Monthly Archives: December 2020

Always Something New to Learn

I have always been of the opinion that it should be possible to refer to a decade – 1960s or ’60s for instance – without the use of an apostrophe between the number and the s. It is something that seems to have crept in over the years and I notice that spellcheckers sometimes pick out the non-apostrophe version as incorrect.

The shop owner always uses 1960’s and I have always written it 1960s, assuming that I am once again out of step with modern thinking. However, I’m just finishing an article and I thought I’d better check a few things. As it’s for a numismatic journal I downloaded the Guidelines for the British Numismatic Society. I was happy to find that they say “The apostrophe is not used in dates or in the plural of abbreviations ‘the 1960s’, rather than ‘the 1960’s’.”

I didn’t really learn this, I suppose, as I already knew it, but it’s nice to confirm it. It also reminds me, when looking into the background, that I have grown sloppy at the other end as I always forget to add the apostrophe at the beginning of the shortened form – ’60s. All this is, of course, just a prelude to the subject of possessives. How about ’60’s music? I thought about putting that in quotes, but I fear my head might explode. You can see why style guides advocate recasting sentences to avoid situations of confusion. So, “music of the 1960s” it is then. I often do that when working round constructions I’m not confident with, and am happy to see that serious style guides suggest it.

Inspiration and the Rebirth of Optimism

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Sorry, I have been struggling since Sunday. Inspiration seems to have deserted me, and IBS seems to have returned. I’ve been watching my diet, so I’m wondering if the IBS could be linked to stress. Yes, even I get stressed from time to time, though I’m only going to mention it in passing as I feel, as I said yesterday, there is far too much sharing in modern life.

It’s taken me well over an hour to get to these seventy seven words. I’ve written about a thousand, but none are hitting the right note.

I started the day by dropping Julia at work and composing a haibun in the car. I emailed it to myself from work. I find that although I need a pen and paper to compose when I’m sitting down to write, I can go directly to the screen if I’ve already composed it in my head.

It will probably never be shown to anybody, as it concerns everything that has bothered me since the depression descended on Sunday. The writing of therapeutic haibun is well known, as is the fact that they make tedious reading. I’m hoping that with the emptying of my head, inspiration will return.

Inspiration has to return because I’m just starting an important six weeks for submissions and these six weeks could set the tone of then next year. Well, if they are good, they could. If they are bad, I will simply start my year from February.

This reminds me – it is probably time for a bit of planning. Things go better with a bit of planning. This year has been OK, but I’ve tended to drift through it, and I need to get a grip. My literary legacy isn’t going to write itself.

My Christmas shopping isn’t going to do itself either, and as Mrs Botham has suspended her Christmas website due to the number of orders, Plan A has collapsed. As has Plan B, because Bettys has nearly sold out. It looks like the hamper plan is going to boil down to some supermarket scones wrapped up in an old shoe box. This lacks the grandeur of the original plan, and I may have to do some more thinking. I did think about getting some fancy Christmas boxes, but the useful sizes all seem to have sold out. It seems that we haven’t been sending empty containers back to China so they can’t send us all the cheap stuff we have come to rely on.

The picture is some Christmas stamps I used on a letter to the USA today.

Growing Up

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We’ve just finished National Grief Awareness Week. This is a good thing to finish as, in my opinion, it has no reason to exist. We’ve always had grief, but we haven’t always had a need to parade it for all to see. Now that we have TV and no quality threshold it’s quite common to see grieving family members making a meal of it on the news, or even friends or neighbours or people from the street who just wanted a few minutes on TV

I know that there are people who read the blog, who have suffered grief and bereavement. I’ve also noted that every one of them has dealt with it in what I consider a dignified manner. There will probably be others who probably haven’t mentioned it. I’ve been feeling a bit down myself this week for various reasons to do with family deaths and the time of year, However, I don’t see the need to have a National Week devoted to grieving, with public displays of emotion and downloadable posters. Sorry if this makes me sound old-fashioned or unfeeling, but that’s how I am.

This post could now go one of three ways – a sensitive examination of grief in the 21st Century, a reflective post on the phenomenon of “National Week of…” or I could upset people and put the boot into modern sensibilities.

Tricky choice. I grew up in a world where things were different. They may not have been better, but they were different. When I look around me, I can’t really say things are better than they were.

However, I don’t go out of my way to upset people and I realise that not everybody shares my views. If a national newspaper were to weigh in with a handful of banknotes I would happily start to upset people. I could be the next Katie Hopkins.

