Yesterday as we drove home from Rye there was talk on the
radio about Movember. Fuelled with enthusiasm I signed up for it, and this
morning as I scoffed my toast I saw that I’d already raised over fifty quid.
That’s not bad. You can donate by clicking here.
As I pootled on-line I had Radio Four on in the background.
It was spouting its usual drivel as it does every morning. There was talk of
the insurance company “Maiden Life” which has apparently cancelled all of its
policies to cover funeral expenses. There were those ranting about
how bad it was… I suppose this is the problem of private companies. If they go
belly-up or decide they’ve had enough there’s not a lot that you can do, is
there?
I Munzed; being the first of the month I chucked everyone
out of our Munzee clan in readiness for November’s Clan War, got Wordle (motel)
on the fourth attempt, and then turned over to Radio Ashford where Steve had
just started the morning show. He started with the “Guess the Lyrics”
competition. “A million lights are dancing, And there you are a shooting
star”. No – I got that one right away – Xanadu by Olivia Newton John and
the Electric Light Orchestra. When you think about some of the wonderful music
that ELO has produced, it always strikes me as ironic that perhaps one of their
weakest songs was their only No 1 single.
It had rained heavily overnight, but Saturday morning was
still Dog Club. We put on coats and wellies and set off.
Dog Club was surprisingly well attended – I think I counted
twenty dogs, but it was difficult to be sure. The dogs kept moving about. The
rain held off but the field was rather muddy and the dogs all ended up filthy.
There was a minor spat between two of the dogs but it was all shouting, it
passed off as quickly as it started, and all the owners realized that it was
just a minor spat.
As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year
competition on the radio. XTC – Making Plans for Nigel was 1979. Definitely.
But this was followed by The Jam – Eton Rifles. That was earlier. I went for
1978 but was wrong. I had had been right with my first choice.
Once home the dogs got a thorough scrubbing, I played the
bots at chess dot com, and set off to work… and sulked. The
earlier rain had given way to a really bright day. I don't mind working when
the weather is grim, but I'd rather be out doing stuff when I can.
As I drove up the motorway so I carried on listening
to Steve on the radio. The Radio Ashford reception is odd. Going north it only
reaches five miles to Kings Wood. Going west it goes for over twenty
miles to Cranbrook. Going up the motorway this morning the signal
eventually packed up at Leeds Castle - about ten miles. You'd think it would
travel the same distance in all directions, wouldn't you?
I got to work and cracked on. For all that I sulked,
as the afternoon wore on the weather got greyer, it was dark by half past five,
and I didn't really have that much chance to sulk anyway (I was rather busy!),
but I did find myself thinking about how Saturdays used to be back in the day.
When I first started in my line of work we would have
morning staff in on Saturday. They would do their bit and go home at mid-day.
Someone else would be on-call from then until nine o'clock the next morning,
and would be called in from home as and when needed to deal with emergency
cases. Back in the day they might get called in half a dozen times over that
twenty-one hours. Any more than that would have been considered excessive, and
words would have been said on the following Monday. These days things are
rather different... I probably quite didn't have to deal with a hundred blood
samples in my eight-hour shift today, but it couldn't have been far off
of it. I can't say I didn't stop, but I can say I didn't stop for very long at
all, and was very pleased to see the night shift walk in this evening. It was only
a shame that she was half an hour late; there’d been a serious accident on the
A249 which had held her up…
But road traffic accidents notwithstanding, two of us
would have worked pretty much constantly today where back in the day one person
would only get off their arse maybe once every three hours or so.
And the money was better too, but that’s another whinge…
And here we are at the end of the first day of MoVember.
Only twenty-nine more days to go…
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