Monthly Archives: February 2021

Fun with ASDA

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I ordered a red rose and a Valentine card from ASDA. They were in stock when I ordered last night. Now they are out of stock. I am in trouble. Could they not at least have substituted the card for another?

I ordered parsnips – they are sending diced carrot/swede. You can’t roast them quite the same and swede is a very different thing to parsnips.

I ordered Lemon Cheesecake, they are sending ES Pudding. I don’t even know what that is.

I ordered Stilton, they are sending St Agur. One is made within 30 miles of here, the other is made in France. One is the King of Cheeses, the other is French. I think you get my drift.

I ordered bake at home baguettes, they are sending sandwich thins. In other terms that is like ordering a shark and getting a goldfish. same family but completely different. I still haven’t forgiven them for sending gluten free baguettes last time. That’s like ordering bread and getting cotton wool. Exactly like ordering bread and getting cotton wool.

I ordered ASDA Indian tonic Water. They are sending ASDA Soda Water. They could send somebody else’s tonic water but that would cost them money. So they send me something I don’t want. I would rather pay extra for something I want, rather than be foisted off with something I don’t.

I ordered Jam Doughnuts. They are sending Custard Doughnuts. Custard? Are they mad. Apart from the fact they look like a bursting boil, does anyone over the age of six actually eat them?

The only acceptable substitution is the pasties and I’m not convinced about that.

I would love  a return to those carefree pre-Covid days when all you needed to do to get a week’s shopping was to walk round a shop with a trolley, brushing up against fellow shoppers and greeting neighbours as you walked down the aisles.

I decided to use the photo with the sunset that looks like the end of the world. If you can’t get Stilton Cheese it might as well be the apocalypse.

 

A Slow Start and Two Interesting Links

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I just woke up in front of the computer screen. It’s 11.27 and if I can’t stay awake while I’m writing a blog it suggests that the post isn’t worth finishing.

My alarm was set for 6.30 this morning as I had a blood test. Naturally I woke at 6.12. That is a bad time – too soon to get up and too late to have a nice warm snooze. A bit of lateral thinking and I went back to sleep with the clock now set for 6.45. Good plan, but poor execution as I then slept until nearly 7.00.

Next bit of bad planning – the car has been parked up for five days. It started, but with an outside temperature of -4°C and a five day coating of ice and frozen snow, it took a bit longer to de-ice than I had planned.

The Road through Clumber park

Non of this actually mattered because when I got down to Phlebotomy, there were two phlebotomists looking very lonely. The one by the door actually told me not to sit in the waiting area a they were ready for me. It took two attempts, the car parking is still free and, unlike the last few weeks, it was actually light. There are no actual flowers out now, but the snowdrops are on the verge of opening. It was not a bad blood test, all things considered.

The trip into work was uneventful, though there did seem to, be more traffic than you would expect from a lockdown. This agrees with the figures about the number of people in work, compared to the first lockdown. I didn’t find any figures when I looked for them but I did find a story about the problems of hippos in Columbia. They  are taking over the waterways after being introduced, via the private zoo of Pablo Escobar.

In the Mencap Garden

Currently, after waking up, I am trying to concentrate as workmen build a drum in next door’s drive. It was meant to be a wooden garage, but the noise indicates it is a drum. A big one.

I’d better get some work done as this could be my last day in lockdown.  Tomorrow I’m going to the shop to work on my own – I offered to do it because everyone else is working and it seems a bit unfair not to do it. I will wipe everything down before leaving.

Then next week it looks like I will be back in work. By Monday I will be at the end of the self-imposed 14 day quarantine. I still don’t see why we are going back to work, but the owner has paid us full wages through three lockdowns and I suppose he’s getting fed up with it. This is known as Pandemic Fatigue, and is not to be confused with the fatigue that lingers after Covid. That is Post-Viral fatigue.

Off the Coast at Southend on Sea.

The photographs are some I have dredged up from old memory cards – some really good memories. They are random, and nothing to do with the content of the post, but I hope you like them.

 

Same day – just later

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For lunch we had the remains of the fish pie. I made the mistake of reheating it in the enamel dish it had originally been cooked in. The pie warmed up well, but all the odds and ends of food  left from the first day burned themselves onto the dish. It is going to take some washing. Then some more washing.

For tea we had potato wedges, sausage and chickpea casserole and stir-fried greens. It is, to be fair, a meal made with more enthusiasm than skill, but it worked out OK. There was something about dietary fibre on TV tonight and a meal of chickpeas and greens  turns out to be an excellent choice, particularly as I left the skin on the potatoes. It’s because I’m lazy, rather than health conscious, but it all helps.

