18 July 2022 (Monday) - Back to Work

I had a terrible night. As it was so hot we needed the window open. And with the window open we could hear everyone walking up and down the street shrieking at their pals who were either on the other side of the road or on the other end of the phone. There was never more than fifteen minutes between people coming past, and not a single one spoke; every one of them shrieked.

As I got up this morning at 6.15am there was someone standing outside coughing loud enough to wake the dead.

 

I made toast and sighed as I looked at Facebook. Yesterday was the Pirates Day in Hastings. It would have been too hot to have gone, but it would have been nice to have known it was happening. I suppose I should really pay attention and sometime each February make a list of what is happening throughout the year.

 

And so back to work after a week off. Originally I wasn’t supposed to have been off work last week, but the boss told me that the week when I was stricken (!) with COVID would count as sick leave rather than annual leave. And consequently I suddenly had an extra week’s holiday. What with the puppies having had their operations and the heat I ended up pootling round the garden for much of last week. We had a good afternoon with friends on Saturday, but there was so much that I had planned that I never got round to.

 

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about yesterdays (frankly shambolic) "debate" on the telly between the candidates for the leadership of the Conservative party. Those currently in the government were distancing themselves from everything the government has done over the last few years. Those not in government were saying that a new broom sweeps clean, and Tom Tugendhat was telling anyone who would listen that he was a war hero. I suspect the average bloke in the street would have been impressed with Lieutenant Colonel Tugendhat, but last night no one with whom he was debating (read "bickering") was interested. In any event Mr Tugendhat is out on his arse now anyway.

There was going to be more televised debates, but it seems that the head honchos in  the Conservative party have told the leadership candidates that if they can't argue nicely they can't have any more.

 

I got to work where I begrudgingly did that which I couldn't avoid. There was a little entertainment when a colleague had forgotten he was on the late shift and had rolled in four hours too early. I did laugh - that sort of thing is always very funny all the time it is happening to someone else.

 

Today was a tad uncomfortable; it was hot. There was a lot of talk about how with supposedly record-breaking temperatures forecast, concern was being expressed that the general public wasn’t taking it seriously, and that the public were seeing it as just another nice sunny day.

I can't help but feel that if weather forecasts were ever remotely accurate then people might listen to what was forecast. Today was hot, but I followed the Met Office’s feed for Maidstone and the highest actual reported local temperature was four degrees less than the local predictions had been.

Weather forecasters are "the Boy Who Cried Wolf", aren't they? I can't help but remember all the dire forecasts of doom and gloom from the early  1990s. By the year 2000 the entire Romney Marsh would be under the sea... It never happened.

I wonder how hot it will be tomorrow?

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