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2 September 2024 (Monday) - Early Shift

I woke in a cold sweat at half past five this morning following a rather vivid nightmare. Something of a shame really; with Pogo off on a little holiday there was plenty of bed space for once.
 
I made toast and had a little look at the internet. There was an incredibly petty squabble kicking off about a factual inaccuracy on one of the on-screen graphics used in the TV series of “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. You have to wonder who would freeze-frame and check what had been written on a TV show from the last century, don’t you?
There wasn’t much else happening quite so early in the morning.  I sent out a couple of birthday messages to friends and got ready for work.
 
As I drove to work I listened to the radio as I do. There was loads of talk about how the schools inspector OFSTED is dropping its one-word summary of schools. Apparently they aren’t changing anything else about how they inspect; just the one-word summary. I’m no expert but it strikes me that any inspector would be far better offering advice on helping improvement rather than finding fault.
Does OFSTED do that? I don’t know.
And there was talk about the problem of antibiotic resistance. Basically doctors have been giving out antibiotics like sweeties for years, and farmers have been feeding them to animals for years. For the most part the bacterial that antibiotics kill have long since been killed, and so with them gone their space is being taken by bacteria that laugh at antibiotics. And before long we’ll be back to the middle ages when an infected cut will go septic and kill you.
I was told all about this when I started in hospital laboratories in 1981, and it was common knowledge back then. Every few years this story does the rounds and everyone acts surprised.
 
I drove to work up the motorway today which had none of that “Operation Brock” stupidity going on. I got to junction six in seemingly record time, and then the delays started. The slip road from junction six to junction five has road works, as does the Coldharbour roundabout off of junction five. Mind you when I say “road works” I mean miles of road cones and dug-up roads, but no one actually doing anything.
 
Work was work. As I did my bit I had flashbacks from my time in the Harbour Restaurant. Over the summer of 1981 the Italian boss had friends staying with him. He asked the youngsters who worked for him if we would take his friend’s teenage children out with us in the evenings. We were a tad reluctant as they didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Italian. Boss gave us the price of an evening out… and we all got on famously. Despite not speaking a word of Italian I soon found myself able to understand it. I couldn’t speak it, but I could understand it. Similarly the Italians couldn’t speak English but hey understood us.
I wonder what happened to them?
Today some of my colleagues were chattering in Italian. I recognized the sound, but sadly I’ve forgotten all that I picked up over that summer holiday.
 
And then at one o’clock a colleague had a text from her daughter’s school. They had unilaterally decided that with effect from today children could only be collected by parents unless a form was filled in allowing someone else to collect the child.
My colleague told the school that she needs more than two hours notice of such a change of policy, and that if her sister couldn’t be trusted, then she herself would collect her daughter after work… at six o’clock.
The school never replied.
But isn’t this a sign of our times? Ten year olds needing to be collected from school. I used to walk home by myself when I was seven.
 
Being on an early shift I got out early. The journey home took me twice as long as it used to. It took half an hour to drive the mile and a half from work to the motorway. I did have a plan to take the dogs to the woods after work, but I spent all of that time in a traffic jam.
 
I came home to find the postman had been. I subscribe to three magazines. The postman brought the September edition of two of them today.
I will read one from cover to cover several times. The other will go for recycling unopened...

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