17 January 2022 (Monday) - Irene Came to Visit

I slept well, but woke feeling rather grim. Had I picked up a bug yesterday? I hope not. I made toast and scoffed it as I had my usual root around the Internet. Apparently someone was flying a drone not far away last night, and someone else had taken a photo of it and posted to the local Facebook group asking who was the peeping Tom. Needless to say that caused an impressive argument.

There was also a lot of consternation on-line about the reports that the government is planning to cut funding for the BBC in a shallow attempt to draw public attention away from the Prime Minister’s latest antics. Apparently at a hundred and fifty-nine quid a year the Beeb is rather cheap. Perhaps it is,,, *if* you are choosing to spend that one hundred and fifty-nine quid a year yourself as opposed to being legally obliged to hand it over.

 

I took the dogs round the park on a rather cold morning. There was a minor incident as we walked when a small child went absolutely mental at the dogs. I can understand that she might have been scared by them or scared of them, but screaming at the dogs just scared them, and of course they are going to bark.

The mother looked at me rather indignantly. I returned her stare and asked “seriously?”, and kept walking.

We got to the park where I got the tennis balls out. Treacle carried hers; Pogo played “catch” for a while, then carried his ball. He likes me to bounce the ball of off the tarmac so he can catch it in mid-air; he has a success of perhaps seventy per cent.

As we walked one of the local thugs came the other way with his massive dog straining on the lead and snarling at everyone and everything. I felt rather smug as my two just walked straight past and didn’t bat an eyelid. We also met OrangeHead and her posse. Her little dog is now being wheeled around in a push chair; it was rather sad as he is a lovely little dog. But he is getting old.

 

We came home where I had something of a tidy-up and ran round with the Hoover before setting about the letter rack. In amongst the utility bills from two years ago was a little package of Lego maxifigure hands that I had forgotten about. That was a minor result.

As I sorted (binned) old letters I was holding on the phone for the GP surgery. I had a vague idea that they were the ones who provide the sick note I need for the two weeks’ sick leave I’m currently having. Once I got through all the pre-recorded drivel I was told I was sixteenth in the queue. After half an hour I managed to speak to someone who (rather abruptly) told me that I can self-certify for a month before rather rudely hanging up on me.

I then phoned the bank as I was still waiting to be given the seemingly random list of dates on which they will send me my credit card bill each month. Eventually the automated system admitted they had a queue a mile long and wondered if I would like them to phone me back. I asked them to do so. They phoned back and someone who clearly couldn’t speak English gibbered at me rather incomprehensibly before hanging up mid-sentence.

 

The door bell rang; Irene had come down to visit for the morning. What with pandemics and one thing and another there are so many people with whom I’ve not spent any time for so long. We had a really good catch-up (with cake and pizza).

It was a shame that after a few short hours Irene had to go, but it gets dark so early and it was a long way home. I then emptied the shed of some of the stuff I want to take to the tip tomorrow; much as I do like my new car it is noticeably smaller than the old one was; I can’t get anywhere near as much rubbish into it when doing a tip run.

I then tried phoning the bank again. I eventually got through to someone with a marginally better grasp of spoken English that the one to whom I had spoken earlier. It transpired that obtaining a list of dates on which the bank would send me a credit card bill was rather difficult because "the app's got crabs". But despite the crabs I was eventually given a list of dates on which I will supposedly get a credit card bill.

 

With “er indoors TM” off bowling this evening I watched the last episode of “The Witcher”. It was rather good, but there’s no denying I watched it with something of an atmosphere of “WTF was that all about?

I really need to watch it all again to work out what was going on… 

I’ve had a week’s sick leave, and got one more to go. The idea was that it was supposed to be a good skive. It isn’t. I’m getting better, but my nose still feels as though it has been punched and I’d love to know what happened to my left arm whilst I was under the gas. It is incredibly tender and just a tad swollen.

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