There's no denying I'd not been looking forward to last
night's night shift. The worst night shift I ever had was the night of a 26th
September, and I get a tad superstitious sometimes. The one that had me worried
was in 1987; the day after “My Boy TM” was born.
Ideally I wouldn't have been working that day but... Over the years the people
I've worked with have come and gone. Sometimes work has been fun, other times
not so. I'm probably working with the best group of people I've ever worked
with at the moment, but things weren't so peachy in 1987. I'll gloss over the
"delightful people" with whom I worked at the time; but I'll
say that it speaks volumes that at that time no one was prepared to swap a
night shift the day after my first child had been born. I went in to work
feeling exhausted back then and during that shift there was crisis after
crisis. I did compatibility testing on over fifty units of blood (these days
more than four in a night shift is rather excessive).
Last night's shift wasn't anywhere near as bad, for which I
was rather pleased. But I was still glad when the early shift rolled in to take
over this morning.
I listened to the radio as I drove home (as I do)
and rolled my eyes. The Home Secretary was being lambasted for making some very harsh anti-refugee
comments and for threatening to take the UK out of the
international conventions on migration.
What boiled my piss here was that she is making these nasty
comments and the masses think she’s wonderful because they want anyone they see
as competition for their dole to be sent back on the next banana boat. What the
masses don’t see is that voting for her is voting for the government who has
been allowing all these immigrants in for the last ten (or more) years.
I got home, had a shower and shave and went to bed. Morgan
and Bailey came with me and as I tried to sleep so they had a play-fight. After
half an hour (!) they wore themselves out and I slept through till
mid-day when I put some washing into the machine, made toast, and remembered
that yesterday evening when I went to Sainsburys I’d meant to get some jam.
I put peanut butter and marmalade on my toast (don’t say
“yuk!”, try it!) and had a little look at the Internet. Yesterday I
mentioned that the geo-feds had archived one of my geocaches. The thing had
been supposedly missing, and my plan had been to replace it tomorrow. However I
had an email today telling me that “once a cache has been archived for non
maintenance it can't be unarchived”. Bearing in mind that others have been
unarchived before I was a tad pissed off about this. Also bearing in mind that
geocaching dot com openly admit that their notification system isn’t reliable
you’d think that they’d make sure I got the message before pulling the plug.
Oh well… it was one of a series of caches along the
Greensand Way; those ones have run their course. Rather than doing the
maintenance run I’d planned, I shall archive the lot.
I hung out washing, then got out the tape measure. Ever
since “er indoors TM” got me my new SmartWatch at Christmas
I’ve been rather obsessed with my step count. But (to be honest) the
step count never really meant very much… until today. After a few measurements
I’ve worked out that twenty steps is fourteen metres sixty-five centimetres.
Which means that one step is seventy-three and a quarter centimetres. So my
daily target of six thousand steps is four point three nine five kilometres or
two point seven three miles (in English). I thought it was more…
I got out the garden vacuum, sucked up all the dead leaves
from everyone else’s trees that were littering my lawn, then mowed the lawn.
And with lawn mowed I sat by the poind and read more of my “Game of Thrones”
e-book. As I read so Bailey yelped. She’d been sitting on the lawn doing
nothing (much like me) when she screamed, jumped up and flew into the
house where she seemed very sorry for herself and wanted lots of cuddles whilst
holding up her front right paw. Had something bitten or stung her?
The plan for the evening had been to wander round to the
local Baptist church where the South Ashford Community Forum was being
re-launched. I’d seen the meeting advertised on Facebook and had asked what it
was all about. Shortly after my asking that, commenting on the event was turned
off.
The South Ashford Community Forum was originally set up
from a feeling that the local council and councilors don't have a clue about
the people they serve, don't communicate and basically get away with things
because there's no interaction. A community forum would give people a voice and
let them know what's planned. The South Ashford Community Forum has run as a
Facebook group for some time, but apparently (so I was told) the deputy
mayor wanted to re-launch it to make herself look good. Cynical? Perhaps. I might
ask if has any politician ever done anything other than self-aggrandizement but
that’s probably not the case for local councilors; if for no other reason that
no one really cares about local councils. Take for example my rant of ten years ago when I
pointed out that the local councilor at the time got in with only seven point
six of the electorate voting for him. That was ten years ago and look at the most recent election. With just
over two thousand people eligible to vote, the winning candidate came in with
one hundred and sixty-one votes; seven point eight per cent of the electorate.
With everyone else utterly apathetic about local matters
would I be wasting my time? Mind you I was rather knackered after yesterday’s
night shift so I sent my apologies.
Instead we cracked open a bottle of montepulciano (as
one does) and watched an episode of “Lego Masters: USA” whilst
Bailey sat with me and quivered. She’s not well. If she doesn’t perk up, we’re
off to the vet.
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