Well, last night was a case of the old, old story.
With an alarm set I was wide awake from three o'clock which (in all honesty)
wasn't bad for a night with an alarm set.
I got up, made toast and watched an episode of "The
Man In The High Castle" which was rather good. I got ready for work
and set off. I couldn't help but notice that the bins hadn't been strewn all
over the pavements, the bin men weren't bellowing swear words up the street and
the bin lorry had been parked in such a way that it wasn't deliberately
blocking the road. Someone in authority must have had a word with them.
As I drove the pundits on the radio were
talking the ongoing situation in the Middle East.
The Israeli and Lebanese governments are holding talks
because (so it would seem) President Trump has ordered them to.
The British and French governments are organising an
international armada to look after the strait of Hormuz; an international
armada involving pretty much everyone except those currently at war over the
place.
And the UK government is preparing for double figure
inflation as the price of food looks set to go through the roof at the end of
the year... or so it was claimed. The head of the Butcombe brewery was wheeled
on who said that inflation of food prices might go through the roof; it is too
early to tell.
It strikes me that whoever is wheeled on to the
morning news is very firm about their opinions, and no two hold the same
opinion.
Pausing only briefly to get a sandwich from Sainsburys
I went in to the early shift. I spent much of the day whistling
"Edelweiss"
which is the theme tune to "The Man In The High Castle",
and was a favourite song of my late grandmother. For some reason I have always
been convinced that the song was also a firm favourite of Adolf Hitler's
but it turned out the song was written fifteen years after he died. One
lives and learns.
And I got rather wound up as I chatted with the
trainees. Being a professional blood-tester has always needed rather specialist
post-graduate qualifications. Back in the day we would apply to be an
apprentice blood tester. The ones who were successful (I got the thumbs-down
on my first application) would spend four days a week in the workplace, and
one day a week at a college. After four years of this we'd qualify with a
degree, and those who wanted to go on to Masters level could do so over a
further two years.
A paid day off work each week to go to college,
college fees paid, train fare to get there paid, the price of lunch and tea
stumped up, and thirty quid to spend on text books… all the costs was part of
our wages. It might have taken longer to get a degree than the
traditional full-time route would, but at the end of it all we had a
qualification, professional registration and a job. And consequently it was
attractive. There was stiff competition to be an apprentice blood tester
back then, and that's why I didn't get in on the first attempt.
Sadly about ten years after I started, someone in an
office realised just how much it cost and decided that we would appoint staff
at the point at which they qualified, and apprentice blood testers could pay
for their own education... Some of the trainees now have over eighty thousand
quid's worth of debt...
This is nothing new... but it came as something of a
revelation to me...
As the day wore on so I had some messages from “er
indoors TM”. The nice drains man had arrived.
Regular readers of this drivel may recall our turd outlet hasn't been flowing
as well as it might. The nice drain man opened the manhole cover over the
communal sewer to find it was only a few inches from the top, and there wasn't
just turds floating in it. It would seem the nice people a few doors up have
been chucking "women's things" down their chodbin. I can't say
that was the problem, but it certainly couldn't have helped. Still, I'm glad he
found them. He can have that conversation with the neighbours.
I got the message that he was sending some submarine
camera down the drain, and then my shift was over. There's no denying that I
drove down the motorway with something of a sense of trepidation.
I came home to find the nice man had gone. Apparently
he’d seen nothing untoward with his sub-aqua camera so he just gave it all a
particularly vigorous rodding and hoped for the best, and that cleared it. I
saw that as a result. Seven years ago the nice people from
the water company sent a camera-equipped submarine down there and told us that
something
had collapsed in the drain and there was a load of rats and shingle down there
(in with the turds). Either today’s nice man’s camera had a turd on the
lens or he wasn’t looking hard enough, or the last bloke was mistaken.
Here’s hoping the drain is good for another seven years…
I had intended to take the dogs to the woods this
evening, but I’d had to park three streets away, and the current plan is that
they should get a decent walk tomorrow. So we just did “FEED THE FISH”
instead, and prepared my sat-nav “Hannah” for tomorrow.
We had fish and chips and watched “Race Across the
World” in which the contestants were racing across Turkey. Some of the
contestants went across the turtle rescue centre at Iztuzu beach where we visited when on holiday seven years
ago.
I’d like to go back there at some point…
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