I’d just like to point out to all the people who have been moaning recently that the government closing nail bars is not a denial of human rights, that the Magna Carta didn’t confer the right to have your hair done and that we can’t always do what we want. Sometimes you have to suck it up and suffer a bit.

Tuesday, and another dull day passes

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It’s cold and wet, but that doesn’t really matter as i’ve been inside all day and have nothing much to do apart from sending parcels.

I stayed late because we’ve been having trouble with a parcel that needs collecting by a courier. They keep coming at 7pm and later, and can’t work out that this is no good for a shop. This is, it seems our fault for closing so early. They are busy and so we have to fit in with them. Whatever happened to the customer always being right? As I pointed out to them, if we have to pay someone for an extra couple of hours to get the parcel picked up we might as well use a more expensive, but more reliable, courier in the first place.

When I finally finished I found that someone had parked their car so close to mine I had a problem getting in. As it’s a private car park this is doubly vexatious.

At home, I had post. One letter was from my credit card company telling me that they were altering the terms and conditions, They are calculating the interest differently now, but as I haven’t used it for years this doesn’t really affect me. They are also going to stop allowing people to use credit cards in casinos and online gambling sites. This was news to me. I’d been told you can’t use credit cards for buying lottery tickets, but didn’t realise you could use them in casinos. I’ve never actually been in a casino (another gap in my miserably grey life) but always assumed they were full of rich people flashing cash around. The idea of feeding my gambling habit by using a credit card is a bleak vision of modern life.

Dull anecdote about a parcel

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I just had to use my printer as a scanner – Number Two son needs copies of documents to support his bid to remain in Canada, and anything I can do to make sure he stays away from my fridge is good. However, despite owning the computer and the printer I have had to register with HP to be able to scan. I don’t know why. I just know it is very annoying, and very intrusive.

I’m afraid that there is nothing much happening either at home or at work. The only episode of any interest (and I use the term lightly) was when I packaged a parcel, only to find that the same customer had ordered something else a bit later. Because they were seperated by three other items I had not picked up on the fact. There are two things you can do when this happens (apart from swearing and declaring that customers, though necessary, are also frustrating). You can carry on and pack the second parcel, but this often results in a complaint that you could have packed it all in one and reduced the postage.

Fair comment, but they could either have done all their shopping at one time, or have sent you a message to let you know before you start packing.

Second choice is to repack the parcel. That’s what we did in this case. It involved a bigger envelope and cutting the front off the other envelope to stick to the second so that we didn’t waste the stamps. This is slightly more complicated when using padded envelopes, but it went OK and I used the rest of the old envelope instead of using bubble wrap. In the end, nothing was wasted apart from a little time and a sliver of vocabulary.

The Post Office was crowded today. It’s a long shop and the queue was out of the door. I suspect it is the last posting day for some places.

New Day Dawning

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Julia has a sixth sense for when I’m enjoying myself.

I left her asleep, and breathing rhythmically (as in pigs grunt, men snore, ladies breathe rhythmically), and crept quietly downstairs for some quiet time with WordPress. Next thing I know, she’s up and zipping everywhere in high energy mode whilst asking what I’m making for breakfast. I had said I’d make breakfast last night, but I was thinking it would be a while. I don’t know how people manage to move from asleep to manic in such a short time. I woke up an hour ago and I’m only just making the transition from lethargic to sluggish. At this rate ‘awake’ will cut in around lunchtime and snooze around 3pm. That’s my sort of day.

And, as I say, sensing that I’m just starting to relax with my keyboard, she is here, buzzing with energy and deflecting me from my plans.

We had a Chinese takeaway last night. It was our first since March. It might actually have been out first since 2019, as we haven’t been having much Chinese. I’d been looking forward to it for a good three months. It was a complete disappointment. Too salty, badly presented and surrounded by guilt. The guilt is mine, as I should be economising and not eating such rubbish. The saltiness and poor presentation is down to the restaurant. It’s good news for my health and diet that I won’t be having another one in the near future (apart from lunchtime, when the leftovers come into play). Strange how you can look forward to something so much and then find it is so disappointing. There is nothing good I can say about the experience, apart from the fact it was first class aversion therapy. In terms of diet and spending, the lockdown has been good for me.

Julia is now making breakfast, as I’m too slow. I’d better go now, and at least make some attempt at being a half-useful husband…

I have been asked to point out that this is a work of fiction and that none of it, apart from the Chinese meal, represents, an accurate version of the truth. And even if it did, I have no room to talk as I was snoring so badly last night that she had to wake me up so that she could hear the TV. I know that bit is true, because I was snoring so loud I even woke myself up at one time.

