1 April 2025 (Tuesday) - Before the Late Shift

After a night filled with vivid dreams of being neck deep in private ponds attempting to harvest water lilies I woke with a rather bad backache. Being the first of the month I shaved with a new razor blade (I’m mean – I make them last) then had my usual look on-line.
Yesterday I’d asked on one of the pond-related Facebook pages if anyone knew anywhere selling cheap lilies. Amazingly there weren’t that many smartarse replies. It seems that there are water lilies for sale for a tenner – in places like Liverpool and Manchester.
For some reason today’s Facebook feed was filled with adverts for matresses. I did a sleep test – my sleep chronotype is “dolphin . Apparently “dolphins” are ten per cent of people, and they sleep like I do. My sleep score is sixty-six not that this means anything to me.
 
I munzed, wordled (piece – meter – level – jewel).  I saw that the geocache I’d chased after yesterday had been replaced. I couldn’t be arsed to go chasing it again. Instead I took the dogs to Orlestone Woods. It can be muddy there, but it is a shorter walk and closer to home. We went there, had a good walk round the woods and were home about two hours earlier than when we come home from Kings Wood.
 
As we drove home the pundits on the radio were discussing meetings in the workplace. It was claimed that the average person spends over twenty hours a week in meetings and is still expected to do a full time job, and that many people are doing the actual work in their own time in evenings and weekends.
I can remember when I was a manager telling my boss that I didn’t want to go to any more meetings. He knew what he wanted to happen and we could all save time by his simply giving out orders. He replied that I wasn’t a team player.
I also once put in a formal suggestion that a random time of day be picked, and anyone found in a meeting anywhere in the hospital at that time be summarily sacked as they clearly weren’t doing any work. That didn’t go down well.
I was once ordered to a meeting to discuss our workplace’s approach to another upcoming meeting, the outcome of which had already been decided (but we still went through both meetings).
Meetings are an utter waste of time… why do so many people love them.
 
I uploaded last month’s diaries to the backup, put my winter shirts away and got out the summer ones (I change shirts at daylight saving time) and got ready for the off.
 
I went to Sainsburys to get some petrol. I got lunch whilst I was at it, and then set off up the motorway singing along to Ivor Biggun songs. With a little time on my hands I took a small (forty miles) diversion up to Sheerness and Whelans to get some more garden odds and ends. With most places selling garden gnomes at about ten to fifteen quid, Whelans knock them out (unpainted) for a fiver. I got gnome paint and gnome varnish as well. And an unpainted Rupert Bear statue whilst I was at it. Hopefully gnome paint will do for Rupert; if it does, that will give me something to do on my next day off.
 
As I drove back down Detling hill I saw that petrol there was seven pence a litre more expensive than what I'd just paid in Ashford. I smiled a smug smile. The smug smile lasted until I got to the Aylesford Sainsburys where their petrol was five pence a litre cheaper than what I'd paid. That's a variation of twelve pence per litre in twenty-five miles. It pays to shop about.
I bought a box of half a dozen beers for the weekend and some tennis balls for dog club, then went on to work. I parked up... and fell asleep.
Fortunately  I woke in time for the late shift and as is so often the case all the good bits of the day were over and done with by the early afternoon. I don't dislike my job like I used to... but sometimes I do find that work is hard work...

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