8 April 2020 (Wednesday) - A Day's Leave


"er indoors TM" had quite a bit of space on the bed last night. I didn’t. Is it so much to ask that dogs sleep parallel to me (so we all have space) rather than perpendicular to me (so that I do not)?

I got up later than I would usually get up (but earlier than I had planned), set the washing machine going, and peered into the Internet as I scoffed toast.
The first fruit of my loin has changed his Facebook cover photo to a photo of him and a waxworks dummy of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Yesterday a good friend of mine posted good wishes for Mr Johnson (whilst he is unwell) and said that anyone who disagreed with him could crawl back under their rock. The Prime Minister is clearly loved…
I must admit that when he came to office I had very low expectations of Boris Johnson… look at his track record. We all expect politicians to lie, but he surely takes the biscuit. He has been sacked from three jobs for telling lies. The Brexit campaign he led has been shown to be based on a pack of lies. And since he took office… Don’t take my word for it. Type the phrase “list of Boris Johnson’s lies” into Google, then use Snopes or any other fact-checking website to trawl through what you find.
He finalised his divorce less than two weeks before announcing that his girlfriend was pregnant. Call me old-fashioned but am I the only person who feels that it is questionable (at best) that the Prime Minister’s girlfriend is only six years older than his oldest child?
But still the public love him. And I must admit to a sneaking admiration of him despite the damage he and his government are doing to so many aspects of our national life. History will probably record him as one of the nation’s better Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson is an amazing figure; he puts on a show for the masses, and the masses lap it up. I can’t help but liken him to Zaphod Beeblebrox who was the Galactic President in “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to draw attention away from those really wielding the power.

I also had an email which made me think “what if”. Five years ago I had the opportunity for a secondment to the medical laboratory in the South Atlantic island of St Helena. I turned it down, but this morning I had an email from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office asking if I would like to go out to St Helena for three to six months (all expenses paid) to assist with the COVID-19 preparation and response in St Helena.
The simple answer was “Yes!” I *would* like to go out to St Helena. But how practical would it be? Having given the matter some serious thought in 2015 it was a pipe-dream at best then. Now with a global pandemic kicking off is no time to relocate to a rock in the South Atlantic miles from anywhere.

I told Facebook about today’s choice of album, popped the leads on to the dogs and we walked into town. Last year I was awarded five geocaching Adventure Lab caches. The idea is that you go to a location, answer a simple question and move on. I found five rather obscure places in Ashford and set it all up. Since then those who like to spoil the game blagged the answers and published them on a spoilers page together with instructions on how to trick your GPS into thinking you are half a world away.
Today I took the dogs to the five locations and worked out new questions that can’t be blagged from Google Street View.
We came home via the park where I had something of a shock. A young lady was doing her exercises on one of the footpaths. Part of her exercise routine involved having some elasticated band around her thighs. However from more than five yards away it really did look as though her knickers had fallen down.

One home I had a go at the lawn. As always strimming the lawn’s edges took an age. I really need to get some strimming line that doesn’t keep snapping every twenty to thirty seconds.
With that strimmed I drove "er indoors TM" to the garage where she rummaged in her car for something or other, then I drove her to the co-op so she could do the shopping for a change. For all that I’m having a go at shopping I’m not convinced I’m doing it at all well…
Seeing my new blue marker pen had arrived I took it up to the loft and coloured in the heads of what will be Lego Bill and Lego Ted. The blue statue seems to work. I then spent an hour or so sorting Lego; the sorting would have gone much better had Treacle not jumped into the middle of it all.

At six o’clock I sparked up my lap-top. We’d arranged a virtual meet-up for the Kent Association of the Hunters of Tupperware, and used the Zoom software. We had twenty-three people on screen at one stage; it was good to catch up.
I ironed shirts, I watched “Bottom”… not a bad day’s leave really…

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