Having been whinging about insomnia for the last week or so you would have thought I would have been grateful for a good night's sleep, wouldn't you? I had a better night than many I've had recently, but as Albert (Einstein) once said, everything is relative. Treacle finally stopped barking shortly after midnight, but I woke in a cold sweat at five o'clock after a rather vivid dream in which Stacey's mum (out of "Gavin and Stacey") had been trying to get me to make a mucky movie featuring the Prime Minister. My role was to just brandish the camera, but I was having none of it and neither was Mr J. I was finding it very difficult to be in agreement with Downing Street, but in agreement we certainly were. Both of us were taking a moral stance. I was rather relived to wake up at silly o’clock.
I got up, opened the Advent Calendar, made toast (with Mrs Bridges Scottish Strawberry Wotsit) and watched half of an episode of "The Witcher" in which there were certainly a lot of nudey sauce romps going on. Her who was the star of the episode a few days ago has now got her own castle (what happened there?) and the little girl on the run (who everyone loves) has now chummed up with a bunch of cut-throat pacifist elves (how does that work?)
I set off to work. As I headed down the road the pundits on the radio were talking about the American job market. It would seem that over the last year the pandemic has made the average American wonder just what they want from a job, and apparently last month one in every thirty American workers quit their job and went off to do something less crappy instead. Good for them. I did that nearly five years ago and never looked back.
Just as I got to the petrol station the radio's sports drivel started. I was glad to have missed that; it is always tedious.
Being rather short of petrol I went to the Ashford Sainsbury's filling station where again the woman on the till flatly refused to do her job and forcefully demanded that I operated all the scanning equipment which was clearly on her side of the counter. She was aggressively adamant that she would not do the job she is paid to do.
Having got fuel (and a sandwich) I set off up the motorway. The roads in Ashford had been incredibly empty; the motorway was rather busy. Again both the slow and middle lanes were full of lorries slowly overtaking each other, forcing all other traffic into the fast lane.
As I narrowly avoided being splatted by these lorries the pundits on the radio were interviewing some scientist or other who was talking about a recent discovery in Northumberland where our old friend science has discovered a fossilised millipede which was as long as a car.
One of the things I love about science is that it is held up to be the ultimate truth... When I was a lad our biology teacher explained to us how insects (and related invertebrates) have grown to the maximum size that they possibly could. They simply couldn't breathe (or do the invertebrate equivalent) if they were any bigger. Millipedes as long as a car were a scientific impossibility back in the seventies.
Science now says that there was loads more oxygen in the atmosphere a squillion years prior to that. Part of me thinks that science can proof that sh*t is sugar if it tries but being a professional scientist I suppose I should remember whose side I am on.
I got to work in the dark and started the early shift. At tea break I had a bit of a shock - I read on Facebook that an old friend had died suddenly overnight. I say "suddenly" - I'd not spoken to Michelle since a funeral we both attended two years ago, and things are always a tad fraught at funerals. Had she been ill? There had been no mention of it on Facebook recently. Mind you, through the wonder of Facebook I now know what had happened pretty much when it happened. None of the awkwardness of finding out weeks or months later. I wonder when her funeral will be - hopefully I will be able to get along. As and when (if!) the pandemic subsides I really should try to organise a few meet-ups with old friends since (as was said at the funeral we were both at two years ago) as time goes by we only see our old friends at funerals these days.
With work done I came home in the dark. However I now have the consolation that with today being the shortest day from here on in I might get the chance to drive in daylight a little more. I came home singing along to the frankly wonderful (!) music that I’ve put on to my stick, and as I howled along the traffic news interrupted the music, said its bit, and then the music came back on. I’ve got that bit working right.
I came home, came in and tripped over a sleeping dog. What an alert sentry that one was. The other had been asleep on my bed and came down to see what all the commotion was about. We went for a quick walk round the block, then I loaded the washing machine and had a look at the old Wherigo that the geo-Feds unarchived for me the other day. What with that one and the two new ones that went live this week I had the makings of a New Year’s Day event. If any of my loyal reader are bored on New Year’s Day and want to come along, everyone is very welcome. You can read all about it here or here.
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