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22 July 2024 (Monday) - Intimations of Mortality

I slept rather better last night, but was still wide awake at half past four. I lay awake for an hour, then got up, made toast and scoffed it whilst watching an episode of “Boomers” before having my usual look at the Internet.
Yesterday one of my old schoolfriends had his birthday. He posted to Facebook about it, and listed some of our old contemporaries who hadn’t made it this far. Overnight a lot of people had commented listing more names of old schoolfriends who’ve passed away. A surprising number of people with whom I grew up aren’t here any more. One drove a motorbike into a skip. One had diabetes and wouldn’t stop eating sweeties. One went down with the Herald of Free Enterprise. One had a stroke (aged fourteen!) One had an asthma attack and was dead minutes later. One died when the Nimrod he was piloting crashed. One had bowel cancer.  One committed suicide. The class bully had leukaemia. Quite a few people were posting all sorts of nice memories about these people… I didn’t have the heart to point out what a nasty piece of work the class bully had been. But it was a long time ago.
Following on from this I spent quite a bit of time today trying to recall a conversation from years ago. Two of the people in our year at school shared a name. Same first and last name. In my mate's Facebook post he claimed that one of these two had died; the one who sat on my table during physics lessons forty-five years ago. This came as a revelation, but as the day went on I could remember having heard this years ago.  I messaged the chap who I distinctly remembered telling me the news, but he couldn't remember the one who died; let alone telling me that he had died.
I must have heard it from an old school mate I once met on the train to Brighton in 1983 who regaled a list of many from our schooldays who had died before getting to twenty years of age.
The chap on the train said that he'd heard that I had been one of them.
 
As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were all a-twitter about the news that President Biden isn't going to run for a second term as President of the USA. The smart money was backing his vice-president who looks set to get the nomination of her party, but whether or not she will beat Donald Trump is a very different question. The expert being interviewed implied that by stating stark nonsense as actual facts.  Mr. Trump appeals to the rather thicker members of the electorate who seem to struggle to tell the difference between stark nonsense and actual facts.
 
Work was work. I did my bit. Being on an early shift was something of a result in that I got out early. But thanks to the roads I didn't get home with any speed. Works to widen the roundabout at Junction five of the motorway meant it took half an hour to drive the mile or so from the hospital to the motorway. And the utter stupidity which is Operation Brock meant it took another half-hour to get down the motorway.
As I drove through Operation Brock I did my usual thing of counting how many cars had ignored all the signs and notices and had driven into the bit clearly labelled "HGVs ONLY!!!". Last Friday there were six; four on Saturday and five yesterday. Today there were three.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up dinner then went bowling. I watched drivel on the telly from underneath a pile of dogs whilst trying to stay awake. I really need a decent kip. It doesn’t help that after nearly four weeks since my nose job it still feels as though I’ve been slapped in the face.

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