Unusually the alarm
woke me this morning; that never happens! I woke feeling rather rough which was
either the port yesterday evening, or the stress of having “Stormageddon –
Bringer of Destruction TM” about the house. Much as I love him,
he can be hard work at times.
I
am reliably informed that today he made a new verse for that classic song “The
Wheels on the Bus” which goes “the weapons on
the bus go bang bang bang…”
I got up and took the puppies outside, and in a novel break with
tradition new-next-door's boiler was making noises. That has been silent
since the ex postie with the motorbike (that never went anywhere) moved
out three months ago. Having tiddled, the puppies went and harassed a sleeping “er indoors TM” and I made toast for brekkie
and a sandwich for lunch. I scoffed the toast whilst watching the last episode
of the current season of "Star Trek: Discovery". It was rather
good, but I now need to find something else to keep me occupied.
I
set off up the motorway to work. Much as I whinge about the motorway now being
a dual carriageway, I far prefer driving up it than along the country lanes to
Pembury. Even the antics of two lanes of slow-moving lorries forcing all the cars
into the fast lane is better than the twists and turns through the -hursts and
the -dens.
As
I drove there was a lot of talk on the radio about the earthquake that hit Turkey
overnight. The earthquake was felt thousands of miles away, and the death toll
is in the thousands. Looking at the map it would seem the epicentre of the
earthquake was only a few hundred miles from where we went on holiday a few
years ago. This made me think... did you know that no one has ever successfully
forecast a major
earthquake?
You'd
think that being able to do this might be a priority, wouldn't you?
Much
of the rest of the news was about the strikes in the NHS which were happening
today. A good thing or a bad thing for the future of the NHS?... I can hardly claim to be impartial, but I'll
just make the observation that a lot of hospitals these days have a section in
their staff newsletters advertising where the local food banks can be found.
Does anyone think that people are going to take up a job knowing full well that
it won't pay enough to feed them?
I
had planned to go on a little wander round the streets Munzing before work, but
I thought better of the idea. Instead I just took a little detour and did a
SleepZee as you can do them from the comfort of the car without having to get
up.
I got to work and parked up, and just as I realised I'd forgotten
my sandwich so “er indoors TM” sent a message telling me
I'd forgotten my sandwich. I suppose that is why God (or blind chance)
put a branch of M&S just down the corridor from my bit of work.
I bought a sandwich,
got to work, set myself up at a microscope and (realising I would be staying
put for some time) phoned the probate people. I got through in a far
shorter time than I had expected; it only took half an hour to get a reply.
After a little to-ing and fro-ing it appears that the reason for the delay on
getting probate on Dad's house was that there was a trivial question that I
hadn't answered when I emailed them on 18 November. The very helpful (!)
woman said that they had realised the oversight on my part, but didn't see why
they should tell me about it. She implied that had I not chased them up then I
would have probably waited for ever for them to contact me... as they in turn
waited for ever for me to do something about which I was utterly unaware.
I
asked how long it would be before we got the probate done. She (I thought)
rather sarcastically replied that it all depended on how long I took to send
them the information they wanted. I told her they would have it by email within
ten minutes, and she seemed genuinely surprised about that. She then made the
schoolboy error of saying that once they'd got my email, it should all be done
in a few days... and on realising what she'd said immediately tried to
back-track.
It
must be wonderful to work in a place with no urgency whatsoever.
I
got on with work, and with it done I came home just as it was getting dark. The
view from the car park was rather pretty this evening. “er indoors TM”
boiled up some pizza then went bowling. I ironed shirts, then settled down on
the sofa underneath a pile of dogs and watched a film on Netflix. Jung-E was… What can I say? I think the
best word to describe the film would be “tedious”. Without giving the
plot away the film is a sort of Korean prequel to “Terminator” which
loses an awful lot in translation.
I suppose if nothing
else it was something to watch whilst the washing machine worked its magic on
my smalls, though the view through the washing machine’s port hole was probably
more interesting.
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