Watching “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem
and Madness” over brekkie again had me thinking about my days in the “Ashford
& District Exotic Animal Society” all those years ago. The events and
people on the TV show were just like how the snake club used to be. Weird, odd
and quarrelsome.
I kept snakes twenty-odd years ago; I
had quite a few including one which was twelve feet long. Friends at the time
kept all sorts of animals. Although I never knew anyone who kept large cats (like
those in the TV show), I *think* we could have got hold of one had we
wanted to do so. I certainly could have obtained a crocodile (and seriously
considered doing so). It was
rumoured that a friend from those days had a rattlesnake as a pet. When he was
found dead at his home (for no reason that the coroner could explain) no
rattlesnake was ever found, but the door of one of the vivariums was open.
Looking back, the exotic animal scene
was madly out of control. I’m glad to have done the “exotic animal thing”,
but I’m well out of it, and quite content with dogs and fish now.
I sparked up my lap-top and told the Internet
about my penultimate album choice. “The Kick Inside” was Kate Bush’s
debut album. I originally got it on tape cassette.
I also had some notifications about
something I’d posted onto one of the work-related Facebook pages. Yesterday at
work we’d been asked to perform a rather obscure test for a rather odd reason.
It seemed a very strange request to me and all of my colleagues so I thought I
might ask the wider blood-testing community their opinion. The responses came
into three broad categories.
There were a lot of rather stupid and
irrelevant animated gifs.
There was a lot of opinion from people
who clearly didn’t know the first thing about the blood test in question.
And there were a few posts which
addressed my question whilst showing some understanding of the matter. But only
a few.
This morning I managed to find my car
right away. But the time I saved in not wandering the roads desperately trying
to remember where I'd left my car, I wasted in scraping the ice off of it.
Despite what the weather forecast had said, there had been quite the heavy
frost.
I drove to work listening to nothing but
the pundits on the radio scaremongering about coronageddon. In their
desperation to wind up the public about the shortages of protective clothing
for NHS workers, this morning the shocking revelation was made that NHS
laboratory workers are now wearing washable laboratory coats. I can't help but
feel that I'm missing something here - as an NHS laboratory worker I've been
wearing washable laboratory coats for nearly forty years.
Just recently I've been shopping in Sainsburys
before work. There is no Sainsburys in Pembury, but there is a Tesco.
Unfortunately the protected shopping period for NHS staff is mid-morning just
after we'd all started working(!) But there weren't that many people at Tesco
at eight o'clock this morning so I didn't have to queue. I went in and got what
I needed. I tried not to laugh out loud at the people in ill-fitting face masks
and torn rubber gloves, but I did have a laugh with the chap in the check-out.
I made a point of going up to the only check-out manned by someone not wearing
gloves and a face mask. I loudly suggested that he might like to go get one of
his colleagues to serve me; without personal protective equipment he might well
be dead before he'd run all my stuff through the till. We both had a chuckle at
how obviously ineffective the PPE on pretty much all of the customers was, and
I wished him well for the rest of the day.
As I walked out, some managerial-type
thanked me for shopping at Tesco. I smiled sweetly, and asked him what the
funny smell was. He said he'd been wondering that too. I made the observation
that if he could smell it, then that face mask of his wasn't worth having.
I don't think he understood my point.
I did my bit at work; I came home. We walked the dogs round
the park, and then "er indoors TM" unpacked the
shopping I’d got and went through the cupboards…
Oh dear.
Six unopened jars of jam, seven unopened jars of marmalade,
more peanut butter than sense (four jars), far too much red wine and dog
food, and no brown sauce…
I might open a bottle of port in a minute…
No comments:
Post a Comment