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25 September 2018 (Tuesday) - Family Birthdays


As I scoffed brekkie I watched the third episode of Vanity Fair in which "everyone is striving for what is not worth having". Doesn't that sum up so many people's lives today every bit as much as it did two hundred years ago when the book (on which the show is based) was written?
I watched the show with something of a picky attitude this morning. Bearing in mind it was mentioned in today's installment that Napoleon had escaped exile, that dates the show to 1815. I thought that hairbrushes had been invented long before that, and so I couldn't work out why everyone had such disasters of haircuts. But Wikipedia says that the hairbrush wasn't invented until 1898, so the show was historically accurate.
Mind you I did keep laughing at one of the leading characters. I'm hoping for great things from Captain Dobbin but suspect I will be disappointed.

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were broadcasting from the Labour party's annual conference. There was uproar as one of their leading lights has described their official position on Brexit as "bollocks". That would seem to be a fair description of their policies on quite a wide range of matters these days.
Ten years ago the Labour party had won three consecutive general elections. Today they would be hard pressed to tell their arses from their elbows without recourse to anatomical diagrams.

The vicar blathering on the "Thought for the Day" bit was talking about the ongoing investigation into how so many haemophiliacs contracted HIV and hepatitis in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I am *amazed* that this is being presented as news. When I was at college in 1981 it was no secret that the UK had to import blood products. And it was no secret just how unsavory were the people giving the blood from which the products were being made. I can't see how there can be any sort of cover-up of something which has been a matter of common knowledge for so long.

There was also talk of how sales of fishing licenses are down by fifteen per cent on last year.  Does this mean less people are fishing, or less people are shelling out the license fee? Bearing in mind just how much fishing tackle costs I can't help but wonder if the average angler is trying to make an economy by not squandering hard-earned cash on what is seen by many to be money down the toilet.
I stopped off at Aldi on the way to work to have a look-see. They had almond butter for the same price as peanut butter. Bearing in mind the bitter disappointment that was last week's plum jam I thought I might try some almond butter... until I realised that although the stuff was the same price as peanut butter, the almond stuff came in a jar half the size.
I went on to work and spent much of a rather busy day wishing I'd bought the stuff. Sometimes I can be such a cheapskate.

Once home I walked the dogs round the park. There’s another fun-fair setting up there. We came home, and the dogs had a rather good dinner and then both had a large rawhide chew as it is Treacle’s birthday today. We are a bit vague as to Fudge’s birthday – sometime at the end of August we think. Effectively the dogs now share a birthday. We remember the date as it is the birthday of the first fruit of my loins.

Fudge enjoyed his chew; Treacle is crying because she can’t stuff hers down the back of the sofa.

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