Do you remember the days when TV was so exciting that it was impossible to fall asleep?

Neck or Leg?

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I’ve just had a letter which claims to be the report of my last telephone consultation with rheumatology. It took place while I was in the car by the side of the road bringing Julia home from work. They were a bit off with me, muttering something about hadn’t I realised I had a telephone consultation booked. I was a little tactless in my reply – that they were often hours late in ringing me so I wasn’t going to sit at home waiting when I had things to do.

They have had the last laugh with this letter. It claims I said my pain score was 2.5 out of 5, when I actually said it was “half”. I have a little stiffness and discomfort but no actual pain. I now look like a whining hypochondriac. Next time I will just say zero. It will be less accurate but less susceptible to mis-reporting., as in mild discomfort, with no actual pain. They have also reported that the only remaining path of psoriasis is on my neck. I actually said “legs”.

Fortunately there is nothing life-threatening about the errors, but it does make mw wonder how accurate my medical notes actually are, and if I will die one day because they apply a tourniquet to my neck instead of my leg.

We had six parcels for eBay (none of which were posted, because the Post Office is still closing on Saturdays), and two customers, so it wasn’t a particularly busy day, allowing us to get more foreign banknotes loaded onto eBay. They are selling well – one of today’s sales was a set we had put on the days before and two lots we sold on Friday had been loaded on Thursday. It feels good when that happens, particularly as they are old stock that have been at the back of a store room for years. That’s the beauty of eBay, it reaches so many people that the stock is always new to somebody.

Anyway, have to go now, Julia bought some mistletoe this afternoon and I suppose I’d better check that it works. Ho, ho, ho, Happy Christmas…

The List (2)

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I meant to post this yesterday, but I forgot to add that to the list, so it didn’t get done.

14. Warm up yesterday’s soup and eat with the remains of the sourdough bread from Lidl

15. Ruminate on the question of why a budget supermarket has the best bakery

16. Freecell

17. Look at list of jobs.

18. Look again. Are you sure it doesn’t mention Freecell?

19. Look again. Nineteen points in and only two of them are actually on the list.

20. Magazine article. It’s nearly done. An hour later it was still nearly done. Ditto for thirty minutes after that.

21. Let the article mature and go back to it tomorrow.

22. Alarm rings. Is it that time already? Time to pick Julia up.

23. Lose the plot and watch TV.

My performance was patchy in some areas but I think I really nailed Number 23. I’m going to try another list next week and see if I have similar success.

What happens to all that time?

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Over the last few days I’ve found myself sitting looking at a computer screen in the evening wondering what has happened to the day.

Twelve hours pass, and I look at the jobs I’ve done and wonder what happened. (Yesterday was washing up, shredding two lots of paper, taking Julia to work and picking her up, blogging, writing a few haiku, reading a few haiku and making soup and a stir fry.) Even with a snooze and some TV it is hardly a full day.

Tomorrow I will sort books out because once the charity shops open again and customers start coming back to the shop I can start moving them on again. The car boot is absolutely crammed and there are bags of books in the back floor wells too. I also have them piling up at home.

It is a sad thing, but they had taken over and life is, I confess, more relaxing without so much stuff in the house. As a bonus, when we move (which is planned for some point in the next few years) we won’t have as much stuff to sort or move. We will be moving 150 miles, so the less we take, the better. I will probably have to give the kids our new address as Julia seems to want to keep them, but apart from that I’m aiming for a fresh start.

Country Life sent me the normal weekly email and, as long as I can manage an immoderate lottery win, I think I have found just the place for us. I mean, a library by Rennie Mackintosh, a herd of Highland cattle and fifteen bedrooms. That means you can have clean bedclothes every night for a fortnight before you need to start doing housework. If only it wasn’t just 500 yards away from Loch Lomond. I seem to recall it being famous for midges. and after my last experience with them I’m not sure I want another go.

That was how I used to organise myself as a bachelor- fifteen sets of everything and then do the laundry once a fortnight. It’s a good system.

However, talking of Lottery wins, it’s going to have to happen soon, as I’m going to stop buying Lottery Tickets. I never win so I might as well save the money and buy something useful. As of January 1st I’m going to drop the money in a jar and buy Premium Bonds. There’s still a chance of winning a cash prize and you can actually get your money back when you want it.

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Life after the Care Farm