Another good night, but I did make the schoolboy error
of going to the loo at three o’clock and coming back to find the dogs had
bagged the warm spot. An hour later “er indoors TM” went
to the loo. No one attempted to move into her spot.
I had my usual rummage round the Internet as I scoffed
toast. Facebook told me that I’ve earned a Top Fan badge for WTVideo. I wonder
who or what they are. And Facebook also told me that (in a novel break with
tradition) a porno advert I’d reported *did* go against their
Community Standards and they’d removed it. And flushed with success at having
removed gratuitous photos of “ladybits”, the Facebook Feds went on to
tell me that they had also removed all the unsolicited religious spamming that
I’d reported on a Facebook page about Hagar the Horrible.
This morning’s Facebook squabbling was unbelievable.
Some sad acts had spotted issues with the railway signalling in the Christmas “Wallace
and Gromit” and were quarrelling about how attention to detail is everything.
And another chap was whinging that he was having to do a speed awareness course
having been caught driving at twenty-two miles an hour in a twenty miles an
hour zone where he’d been overtaken by some chap on a pedal-bike.
I munzed, I wordled… I looked outside. I had a vague
plan to take the dogs out before work but it had been raining heavily overnight
and what with the excitement of the last few days I think we all needed a bit
of a rest.
Instead I wrote up some
CPD – I haven’t done that for a while. And then I had a
little fight with my laptop. Whenever I want to highlight anything in bold text
I’ve always typed it out then highlighted it and pressed the CTRL and B keys.
Somehow or other that had stopped working. I eventually sorted it, but it took
some sorting.
And then there was a tap on the door. It was the
Jehovah’s Witnesses. I gave them the standard spiel about their letting
children die for want of a blood transfusion. They said that wasn’t the case
any more as hospitals now declare children wards of court and allow the
transfusions, but they didn’t deny that blood transfusions were prohibited by
the Bible. Or so they claimed. They weren’t happy when I told them that the
proscription was actually against eating uncooked pig’s blood (Genesis 9:4
and Leviticus 17: 10-12). I then
asked what their clothes were made from – they were unaware that the bible says
you mustn’t wear clothing made from mixed fabrics (Leviticus 19:19 and
Deuteronomy 22:11). They claimed they’d studied the Bible and hadn’t heard
of those. I replied that I used to run Bible study classes (I did!) and
perhaps if they studied it some more they would see it was riddled with
contradictions, and all that Bible Study does is try to justify those
contradictions.
They changed tack at that point and asked (with a
smug smile) if I really thought the entire world came into being without a
creator. I replied that I didn’t know, but if it did, I wondered what had made
that creator. I then pointed out that a garden can be pretty without having
magical pixies at the bottom.
They claimed they didn’t have all the answers but felt
their religion gave them some sense of certainty. I told them I used to feel
that way (I once did), but two minutes of honest thought shows that
their religion is demonstrably wrong.
They were in such a hurry to get away they didn’t even
attempt to sell me a copy of The Watchtower.
I was quite pleased with how I dealt with them. They’d
obviously done their homework; I was just working off the cuff…
I got dressed and set off to work wondering if I might
need to avoid a thunderbolt on the way. As I drove I found myself thinking
about the Jehovah's Witnesses who used to run a stall at the park gates. There
were two little old ladies with a bookstall who I used to avoid until one day
when Fudge charged up to them for a fuss. They smiled at me and said not to
worry. They told me that if I wanted to talk religion they were happy to, and
if I didn't they were happy to just fuss my dog. We often passed them for a
little fuss and to say hello.
Sadly after a while the two little old ladies were
replaced with a pair of younger ladies with epic chests and legs that went all
the way up to their bums. They would smile in a saucy way at the kind of sad
acts that were taken in by that sort of thing, and once I'd started sniffing
round them they would play the god card at me.
I always felt that was rather unfair.
I got to work where I had a surprisingly busy day.
Many years ago the days between Christmas and New Year used to be very quiet.
Not any more. I was glad to see the night shift turn up.
And having had a misty drive to work, there was thick
fog on the way home.
“er indoors TM” boiled
up the leftover vegetables into a particularly good soup for supper. She does
make a good soup.
And in closing, today is the third birthday of the
pups… For all that they are small, they aren’t pups any more.
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