6 April 2020 (Monday) - This n That

After a better night I watched an episode of “The Good Place” before having my usual peer into the Internet. This morning I had a rather snotty message from the chap who sold me a Lego model Cadillac last September. On the day when I put the thing together I wrote here “To be honest I could have made the car in a fraction of the time had I not needed to keep popping to my Lego store to get spare parts. Am I being unfair in expecting that when I buy a Lego set from eBay, it should be complete?”. I gave the chap neutral feedback about it on eBay, and now (seven months later) he’s got the hump and wanted me to contact Facebook to amend what I wrote.

As the day went on I found myself exchanging emails with this seller. He maintained that what he'd sold me was a complete set. I took the line that bits were missing (because they were).

From his point of view I was in the wrong for not giving him a glowing report.

From my point of view he sold me something that was not as was described and then took seven months to respond to my complaint which he then denied entirely.

In the end I offered to contact the people at eBay and ask them to change my initial neutral feedback of "Item was not complete" to a negative feedback of "Item was not complete. Seller took seven months to respond, then did so with a stream of confrontational messages". I think this has effectively closed the matter.

In over six hundred transactions on eBay I've only had a handful of bad experiences, but I suppose no matter where you shop there will be instances when things don't go smoothly. But doesn’t this sum up all that is wrong with the “feedback” mentality? The accepted etiquette is that you give full marks no matter how crappy the goods or service received. Whenever I buy an e-book on Amazon the thing always comes with a plea from the author to give them a five-star rating. I know of a few authors whose e-books have got such five star ratings from their mates (who haven’t even read the books that they’ve rated). I can’t help but wonder how many people gave my eBay fellow a good review because that is the expected thing to do even though their purchase wasn’t what they were hoping for?

I saw my father-in-law was still posting misinformation on Facebook about the dangers of 5G technology. There is a crackpot group in Hastings who are trying to scare the masses about the possible dangers of 5G technology despite their so called “scientific evidence” showing a really fundamental misunderstanding of science. What they are saying is akin to claiming that all insurance is bad because a third-party insurance policy on your motorbike doesn’t cover water damage from a leaking washing machine.

I have a theory that the person leading this campaign doesn’t wasn’t a 5G mast built near her house because it might block her views.

I might be wrong… I wonder how I might find out.

As I drove to work this morning the pundits on the radio were talking about the Prime Minister having been admitted to hospital last night. His bout of illness with the corona virus had taken a turn for the worse, and I found myself thinking about the chap today.

Boris Johnson would seem to be making a fair stab at being Prime Minister; better than I thought he would. Several times over the last few years I said that Teresa May had made such a stuff-up of Brexit that whoever took over would be seen as the saviour of the nation, and judging by his election victory last year Boris was certainly seen as that. His recent firm stance about social distancing has shown him to be a decisive leader where others might have dithered. Now he's gone down with the disease himself, self-isolated, been admitted to an NHS hospital, and with reports that he's been given oxygen he really is being seen to be suffering with the rest of us.

Rightly or wrongly, unless he deliberately makes a total tits of things, he will probably go down in history as one of the most popular Prime Ministers ever.

With dog food being in short supply at home I went to Sainsburys before work where there was already a queue forming. I joined the queue to find that (yet again) my "idiot magnet" was working at full power. I was directly behind a "rather delightful fellow" who was loudly ranting about how he'd come to get the shopping even though he had no idea what to get. He was not at all happy that Sainsbury's have announced a policy that only one person per family needs to go shopping. Everyone knows (so this chap was telling everyone) that both he and his wife have to come shopping together. Apparently (like most women!) she can't be allowed to drive, and (like most men!) he can't do the shopping because it is "women's work"(!) He explained in great detail and at great volume to everyone within fifty yards how he'd made a decision. Because she would stuff up the driving more than he would stuff up the shopping, he'd left his wife at home whilst he came out. (I would have thought that he could have driven her to the car park and then stayed sitting in the car whilst she shopped, but I wasn't going to get into a conversation with the chap).

After fifteen minutes of this idiot repeating the same old tired misogynistic drivel the supermarket doors opened, and a call went out to NHS workers in the queue who were invited in half an hour before everyone else. It was with something of a sense of relief that I was first one through the door this morning. As I went in I could hear the idiot arguing with the Sainsbury's staff claiming that because he should be regarded as a "key worker" because his wife wasn't with him and it takes him ages to do the shopping.

I got what I needed; dog food and spuds. Heavy stuff. As I passed the bakery counter I saw yet more supermarket staff doing themselves no favours at all. One chap had asked a question of the woman behind the bakery counter. She replied "We don't answer customer's questions any more".

And the supermarket staff wonder why the public get cross with them.

I went in to work. It was a colleague's birthday today. We had cake. And with my bit done I came home.

​"er indoors ^TM" is out with the dogs. I wonder what’s for dinner…

5 April 2020 (Sunday) - Early Shift

I had a relatively good night; I *think* one of the dogs might have had a growl in the night, but they do that.

I watched an episode of "The Good Place" as I scoffed granola then had a look at the Internet. Silly memes and jokes were in abundance, but unfortunately so was utter misunderstanding (again). One vague acquaintance was posting messages of stark terror having drawn completely the wrong conclusion from the fact that there is more than one strain of the corona virus, and this left me in something of two minds.

On the one hand there is no denying that many people aren't that well educated and really should try to better themselves. On the other hand some people do themselves no favours by reading stuff they really don't understand, confusing themselves, and then showing their ignorance by trying to tell the world something which is factually wrong.

Am I really being that judgmental when I can't help but think that if more people had paid attention at school they would know better than to believe the drivel posted on-line by other people who had paid even less attention at school.

