12 December 2021 (Sunday) - Early Shift


After a frankly dreadful night I gave up trying to sleep, opened my Lego Advent Calendar, made toast and turned the telly on. Today’s episode was an hour long, so I only watched half of it before having a quick look at the Internet. Perhaps six o’clock on a Sunday mooring was a tad early, but nothing much had happened overnight.

 

It was still very dark as I set off to work this morning. I was rather amazed at the amount of houses whose Christmas lights were switched on and at full intensity at half past six this morning. Presumably they had been on all night? I wonder what these people's leccie bills are like. At the risk of sounding like an old sourpuss, cutting back on that amount of wasted leccie is one way of salvaging the environment.

As I drove I caught the end of a thing on the radio about ravens. It could have been rather interesting;  it was sadly on the dull side. And then there was the seven o'clock news and my piss boiled. Over the last week there has been all sorts of controversy about alleged parties at 10 Downing Street last Christmas. Were there parties? Did the Prime Minister know? Apparently photos have now come to light in which the Prime Minister was actually hosting a Christmas quiz in Downing Street while London was under tier two lockdown restrictions banning any social mixing between households. It would seem that the Prime Minister was pictured on a screen reading out questions while staff were sat behind computers and conferring in person with colleagues about the answers. How can the chap expect the nation to follow his instructions when he doesn't follow them himself? Perhaps we should all have followed his lead and did what we liked too? Admittedly the virus would have spread like wildfire, but my mother and many others in hospices up and down the country wouldn't have died alone.

Boris Johnson really does need to be removed from power as a matter of urgency. And not just him - it would seem the Treasury has been staging piss-ups too.

Meanwhile Pluto looks set to get reinstated as a planet, and the Moon with it.

 

I got to work when it was still dark. I thought about getting brekkie from the canteen, but I was still rather stuffed from yesterday's pig out and the works brekkie can be a disappointment. Instead I just got on with work. I would rather have not done so. As I worked “er indoors TM” was off to Hastings for an afternoon family Christmas party. But I had yesterday off. Not counting booked holidays I've had three complete weekends off since July - how many more do I want (!)

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. I do get as much time off work as everyone else - just at different times. I was off last Thursday and have tomorrow and this coming Wednesday off too. I rarely have to work for five consecutive days... It's just I'd rather not do any. If only I could take that pension that was promised to me (and then I got cheated out of).

 

As I worked I found five minutes to have a cheeky look at the Internet. My car's music/radio/information display thingy seems to have an intermittent fault in that the touch screen sometimes takes a little while to get going in the morning. This morning it was utterly unresponsive to any touching for a good fifteen minutes. I had a look on some of the Skoda forums and this would seem to be a feature. There are various theories about why this is happening. Is there condensation in the screen? Are my hands too dry? Does the thing need time to warm up? I might have a word with the local garage and see what they say.

It was OK as I drove home.

 

Once home I walked the dogs round the block. One of the houses in Francis Road has one of those inflatable air-filled blow-up snowman thingies in the garden but it had a tear in it. It was making a very odd sound as it thrashed about like a thing possessed, and poor Pogo was rather terrified by it.

 

I made a cuppa and watched the last half of the episode of “Lost in Space” that I had started this morning. It was the last episode; it had been a rather good series with lots of nods to the original from fifty-odd years ago. This was followed by some documentary on the National Geographic channel about Mars. With a sleeping dog on either side of me, I too fell asleep until “er indoors TM” came home with a dish for scoff from the party she’s been to. I shared sausages and chicken pieces and quiche and sausage rolls with the dogs.

 

I feel really tired…

 

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