As I had a look at Facebook during brekkie this morning I
read about a new business venture. People are hiring out Lego sets. There’s one
particular set which retails for about a hundred Euros which you can hire for
sixteen Euros per week (and an eleven Euro delivery fee). Either this is
a nice little money-spinner, or cash down the drain, depending on whether or
not you get all the bricks back.
On the other side of making money out of Lego were endless
gripes on Facebook about someone called Fabien who seemed to be taking people’s
money for Lego sets he never supplied.
There were one or two rants on some of the work-related
Facebook pages about the disappointing pay rise that the NHS has been offered…
I say “pay rise”; here’s the truth of the state of the NHS pay dispute.
Have a look at the NHS pay scales over the years (type “Agenda for change”
into Google).
Pick any NHS worker at random and it takes a matter of
seconds to calculate their hourly rate of pay both now and over the last few
years.
Then choose anything you might regularly buy and Google how
the price of that thing has changed over the years.
It is then a simple calculation to work out a rate of pay
in terms of what people buy on a regular basis.
If you calculate my hourly rate of pay in terms of Freddo
chocolate frogs or pints of milk, my pay has dropped by half in the last twenty
years.
We got ourselves organized and drove over to the Repton
estate for Dog Club. We were first there so the dogs got a bonus ten minutes.
The puppies had a whale of a time, and Treacle was less antisocial than she has
been. As “er indoors TM” fussed Treacle for being tolerant of
another dog who had sniffed her, she spotted a tick on Treacle’s head. We found
a pair of tweezers and had an impromptu tick removal masterclass.
There was quite a good turnout at Dog Club today. “er
indoors TM” overheard someone else saying that everyone was
smiling, and that sums up Dog Club for me.
As we drove home my ears pricked up; we had a mention on
the radio. Steve said hello to us, said we always listen in on our way home
from Dog Club and wished us well in the Mystery Year competition.
I got it right – 1973.
“er indoors TM” got some non-dogged
trousers and set off to Craft Club. I scrubbed the muddier two dogs (Treacle
was surprisingly clean) and then I went into the garden. The lawn had liked
the rain of the last week and needed mowing. And with the lawn mowed I looked
at the pond. It was two and a half weeks since I’d installed the new filter.
The instructions said to clean it out every two weeks. Despite having read the
instructions and watched the You-Tube videos I was somewhat apprehensive; I’m
never any good with anything new. But… I had nothing else to do until “er
indoors TM” came home. So I did what the instructions said.
I ran out the new waste hose, connected one end to the “out”
bit of the pump and stuck the other end over the drain at the other end of the
garden thirty yards away. I turned everything off, turned the filter’s taps to
the right settings, turned on the pumps and cranked the cleaning handle like a
thing possessed.
After a couple of minutes I turned it all off, disconnected
the waste hose, turned all the taps back as they were, and turned it all back
on again.
In the past cleaning the pond filter was physically hard
work; a messy smelly job taking at least forty minutes. Today it probably took
less than ten minutes. The most troublesome and time-consuming bit was running
out the waste hose and putting it away afterwards.
Next time I will lift the grill over the drain and stick
the waste hose into it as the muck did bung the grill up, but I was amazed at
how easy it all was.
I made myself a cuppa and paid the water bill on Dad’s
house. I was amazed at how easy that was too. I then settled the dogs and
collected “er indoors TM” from Craft Club and we went for
McLunch. That’s not cheap these days.
From McLunch we drove to Dad’s house where we met my
brother. There’s not much left in there any more. We loaded Dad’s fridge into
the boot of my car, together with one or two other bits and bobs. I took down
the house’s name plate… and the home was suddenly just a house.
Now (realistically) we’re ready for the house
clearance people. It’s all rather sad really.
On the way home we stopped off for geocachical reasons, and with
geocache found we came home, unloaded the car and put the new fridge in place.
It took some putting.
Dad’s fridge was to replace the one in the shed, so first
of all we had to heave it through the house to the back garden. Then was the
job of getting the old fridge out. It was physically wedged in place, and took
a fair amount of heaving to remove. I’m not sure that “er indoors TM”
*really* needed to slam my hand in the door of the old fridge, but there
it is.
Once I’d shouted a few swear words we then had to get the
new fridge into place. With the new fridge being about a millimetre taller than
the space into which it was going I got under the bench and forced it upward as
“er indoors TM” shoved the new fridge in pretty much every
direction known to science except the one in which it needed to be shoved.
Oh, how I laughed…
“er indoors TM” says we are going to
watch the Eurovision Song Contest this evening. She says that will be nice.
Bearing in mind my poor mangled hand, I don’t dare argue…
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