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12 February 2015 (Thursday) - Fortissimo

Yesterday I was boasting about how well I'd been sleeping recently; last night wasn't quite so good. I did wake rather a lot during the night. Mind you a restless dog may have been partly to blame.
The same restless dog watched me eat my toast this morning with a hungry expression on his face. I did feel rather guilty about not sharing my brekkie with him, but he's not going to lose weight by being over-fed.

I drove to work and as always listened to the radio. There was a lot of fuss about the HSBC banking scandal. I say "scandal" - I can't see what all the fuss is about. In an unnecessarily complicated financial world a bank has offered advice to their clients on how to minimise their tax bills. Admittedly the sums of money involved aren't trivial, but in principle I can't see what all the fuss is about if it is not jealousy on the part of those stirring up the bad feeling.
After all those who stand accused haven't done anything illegal and haven't done anything that anyone else wouldn't try to do in the same situation. I'd certainly cut back on my tax bill if I could.

There was also great fuss made about the fact that the government's obesity adviser would seem to be rather closely involved with the sugar industry. The pundit being interviewed pointed out that none of the information we receive is impartial. He quoted the pharmaceutical industry. How many of the drugs in common use are independently tested? Not many. Most of the testing is done by those with a vested interest in selling the stuff. Admittedly they also have a vested interest in supplying a reliable product, but as the pundit pointed out no government could afford to independently assess everything. Advice has to be taken from experts. And who are the experts if not the people intimately involved with that on which they are expected to be expert?

I got to work for the early shift (via a quick stop-off for geo-maintenance) and once at work I did my thing. I could have done more I suppose, but I was feeling a little worn out. This working for five consecutive days is hard. I much prefer working longer days, but because they are longer I work for less of them. I get more time to myself that way and also save on the petrol bill.

At lunch time I had sax practice in the works car park. I pretended not to notice the half-dozen people standing at the other end of the car park who spent the entire time watching me intently. What is the fascination? I can understand listening to a decent musician in a comfortable environment. But I would have thought standing in a cold windy car park listening to my murdering the theme to the Pink Panther would have got rather dull rather quickly? Perhaps they thought that the moment their back was turned I would get up to something?

As the afternoon wore on I felt a little under the weather, but fortunately for humanity I perked up for my saxophone lesson. The Pink Panther went relatively well, however I was skimping on my fortissimo. I must remedy that over the coming week.

And then it was round to Park Farm for a committee meeting. The astro club is doing Stargazing Live in March to co-incide with the upcoming solar eclipse. Should be fun - it has been in the past.

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