24 October 2020 (Saturday) - Late Shift

I slept through till after eight o’clock this morning. I came down and Sid headed straight for the back door (which was good) dropping turds as he went (which was bad).

Once I’d sorted the pup I had some brekkie and peered into the Internet. I’d received a lot of messages of support about yesterday’s little warning from Facebook. Last night I logged my Facebook warning as a fault on their “report a problem” page, but had received no reply this morning, so I spent a rather vengeful and bitter five minutes logging quite a few of their adverts as “sexually inappropriate” (as they were).

A lot of people were posting on Facebook today complaining about the government’s refusal to provide free school meals for the next six months. I was a little confused. Those who openly advocated against socialist values on the run-up to the last election were now demanding them from the Conservative government who make no secret of their love of the capitalist approach. Holding those in need in contempt is all very well all the time it is someone else who is in need, isn’t it?

 

As everyone else snored I looked at the monthly accounts. Bearing in mind I spent far too much on garden ornaments and new boots before having an unexpected car calamity last month, and then bought a carpet yesterday, I could be a whole lot worse off. I suppose seeing that the gas and leccie bill is thirty quid a month cheaper is something of a bonus. Or is it? I didn’t think the SmartMeter was working properly. I’ve been watching the thing recently. How can we have used nearly half of the day’s leccie and gas by five o’clock each morning? I contacted the on-line help thingy through the leccie company’s website and found myself talking with either an automated bot or someone who was determined to follow a pre-prepared script. After a little to-in and fro-ing and fiddling with the meter I got told that “I see that your smart meter are giving us the incorrect reads and it seems that your smart meter need to be commissioned”. The next utterance was “It seems that there is some interruption of Bluetooth devices, router or any other equipment which is creating a signal issue between smart meter and Inhouse display”. And because the SmartMeter hasn’t been right for months (!) they’ve been estimating the bill for months.

They’ve referred the matter to their dedicated SmartMeter team who will be in touch over the next few days.

 

The plan had been to walk the dogs before I set off to work, but it was raining and we’d run out of time anyway. Since I'd made toast with the last of the bread I thought I'd better get myself a sandwich on the way to work. There had been some decent sandwiches in Dobbies when we were last there, and some rather unusual beers too. I got to Dobbies to find their food section had been taken over by Marks and Spencer. They had all sorts of poncy food, but not a single sandwich. And a rather good selection of tinned lager (!)...

 

So I headed west-wards thinking I might try the little shop in Bethersden. I got there and found that they might have sandwiches - the little girl behind the till looked a bit vague on the matter, but she was confident that they had a good selection of ales. Personally I call four different tinned lagers a piss-poor selection of ales, but what do I know.

I eventually got to drive away from this place. Some arrogant idiot had stopped his car in the middle of the road behind my car whilst his wife went shopping. He assured me he wouldn't be long, but he people who were trying to drive up and down the road that he was blocking persuaded him to move.

It was shortly after here that I nearly ran over two idiot children. Pulling wheelies on their bikes they were utterly oblivious to traffic and didn't seem to be at all bothered that they were on the wrong side of the road cycling head-on directly at me.

Finally I found sandwiches and some bottled beer (for tomorrow) in Sissinghurst.

 

As I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing some chap who had given away a small fortune recently. Having started following some scammer on Instagram, this chap was rather jealous of the scammer's lifestyle. The scammer offered a similar champagne-and-fast-cars lifestyle to anyone who wanted it. All you had to do was subscribe to his stocks and shares portfolio scheme. The chap on the radio handed over twenty-eight thousand pounds, and others handed over sums of money totally over four million pounds. The scammer has now vanished, and so has the four million pounds.

The chap on the radio was amazed that he is now widely regarded as a twit, and was desperate to prove that he wasn't stupid. He wasn't convincing anyone.

 

I got to work and di my bit on a particularly busy day. I’ve always said I don’t mind working when the weather is bad, but the weather was particularly bad today. Driving home through the wind and rain took some doing, if only because of the swerving about blown-down branches.

I came home to find "er indoors TM" had baked a loaf. It was rather good.

 

As I’m typing this, the rain is so heavy that the telly keeps stopping as the rain on the Sky dish is blocking the satellite signal.

I hope my new fence stands up to this wind…

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