27 December 2016 (Tuesday) - Walking the Dogs





I had a rather traumatic night plagued with inexplicable dreams about various scandals involving the cast of "Thunderbirds". I got up early, tiddled the puppy and dumped her onto a sleeping "er indoors TM". I then had some toast as I watched a Christmas "Dad's Army" special from years ago.

I left for work in the dark; and I had to spend a few minutes scraping the frost from my car. As I drove the radio was still spewing its usual blend of news. I was rather amazed at one news article. In order to avoid election fraud it has been suggested that when you show up to vote at national or local elections you need to bring some proof of identity. Personally I've been amazed that for as long as I've been voting I have just marched up to the desk and announced who I was and been given a ballot card. No one has ever checked who I am, and there is absolutely nothing stopping me from coming back ten minutes later and claiming to be my son, my son in law, my next door neighbour. However it turns out that this has caused consternation. There are some communities where the head of the household sees it as his right to cast all the family votes. This has been recognised for years, and returning officers have not dared to say a word for fear of giving offence. But now the entire family are going to have to turn out to vote how they are told rather than having Father vote for them.
Have I ever said I'm not convinced by the idea of democracy?
And our old friend Science has found aliens again. Science does that a lot....

I stopped off at Morrisons on the way to work. The place was lit up; staff were busying about. the door was locked. Some spotty oik came to the door and said they were closed. He didn't actually say the words "piss off, fatso" but his tone conveyed the sentiment very well.
I went to their petrol station to re-fuel. It too was lit up and looked open for business but wasn't.

I got to work; the leaving night shift was pleased to see me. They'd had a busy night and were glad to get away.
I wasn’t overly keen on working today… one of the drawbacks of working in a hospital is that the place never closes. Obviously one realises that when first taking up hospital work, but I still get a tad resentful of everyone else whose firm shuts up shop a day or so before Christmas Eve and doesn’t open again until the New Year. I set off to work this morning whilst most people were still sleeping off the excesses of Boxing Day. Mind you I had three clear days off work this Christmas. I’d worked all night long on Christmas Eve last year, and did a twelve hour shift the year before. I had a good break in 2013, but I’d worked on Boxing Day in 2012… One of the advantages of regular blogging is that I have a record of things like when I worked at Christmas. In fact I’ve only had four proper Christmases off work in the last eleven years.
But I did this year’s bit today.

I got home to find "er indoors TM" was off out sorting out one of "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM"s Christmas presents so I took the dogs round the park. "Furry Face TM" likes his walks and "Furry Shark TM" is getting the idea. As we walked I did a couple of live videos on Facebook. Now my mum is back on Facebook she loves that sort of thing. I was amazed how many viewers I got whist broadcasting live. And in the five hours since I posted them they’ve been watched over seventy times each.
Once home I played back the videos. I was shocked at how breathless I sounded. I seemed to be gasping for air. That can’t be right.

With the walk done the dogs played for a while before completely tiring themselves out. We all then dozed until "er indoors TM" came home. Turkey curry went down well as we watched telly, and for the first night in a week I didn’t have a pint of stout…



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