16 January 2018 (Tuesday) - Flu Jab

I woke feeling more tired than when I went to bed, having spent much of the night in a vivid dream in which my father had been promoted to “Eddie the Eagle”.
I *really* didn’t want to get up this morning, but I forced myself from my pit. Over brekkie I watched yet another old episode of “Dad’s Army”. It passed half an hour, but again the show had been written without an ending. Most of these shows just fizzle out rather than actually having a decent ending.

I had a quick look on-line just in case I’d missed anything overnight. It would seem that one of Treacle’s brothers has had some sort of seizure. That’s worrying. We shall keep an eye on her (and Pogo) just in case.
The environment agency had sent me an email. Last year I asked them for a breakdown of where the money allocated to the Angling Improvement Fund had been spent. Today they sent me a rather vague set of figures. A total of thirty-two thousand pounds had been spent on eight different “predation” projects. Three hundred thousand pounds had been spent on fifty-nine “getting your fishery ready for spring” projects. Seventy thousand pounds had been spent on forty coach bursaries (whatever that means).
I’ve asked for a properly detailed breakdown of where the fishing licence money goes. After all, this is public money they are spending here.

It was dark as I set off to work. Again I was tailgated for much of the way when on the narrow country lanes, but I've decided I'm not going to pander to the idiots who fly down pot Kiln Lane at breakneck speed. It takes seven minutes to traverse that lane; the idiots can slow down.

As I drove the pundits on the radio interviewed some of the executives from the failed commercial giant Carillon, and then they interviewed one of the leading lights of the HS2 project. No one being interviewed spoke English as I speak it; they all spoke some weird business-speak language which sounded impressive (to those who are impressed by that sort of thing) but didn't actually say anything.

I got to work and did my bit. During the early afternoon I skived off in the general direction of the occupational health department where (against my better judgement) I had the flu jab. I'm a great believer in vaccinations for the masses, but I must admit I'm not so keen when I'm on the receiving end of the needle.
Normally I wouldn't bother, but apparently I am now "of a certain age", and so I relented. I had a minor qualm when the nice lady brandishing the needle said that contracting Guillian-Barre syndrome was a possible (if rare) side-effect, but in the end I went through with it. I didn't like the cold I had a few weeks ago; flu would be even worse. The jab being brandished offered protection against the Aussie flu (H3N2), sweeping across the country as well as against Phuket flu and several other strains, so here's hoping it worked.

I then spent much of the afternoon imagining I had various side-effects of the injection, and left work loudly announcing that I would be off sick tomorrow.
Being Tuesday the clans gathered; tonight round at our house. Insults were bandied, dogs set on people, and we watched the first episode of the National Geographic docu-drama about manned landings on Mars.
We all agreed that most of us probably won’t live long enough to see manned landings on Mars….

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