I slept through till four o’clock last night and lay
awake for an hour before giving up and getting up. I made my usual toast which
I scoffed whilst watching “Orange is the New Black” then had a little
look at the Internet. It was still there. My cousin seems to be having fun in
her camper van in Cornwall, and I was presented with quite a few adverts for
home schooling. Earlier this week I’ve had adverts for shirts and for Machu Picchu;
today it was home schooling. I must admit I’m not a fan of the idea. A friend
once home schooled her children. One got to be sixteen years old and couldn’t
read; the other spent the mornings watching random You-Tube videos and the
afternoons playing tennis. When I was a scout leader we would periodically have
home schooled children come along. They were all the same – utterly unable to
interact with children of their own age, utterly terrified of children of their
own age and would physically cling to adults for the whole time that they were
there, and would never come back for a second time. I don’t doubt that there
are some children for whom home schooling works, but I’ve never seen it.
I set off for work and drove up the motorway. On the
one hand I wasn't continually stopping for the seemingly endless roadworks
which plague the drive to Pembury. On the other hand I was continually having
to brake sharply to avoid the idiot drivers cutting me up on the "Operation
Brock" stupidity. As I have mentioned before, people really should
avoid driving like idiots all the time they have their company name and phone
number emblazoned across their cars, vans and lorries.
As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking
about the remembrance
services in Japan that were happening today in honour of the eightieth
anniversary of the first atom bomb that went off at Hiroshima. As a lad I was a
member of the campaign for nuclear disarmament. I don't know if our little CND
chapter in Hastings ever achieved much...
And there was talk of how the nation's finances have
gone down the pan. Apparently the Chancellor of the Exchequer is facing a forty-one billion quid shortfall.
And the winners of the competition to build humanity's
first starship have been announced. When you consider just how
trashed our planet is, and just how many atom bombs are still poised to blow up
what's left, you'd think that having some sort of lifeboat in which to escape
might be more of a priority, wouldn't you?
I stopped off at Sainsburys to get lunch, and whilst I
was at it I got a couple of bottles of beer for the weekend. And as always
there was no one operating the tills, but because I was buying beer someone had
to come over to tell the automated machine that I was old enough to buy a
bottle of beer. You'd think the face recognition software would be able to tell
that, wouldn't you? And you’d think that if Sainsburys could have a couple of
totally bored staff loitering round the self-service tills they could have the
same people usefully occupied by each running a till.
I went into work and did my bit. Being on an early was
a result. I came home, and by the time I’d done my twenty minute chair workout “er
indoors TM” had finished working
and we took the dogs down to Orlestone for a little walk. As we walked I tried
out my “Map My Walk” app which had failed yesterday; it worked perfectly
today.
And with walk walked we had a rather good dinner of
chicken donuts and garlic bread which we scoffed whilst watching more episodes
of “Below Deck” in which the bosun got the sack.
Hello sailor…
Meanwhile the most recent fruit of my loin has left me
a load of her washing to sort out…
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