Over the years I’ve mentioned here and in conversations about gathering up bumper harvests of dog turds from the garden. I gathered another this morning; fortunately as the babies get older it is less of a race to stop them eating it. But you wouldn’t believe how much dung three small dogs generate. All rather yuk, but so many other people look at me un utter disbelief when I say that we regularly (several times a day) de-dung the garden. And so many people with dogs tell me that they don’t. Either my hounds are crapping like things possessed, or there are a lot of people with rather rank gardens.
As I scoffed toast I watched another episode of “Another Life”. I find that I am watching it purely because it is so terribly written I can’t help but wait to see what comes next. Given that you are finally negotiating with the space aliens you’ve been trying to negotiate with for years, why attack them in the first few seconds?
And then I had a quick look at the Internet. It was much the same as it ever was. It seems my credit score (with Credit Karma) has gone up by eleven points this month. I wonder why? The last time I looked it had gone down, and I’ve not done anything different from one month to the next.
I saw the rant I’d posted on a work-related Facebook page had been “liked” quite a few times. My professional body is rather concerned that fewer and fewer people are becoming professional blood testers and want to remedy the situation. What can be done to make people want to test blood for a living?
I had a suggestion…
In order to do the job you need post-graduate qualifications both as a legal requirement and to actually know what you are doing. When I started I took a job as a trainee and the hospital paid for my education which was done as day-release to various technical colleges, and also paid my train fare to get there. They gave me the cost of my lunch (and a pint) every time I went, and thirty quid to spend on text books each year. When all my other mates were going to university to run up debts, being a professional blood tester was an attractive proposition. But in the meantime successive governments have decreed that wannabe blood testers can pay for their own education and apply for a job once they’ve got the degree for themselves… and are now acting surprised that very few people actually do this.
I made the radical suggestion that we go back to employing school leavers as trainees and train them. This seemed rather obvious to everyone *except* those in a position to make this happen.
As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about yesterday's sacking of Sam Tarry. Mr Tarry is the Labour MP for Ilford South and has been removed from his post as Shadow Transport Minister following his standing on picket lines during yesterday's train strikes. Weren't the Labour party supposed to be chummy with the unions? It was claimed on the radio this morning that he is the partner of the deputy leader of the Labour party. Is there some silly power play going on here?
I then felt my age as there was a lot of talk about social media; it would seem that children and teenagers are mostly of the opinion that Facebook is what their parents use. And this was compounded in an interview with Sir Lenny Henry (since when has he been a "Sir"?) who brought the baton to the Commonwealth Games yesterday. He commented on how so many younger people in the crowds (in their twenties and thirties) were looking at him and wondering who he was.
At tea break I found that Bernard Cribbens had died and that pretty much none of my younger colleagues (they are all younger colleagues!) had heard of him. Bernard Cribbens should have been a "Sir" - did voicing The Wombles and appearing with two different Doctor Whos count for nothing?
Someone else who died recently was Darren Stretton; or so my brother messaged me. Darren Stretton was someone with whom I used to mess about back when I lived in Grove Road (in Hastings). I moved out of Grove Road in the summer of 1975 and certainly never saw Darren since then. But I remember him, his older sister Mandy and two older brothers Mark and Paul. Paul kept ferrets, Mark fancied himself as a junior Satanist and both were a tad odd and went to a special school. His mother was festooned in jewellery and was a large lady, unlike his father who was a rather small and wiry chap. How strange that I can remember that from nearly fifty years ago, but couldn't tell you what I had for lunch two days ago.
