31 October 2020 (Saturday) - After the Night Shift

I was glad when the relief arrived this morning. Last night’s was one of the busier night shifts.
As I drove home the pundits on the radio were talking about rumours of another nationwide lock-down. As part of the ongoing endless speculation and guesswork they wheeled on Sir John Redwood who… Don’t get me wrong. I don’t know the chap, I’ve never met him. Perhaps he is a lovely fellow and perhaps I misunderstood what he was saying as I was rather tired as I drove home. But it sounded to me that he was absolutely crystal-clear that any reduction in death rate that a lock-down might bring in no way compensated for any possible harm a lock-down would do to the economy. He really did seem to be saying that it was far better to have businesses and jobs than people. Do the public realise this is what the ruling party stands for? Yes or no – either is rather scary.

I collected "er indoors ^TM" and those dogs that don’t go and hide at walkies time, and we went down to Orlestone Woods. There were quite a lot of cars in the car park, but we only met one other group as we walked. It was a lady and two dogs that we have met before; her dogs are very friendly, but huge, and Treacle is terrified of them. One of the huge dogs bounded up to me and jumped up. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the people who called the police on me ever met a dog of this size.

 

With walk walked I went to bed and slept like a log. Eventually the noise of the torrential rain woke me. Over a rather late brekkie I peered into the internet to see the entire world was distraught. Sean Connery had died. The chap was ninety years old so it can’t be really unexpected, but the postings on social media were rather telling.

Seemingly the entire universe saw the death of Sean Connery as the death of James Bond. But less than a minute’s research shows that Mr Connery didn’t like the Bond association. He once told Time magazine that he was ”fed up to here with the whole Bond bit" and was quoted in the Observer as saying "I have always hated that damned James Bond. I'd like to kill him". In Mr. Connery’s biography Michael Caine is quoted as saying "you didn't raise the subject of Bond. He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous with Bond. He'd be walking down the street and people would say, "Look, there's James Bond." That was particularly upsetting to him."

It is a funny old life being an actor. Despite a varied career of many years, so many people find themselves remembered for just one role out of hundreds. Take Ed Tudor-Pole for example. He *hates* the Crystal maze, but who can name anything else he’s ever done (even though he’s done a *lot* of other things). Or take Robert Pattinson, star of the “Twilight” films he despised.

 

I wasted half an hour trying to solve a geo-puzzle. Despite having been told that the puzzle was based on tropical cyclones I got nowhere. Was it based on the intensity force? The year of the cyclone? Wind speed? Barometric pressure?

I then struggled (and failed) with some other geo-puzzles involving post offices, Sir Thomas Smythe, and random street names in the Otford area.

Some geo-puzzles are put out to be solved, and some aren’t. I must admit I’ve hidden one recently which seems to have the punters foxed. Do people enjoy trying to solve these things? They aren’t so much “difficult” as just require people to keep randomly guessing and guessing until they hit on whichever random thing you’ve chosen.

 

With all sorts of rumours abounding that the Prime Minister was to make a statement to the nation we sparked up the telly and tuned in to the news. All sorts of pundits were making all sorts of sage announcements whilst the nation waited for Mr. Johnson to finally show up on screen.

After nearly three hours he came on with a couple of advisors. His advisors droned on for twenty minutes or so. It was a shame that they were incredibly boring and that the slides they used to illustrate their points were confused and only half-visible on our TV screen. Eventually the Prime Minister spoke. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to say that basically we’re having a lock-down again. He started taking questions from the press; all of them seemed to be trying to big themselves up and embarrass Mr. Johnson rather than asking anything relevant.

I can’t help but feel that Boris Johnson has blown a golden opportunity for himself. Given a national crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before he could have been decisive and gone down in history with Churchill or Lloyd-George. Instead he’s waffled on, been indecisive, wishy-washy (and in desperate need of a haircut) and is now seen as something of a national embarrassment. Such a shame. 

"er indoors ^TM" boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we coffed whilst watching this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Discovery”. The season started very badly, but has improved beyond all recognition. I think I’d like the show more if I could warm to the leading character. To be honest if the writers killed her off in the next episode it would improve the show no end…