My
stomach muscles ached this morning before I even got out of bed. When I did
emerge my right knew was still playing up.
In
a novel break with tradition I had granola for brekkie. It was rather good, but
I could sense the ghost of my grandmother as I scoffed it. Many years ago when eating
muesli my grandmother discovered the concept of osmosis. In technical
terms osmosis is the spontaneous net movement of solvent molecules through a
selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, in
the direction that tends to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides
of said membrane. (That’s science, that
is!)
In
reality osmosis is the reason raisins swell up when you put milk on them. And
having realized that raisins swell up when you put milk on them, my grandmother
decreed that when having any raisin-containing cereal, raisins should be left
to swell to their full extent before being eaten. Consequently any bowl of
raisin-containing cereal eaten by anyone in our family would be luke-warm and
soggy before anyone was allowed to eat it.
I
scoffed my granola straight away this morning, but not without a sense of
guilt.
Not
much had happened on social media overnight which was probably for the best.
However the leccie people had sent me an email. Since February I have underpaid
by forty-two quid so (starting next month)
they asaid they were putting up the combined cost of my leccie and gas by sixty
two quid each month. I used one of these on-line chat thingies to speak to
someone called “Raina” at their end.
“Raina” had a look and agreed that an
increase of ten quid a month would be more than enough. It was easy enough to
sort out, but it did waste fifteen minutes.
I then phoned the bank
for trivia. They went through their security process and because I had no idea
what my overdraft limit was they immediately locked my account. Eventually I
sorted it all out, but again what could have been a call of seconds took nearly
twenty minutes.
I then phoned the
internet people. They supply our land-line phone. Bearing in mind we’ve not had
a phone plugged into it since before Christmas I thought that getting rid of it
might be an economy we might make. I managed to recoup ten quid each month.
That will offset the increase in the leccie bill…
"er
indoors TM"
set off to Margate to see "Daddy’s Little Angel TM"
and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM", and
I took the dogs out. We didn’t go on our usual circuit of the park; we would
have coincided with the Park Run, and for all that they claim to be friendly
and open to all experience has shown me (and
many others) that this isn’t the case.
Instead
we drove over to the new Finberry estate for a little walk. Finberry is an odd
place – it is still being built. Some parts are really nice and posh; other
parts are rougher than the grimmest council estate with weeds three feet high.
There are two geocaches over there; I thought I’d get them seeing how it in
International Geocaching Day.
I found one, but the one hidden by "er indoors TM"
eluded me.
We came home; we’d only
been walking for a mile or so (and all of
that on the flat) but my stomach was rather tender and my knee was giving
me serious gyp. I settled the dogs, and set off for work.
As I drove the pundits
on the radio were playing some documentary about the life of Yves St Laurent.
After five minutes I realised I wasn't hearing words; I really was hearing
"blah blah blah" so I
turned it off and turned to my rather unusual choice of music, and I howled
along to that. With a little time to spare I drove down to Willesborough where "er indoors TM" had concealed a couple of geocaches; I found both of those, and another
one too.
I
then went to Sainsburys for petrol. As I filled my car I could smell something
odd; the chap at the next pump was filling his car with petrol whilst puffing
on a "herbal" cigarette and
talking on his mobile phone. I thought about squealing him up to the
petrol-station-feds, but I decided "not
my circus, not my monkey".
I
made good time up the motorway to Maidstone; so good that I had a few minutes
to go look for a cache near the hospital. I've tried for this one before. Each
time I've given up after a rather long search. Today I went straight to it.
Just
as I was putting it back a rather huge dog came up to me and asked for a fuss,
so I spent ten minutes fussing her. The hound's owner seemed amazed that I was
happy to spend time with the dog. Apparently most people either swear at the
dog or run away. I told the woman that I wasn't "most people"; in retrospect I think that scared her.
I
went on to work and made a bee-line for the canteen. Over the last few months
I've become something of a fan of hospital food. Macaroni cheese and chips went
down very nicely. I then did my thing at work. In between I wrote one or two entries for another blog.
I
also found myself going up and down the stairs between the various sections of
where I work. Going up and down the stairs hurt.
With
my bit done I came home. Alternating my right leg from the accelerator to the
brake didn’t do my knee any favours.
I’m
fed up with hurting now…
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