When on the night shift I have the radio
on. It can be interesting; it *is*
interesting. But there were oh-so-many repeats last night. We started off with
an expose on a scandal about how Estonia its selling citizenship on the
Internet. I listened to that on Thursday evening. There was a nature program
about crayfish which I heard shortly before going home yesterday morning. There
was extracts from the autobiography of the widow of Captain Scott which I also
heard shortly before going home yesterday morning. There was an odd play about
a misanthropic governess that had been on in the small hours on the previous
night.
It is as well that the radio is just
background noise to keep me company whilst I work, rather than the only thing I
have to keep me sane in the small hours. You'd think the BBC would have a
rather larger archive.
As I came home the pundits on the radio
were wittering on about Brexit again. It seems more and more likely that in
order to maintain the current levels of trade with the European countries the
UK is going to have to pay all sorts of tariffs. The Brexit secretary
has hinted that at the end of the day the UK may well still be handing over as
much money to Brussels as we were before the referendum, and may well be
beholden to as many Euro-rules as we were before. The only difference Brexit
would have made would be that we no longer had any say in the making of those
Euro-rules. They were interviewing one of the Norwegian ministers who had
warned that this is the arrangement that Norway has with the EU and that they
don’t like it.
The Foreign Secretary disagrees. Let's
hope he's right.
I had decided that when I got home I
would take my dog to the vets. But I got home to find him a lot perkier than
yesterday. He wanted to go for a walk, and he was scoffing biscuits. Going to
the vets only upsets and stresses him so we went for a walk instead.
Once he was walked I went to the
dentist. He again commented that existing fillings really need replacing at
some point; he’s been saying that for ten years.
I took myself off to bed for the rest of
the morning. Over a spot of lunch I watched the second episode of this week’s
instalments of “Game of Thrones”. I’m
now at the part of season six where it starts getting good again (yes - the episode where nudey-dragon-girl
gets them out again). As I watched so my dog was intently ripping up the
teddy bear he’s been given yesterday, and the puppy (furry shark!) wreaked mayhem. Eventually the furry shark tired and
fell asleep across the back of my shoulders. As she snored into my left ear I
watched the last couple of lectures on the course on dog psychology, and then
did the exam. I passed the course – ninety-three percent. Not bad.
This is the seventh course I’ve done
with Coursera.
Over the years they have taught me about astro-biology, internet security, dark
matter, dinosaurs, psychology (human and
canine) and the origin of life, the universe and everything. And all for
free. I wonder what I’ll learn about next with them.
I then had a rather odd five minutes.
Having chewed my laptop’s power cable and my phone the furry shark then went on
a little walkabout. It wasn’t long before the familiar odour reached my nose.
The puppy had done a poo. But could I find it? Eventually I gave up searching;
it is still out there somewhere.
I then opened today’s window on the Lego advent
calendar and then sat on the sofa with "Furry Face TM"
for a while. He’s better than he was yesterday but is still obviously not his
usual self. After a while "Furry Shark TM" joined
us. I had a quiet poorly dog to my left and a rampaging ball of fluff and sharp
teeth to my right.
"er indoors TM" came home and
boiled up a rather good bit of dinner before going bowling. I thought of
suggesting she might stay in with the puppy she wanted rather than leaving me
with the puppy I didn’t want. But I thought better of it. The little puppy
actually slept for much of the evening, but was fascinated by the noises made
by various animals starring in the documentary “Planet Earth II”. At one point she was sitting up and watching the
telly. Fudge never watches the telly…
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