in (not that Bailey can manage it). “You What?!” announced the thug in a rather threatening manner. I explained about “Boot Dogs” being the command to get them into the boot; he didn’t look convinced. I then did my whistle and gave the dogs a treat (to reinforce the whole coming to the sound of a whistle) and the thug took offence at that too.
We came home via the petrol station where I picked up cakes, and had another episode. I drove down the road, indicated, slowed down and pulled up in the end of the parking bay. The idiot in the car behind who had been following far too closely behind had also pulled in behind me. When he saw me getting out he flew back, then flew forward, wound down his window and demanded to know that the f… I was playing at. I rather took the wind out of his sails by telling him I was parking my car.
I wish I could get rid of my idiot magnet.
 
I showered the mud from the dogs, put some shirts in to wash, made us both a cuppa, and dished out the cakes. Whilst “er indoors TM had a meeting I cracked on with some CPD. If you look on-line there are many atlases of haematology; websites showing all sorts of weird and wonderful things you see down the microscope. Some are rather obscure and you rarely if ever see these things outside of an atlas. Years ago I started one of my own. It’s nothing special, the photos are rather dreadful, but it is all stuff that I have seen myself. You can see the atlas by clicking here (if you feel so inclined).
I spent a little while this morning updating it with things I’ve seen over the last couple of months. At the risk of getting technical, those things were basophilic stippling, Howell Jolly bodies, May-Hegglin anomalies and mitotic figures.
 
And then the washing machine finished so I cracked on with the ironing. As I ironed I watched something on Netflix. “Masterminds” was a rather good film. 
And then I saw the postman had been. He’d delivered a payslip… I say “payslip”; the pension equivalent of a payslip. The sort of thing the pension people assured me I wouldn’t get (!) I then spent an age poring over my monthly accounts trying to figure out why I had been paid hundreds of pounds less than I thought I should be… eventually I remembered I’d halved my working hours. Dur!
And then my phone beeped with a message. The GP can’t examine my knee remotely and needs me to turn up so’s he can give it the once-over. An appointment is booked for next week.
And then my phone beeped again. Yet another friend request on Facebook trying to peddle porn websites.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up sausages and chips which we scoffed whilst watching an episode of “Taskmasterand then an episode of “Stacey Dooley Sleeps Overin which Stacey was staying with a trans couple in America. They were… different. But then isn’t everyone?

I’ve had a couple of days not at work in which I wasn’t running myself ragged in the garden, and I’m not in pain. Perhaps I have been overdoing it?

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