There was a surprising amount of traffic about as I drove to work at seven o'clock this morning. More so than most Sunday mornings. Where was everyone going? (bearing in mind it was seven o'clock on a locked-down Sunday morning).

As I drove to work there was something on the radio about how maggots can be used as forensic evidence. I would have liked for the people presenting this information to have explained how, rather than having them continually repeating themselves. But I suspect that this information might have turned the stomachs of the very few people who were listening to the radio at that time in the morning.

The news then came on. There was talk of the new leader of the Labour party having a go at the government's handling of coronageddon. I suppose he has to have a go at them; that's his job. But realistically no government would be able to do much more than the current bunch have done (without declaring martial law). My main concern with the new leader of the Labour party is that we might have yet another one determined to make himself unelectable. The Labour party have a habit of doing that. Jeremy Corbyn, Gordon Brown, Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot… Sometimes I wonder if the Conservative party gets to pick the Labour leader, or whether the idiotic choice of leader is a clever move on the part of the Labour party in that they get to criticise the government of the day safe in the knowledge that they will *never*  actually have to put their money where their mouth is.

I got to the works car park. With a few minutes spare I walked round to Tesco for bread and margarine. I went to pay; the woman on the counter pretended to be busy so I used the self-service thingy. When I went to shove my card in the slot I saw just how grubby the card reader was so (bearing in mind just how hygiene-mental the world is right now) I asked the woman at the tills how often the card reader was cleaned. She (rather contemptuously) replied "I don't know - I just work here".

Well, if she don't know...

I've seen a lot of people posting on social media about how much abuse shop workers are getting at the moment. But from my own experience shop workers aren't helping themselves very much right now.

I went in to work and did my thing As I did I found myself whistling all the songs from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" that were going through my head after last night's TV performance.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at the glorious day outside, but I wasn't missing much today. With the world on lock-down none of my friends were doing anything more adventurous than sitting in their own gardens. I sat in mine yesterday; it's not that exciting an activity really.

With work done I came home, and we took the dogs round the park for our daily exercise. There were quite a few “normal people” in the park. One rather idiotic child stood on a bench and started some odd fidgety dance whilst making strange noises. Apparently he didn’t like dogs… I considered telling him that if he didn’t like dogs then he shouldn’t try to deliberately attract them, but I thought better of it.

The people who hide painted rocks had been out; we saw a few, but decided against moving them. Not for fear of the virus, but from the public backlash of doing something (supposedly) so reckless.

In a novel break with tradition the dogs were terribly behaved. Fudge wasn’t too bad, but Pogo and Treacle ran off twice.

This evening we watched the Queen’s address to the nation. Apart from her annual Christmas speech, the Queen rarely talks to us in this way; coronageddon must be serious for her to do so.

I must admit I was disappointed.

I have no idea what I was expecting, but just to have Her Majesty repeat what we’ve all been told (in an address which was recorded a few days ago) was something of a disappointment. Mind you, on the plus side, the Queen looked well.

4 April 2020 (Saturday) - A Lithuanian Ale Sort Of Day

"er indoors ^TM" went to the loo in the small hours and there was a mass exodus as all the dogs followed her. I got up for the loo an hour later. No one followed me, and I came back to find all the dogs had made themselves comfortable in the warm space where I had been.

With the on-going lock-down our usual weekend walk was out the window, and with absolutely nothing on the agenda we didn’t wake up until after nine o’clock.

I made myself some toast; rather paranoid about using bread. With "er indoors ^TM"’s car being in the garage for the foreseeable future and shops having massive queues and keeping 1970s hours I’m rather paranoid about the shopping at the moment. There’s no real need for this; being a “key worker” I am allowed to jump the queues (provided I get there early enough) and we aren’t short of anything really, but still I worry.

I had a little look at the Internet. There were posts on Facebook from some rather thick people who (having totally misunderstood scientific papers which are clearly beyond their understanding) were advocating eating very acidic and alkaline foods to defend themselves from corona virus. The idea is that corona virus cannot survive in any pH below five or above eight so taking your own body’s pH above or below these levels would stop the virus from infecting you.

It is a brilliant idea in theory… in practice your lungs and kidneys would thwart any attempt to alter your body’s pH so right up to the point where trying to do so killed you.

We took the dogs out for a walk. "er indoors ^TM" wanted to carry on working on the series of geocaches she started planning last weekend. I wanted to test out using “Hannah” (my GPS unit) to plot where we’d walked onto a map. And the dogs wanted a walk. So we all went out four a four-and-a-half mile wander.

The walk went well; it was a bright day. We saw quite a few other people but managed to keep far enough away to prevent spread of virus (they can only jump so far, you know!). We met several other dogs and Pogo only barked at one.

We came home; after a quick Whitby bun and a cuppa we went out into the garden where I made my video for the “Really Skillful Angling/Toilet Roll Challenge”. It would have been easier with the dogs not in the way, but that’s my world these days…

I then popped over the road to the shop. They have a rather impressive international beer selection, and I (possibly) bought far too much beer. "er indoors ^TM" sat by the pond and had a bottle of Russian lager; I sat half-way up the garden and drank a rather interesting selection of Lithuanian ales whilst reading Alexei Sayle’s autobiography on my Kindle until it was too cold to sit in the garden..

"er indoors ^TM" baked some bread and made some soup. It was rather good; we scoffed it whilst watching “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”; Lord Lloyd-Webber has arranged for some of his musicals to be available free to the public on You-Tube for a limited time during the ongoing coronageddon.

There’ no denying that today wasn’t quite the day I was planning; I can’t pretend to like the current lock-down, but I understand the rationale behind it, and if I have to abide by it, I will make the most of it.