11 February 2011 (Friday) - Bit dull, really.

To work, where I must have moved awkwardly. My lower back was giving me gyp all day. I wish it wouldn’t. One of my lads managed to get the hiccups – we did laugh, and laughed more as we experimented on various hiccup cures. In the end the cure was showing him some Auer rods. Auer rods are a rather uncommon finding in a very uncommon form of an even more uncommon condition. So as a hiccup cure they are only going to be of limited efficacy.

We then spent a valuable and thoughtful half an hour trying to decide a top ten list of the lamest aliens in sci-fi. E.T. and Wookies featured high on most people’s lists, as did Davros – the creator of the Daleks. If any of my loyal readers would care to make their own top ten lame aliens lists, please feel free. Maybe we could start a Facebook group?

And so home, where I walked in to a ringing phone. Was Mrs Badger in? No she wasn’t. Were there any other adults in the house? In retrospect I suppose that as I stampede towards my forty-seventh birthday I should feel flattered, really. I took the call. It was the power company. Not content at rejecting my leccie meter reading last week, they weren’t happy with my gas meter reading either. Would I resubmit it? I offered better than that – I suggested the nice lady waited on the line whilst I took the phone outside and read the meter to her. She was amazed at this, and within a few seconds I was reading out the numbers. She wasn’t impressed with what I read out, and asked if I would I repeat it. The numbers were strange – they were (pretty much) what I’d entered on-line last week. Could I check them again? So I read them out again. The nice lady was concerned that I’d used a lot of gas since early November. She then commented that it was odd, because a lot of people seemed to have used a lot of gas over the last few months.

With heroic self control I bit my tongue, and thought better of telling her we’ve just had the harshest winter in the history of the universe. But before I hung up there was one point I wanted to raise with them. The gas bill is in my name. We made a point of having it so some time ago. So I queried this. The nice lady agreed that the gas bill was in my name, and went on to deny she’d ever asked to speak to a Mrs Badger.

Mrs Badger eventually came home to find me and the parrot watching Star Trek. So far the parrot hasn’t really taken much notice of the telly, but this evening she seemed entranced by Star Trek. Obviously a parrot of refined tastes….