Post 409. ANOTHER MONTH ENDED.

THE CLOCKS HAVE GONE BACK.

AND AS USUAL
Some smartarse tried to convince me I'd get an extra hour's sleep. I didn't and I won't for at least a  month or more.. It is not perversity. It is the inbuilt time clock. I shall be awake and ready to get up at around a quarter to nine British Summer Time until nigh on Christmas and maybe right up to the end of the year. I awoke at bang on 8.45 BST this morning and went around making sure all the clocks - except the one on the oven which is a bugger to mess about with - were put back to what they have to read now. I'll sort out the oven when I can find the instruction book and the patience. It was raining buckets outside and the guttering is leaking badly in a couple of places which didn't help my mood.  Lord knows what this bloody hour thing does to night shift workers, but (as I boringly say every year) it sure niggles me.
I know: the words GET and A LIFE spring to mind. Thus to
THOSE TEDIOUS MEDIA TYPES.
Why are so many real life media types totally unlike the person they transform into when faced by a microphone or camera? Hear them chatter to their own kind on radio or television and butter wouldn't melt. They come alive. They are the nicest, most approachable, people in the world. Run  across them away from the spotlight and they are so far up themselves you would want no conversation whatsoever with them, not even from six feet away with a mask on.
Most of them will be given honours by HM or the Government. Ah well.
I'VE GOT ALL I WANT.

He does his best to stand in for Shadow.

And it never varies.
He and his sister are much valued.
Cheers.    
 

Post 408. A CONTEMPLATIVE TIME AGAIN.

A TIME TO REALIZE

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER.
Said he, following three coronavirus jabs, a flu jab, an ECG, a blood pressure check-up, and a blood test (please also bring a urine sample in a surgery supplied container). Nobody can say our surgery isn't working. I still have no idea what the doctor on whose list I was placed back in 2015 looks like, but I have seen a panoply of pleasant practice nurses so I'm not grumbling. 
Whether your local surgery is providing a service at all seems to be in the lap of the gods. General practice is currently in a shambles. There is an alarming shortage of GPs and, from the look of things, a disinclination on the part of those still active to be buggered about by London based bureaucrats. NHS Executive Councils (later known as Family Practitioner Committees) were also manned by bureaucrats, but they were locally based bureaucrats who could be confronted face-to-face when a doctor (or dentist, chemist, optician) had a grievance to air and, believe me, many of them did. So did a steady flow of unhappy members of the public. No point anyone looking for that source to express their discontent now. Gradually, in the drip drip drip of change wrought upon the NHS by respective governments over the years, all those sound, convenient, local offices have disappeared. I really don't blame doctors for rebelling against the ill-administered post Brexit shit heap they find themselves in, even if I do wonder why the almost secretly introduced offer of a whole lot of cash and a degree of autonomy (bequeathed them sometime ago) did not appear to have rung a solitary alarm bell among them. I can only hazard the guess that majority greed in their ranks outvoted minority common sense. And by then there would have been no sound local lay voices advising them, as some might have done, to proceed with the utmost caution if the Department of Health was offering enhanced profits for less work. When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Which is more or less what voted us out of the EU in 2016. But enough of that...

TELEVISION.

My Leader and I watched the four part Series 2 of GUILT (BBC iPlayer) and should have seen the first series before doing so. When the second series concluded we were no more aware of what it was all about than we had been when it started. We stayed with it right through, though, because the entire cast was excellent.

We also watched Josh Widdicombe and Judi Dench be suitably overcome at the discovery of who they are in Who Do You Think You Are (BBC1). We like them both and it came as no surprise that both are in some way linked to royalty. Aren't we all?     

IF YOU KNOW YOU ARE

GOOD LUCK

And go carefully

Post 407. THIS IS THE DAWNING OF

THE AGE OF APOLOGY

AGE OF APOLOGY.
When the century is in year twenty one
And the word gay doesn't just mean fun
When populism rules the roost
And with a word you'll be undone

This is the dawning of the age of apology

Age of apology

Apology

Apology

I know.
It's daft.
But it does seem to be the world we are living in now.
And I do get fed up with it, despite the alternative.
Perhaps it's the onset of the usual bout of SAD. Perhaps it's the dearth of any post Post comment from anybody on anything since Post 362. SOMETHING ORIGINAL? (published 24th June 2020) when our daughter, Jac, put me right at the time the ludicrous new rule for 'a minimum of £75' to be spent on one of the Bargain Hunt items - plus a something from somewhere - was introduced.

Or perhaps it's just conscientious people at Google Blog shielding me from the more unpleasant responses to my opinions. An unlikely explanation. Few dickheads read me: few dickheads can read and even fewer could write anything to which I'd be bothered to respond.
Or it may be that you nice folk who do glance in this direction have changed from the old computer to A.N. Other and are (1) no longer receiving me or (2) unable to message me by other than email. If it's the latter, I can be reached via:
dennisbarnden30@gmail.com

Pleasant people will be replied to pleasantly.
Unpleasant people will be told, without apology, to piss off.

Anyway, winter's coming.

Good luck with your fuel company.