Yesterday I mentioned I was woken by Bailey gently licking
my head in her sleep. Last night she was wide awake when she set about licking
my head in much the same way that an over-excited toddler might attack a
lollipop.
After that I had a rather vivid nightmare in which work
sent me to New York supposedly for some blood testing conference, but in
reality it was to pass on a load of counterfeit dollar bills that our blood
counting devices had started churning out (for no adequately explored reason).
I woke in a cold sweat, got up, made toast and watched another episode of "Shameless". One of the characters now has a pet python. If they wanted to show a python on screen you would have thought they would have brought one on wouldn't you? I suppose not everyone knows the difference between a boa constrictor and a python... but they are *very* different to look at. And are both very misunderstood animals.
And with a telly watched I had a quick look at the
Internet. As always squabbles abounded. Sparks are back in the UK. Having
played in Oxford and Liverpool, they are playing in London at the weekend, and
so-called fans were using this as a chance to argue. Some people wanted to know
what songs they were playing; others didn't. To me the solution to this was
obvious. Those who'd seen the shows could post about them on Facebook; those
who didn't want to know could snooze those Facebook pages... like I do whenever
I don't want to see spoilers. Personally I'm glad I saw the spoilers about what
songs they were playing on this tour. Having got quite the sulk that (again)
I missed out on getting tickets, I was quite pleased to see that a lot of what
they were playing was their newer stuff which I'm not overly keen on.
There were also people arguing on the garden ponds Facebook
pages; if you ask a question on those pages you usually get good advice. But if
you post a photo of your pond you will get no end of criticism and abuse.
This prompted me to go have a look at my pond. The jollop I
put in yesterday had done the trick and the blanketweed was gone... for now. I've been reading up on blanketweed
and there is a theory that, filter as much as you like, the nutrients (fish
poo) in the pond will feed some plant growth, and if you don't have pond
plants, it will feed algae (blanketweed). Pond plants take the nutrients
and stop blanketweed. Or so it is claimed.
Perhaps I should look at having plants in the pond?
I set off to the post office and posted yet another
official house-sale letter to my brother, and then drove up the motorway to
work. As I went the pundits on the radio were talking about leccie bills dropping. From
what was being said, my bill for next year should be about three hundred quid
less than it was this year. But what they didn't say was that for six months of
last year I had a monthly bung from the government towards my power bills (everyone
did)... so next year's bill will actually be sixty quid more than last
year's.
Ho hum...
There was also talk about the latest immigration figures
which were released this morning showing record numbers of people coming to the
UK to work... to work in agriculture and care and the NHS and all the sectors
which aren't paid enough to attract the resident UK workers...
And to add insult to injury did you know that for every
thirteen people working in the UK there is one on long-term sick leave
(and benefits). Four million not working. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure
there are genuinely ill people who would work if they could... but four
million?
Work was work. As we did our thing we heard reports of an
ex-colleague who is up before the professional regulator for alleged misdemeanors.
For me this brought back flashbacks of a particularly bad time of my life some
twelve years ago.
And as I drove home so the chap phoned me. I’ve been where
he is going so I know what he’s going through. There’s absolutely nothing I can
do to help him but listen and understand.
I hope that is enough… It won’t be.
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