They also said that the avocado is an ecological disaster as a crop, but when you look at its fibre content it is packed with the stuff. So do I have well-polished innards and a healthy heart, or do I have a healthy planet. And if I give up avocados will people also give up flying to foreign holidays. I doubt it. What will happen is that I will give up avocados and the planet will still fall apart.

Julia has still not had her test kit delivered, which makes you wonder if it has even been ordered. Even if it arrives tomorrow she won’t get the result back until next week, by which time I think we will already have established that she isn’t infected.

It has tried to snow several times since I last mentioned it, but none of the attempts has come to anything. This is good as I am planning at being at hospital for a blood test just after 7.00. They are still draining it at an alarming rate to check on the Warfarin. I am hoping for a clear road tomorrow.

 

 

 

A Tour Around the Internet

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February has a habit of catching me out. Spring starts to drop hints, the birds begin to act amorously and then it snows. Even in years that are generally free of snow February often manages to squeeze out a few flakes. As I’ve said before, it probably wouldn’t be considered snow in many countries that get proper snow, but in the UK a couple of inches for a couple of days brings us to a halt.

It’s a bit like those summer heatwaves we have – we don’t get one every year and they only last a couple of days. We all complain and need a lie down in temperatures that would be considered mild in Australia.

As a result, we have few snowploughs and no domestic air conditioning.

However, that doesn’t stop me complaining that it’s unseasonably nippy this morning. Nor does it stop me becoming a stereotype, British and talking about the weather. Whatever next? I’ll be on to Europe, immigration and capital punishment next.

Talking of which, I’ve just been looking at Albania on Wikipedia. I find that it is a member of two organisations I had not previously heard of – the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and Union for the Mediterranean. I didn’t even realise it was on the Black Sea. And when I check it up, it isn’t. Quite a few of the members aren’t on the Black Sea, and when you check the “Observer Members” the link becomes even more tenuous – they include Egypt and Israel (which must make for some fun meetings), France, Poland, Tunisia and the United States.

It’s much the same with the Union for the Mediterranean, but the entire EU is in that one – even Ireland, which it’s notably lacking in olive groves and sparkling blue seas. It seems, from reading the Wiki entry, that this is not a particularly effective organisation. One meeting ground to a halt when nobody could agree whether to refer to certain territories as  “occupied” or “under occupation”.  Such is life as an international diplomat.

It’s a good thing I don’t blog about politics or I might be tempted into sarcasm.

There is, it seems, tension between the EU and some of the less progressive states over Human Rights. This led me to checking which countries still executed homosexuals, and then to checking where the UK stood on this.   We last executed men for homosexual activity in 1835. Times and sensibilities were different then, but it was a surprise to find it was so recent.

So there you are, a discussion on the weather followed by world politics and capital punishment for something which isn’t actually a crime in the UK. Only on the internet…

 

An Excellent Apple Crumble and an Amusing Book

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Today started reasonably well and has ended up not being too bad.

That’s probably not the most inspiring opening, but it’s a fair summary. I have managed to get another submission done, have polished up a few bits for another one, tries writing a new form and still had time to cook.

We had shop-bought fishcakes tonight, with roasted cauliflower and cheese sauce (using the remains of the cheese sauce from yesterday’s Welsh Rarebit), potato wedges and sweetcorn. It was tasty, reasonably nutritious, and beige. I didn’t photograph it because the light golden brown fishcakes were the most colourful bit. The sweetcorn had faded to magnolia (it was half a tin left over from the fish pie), the cauli was off white and the sauce was made with white cheese and Dijon mustard, so was light beige.  It would not have looked good on film.

After that we had apple crumble, which is basically a beige topping on a magnolia base. Again, tasty but uninspiring in a photographic sense.

Apart from that, it snowed. Several times. There wasn’t much but as it fell on frozen snow we could have done without it.

I’m sure other things happened in between, but I’m having trouble recalling them. All I want is another 41 words and I can sign this off and go to bed. Then, later in the week, I can have  another blood test. The amount they have been tapping off recently you’d think I was made of the stuff.

Number One Son bought me a book club subscription for Christmas and the first one just arrived – The Diary of a Nobody. If I believed in fate anything like that, I’d think this was a message from a higher power. I am reading a chapter a night and picking up a few tips on diary writing as I go along.

 

 

Writing for a Future Reader

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It snowed, I wrote, it melted. I cooked two meals, Julia returned. We had bacon hotpot for tea, she said it was salty. The night grew frosty then it snowed again. I watched TV, fell asleep, woke up, made sandwiches and, in the early hours, decided it was time to blog. It will be one of those dull blogs written with a future reader in mind and full of dreary detail about lockdown.

There is something wrong with my routine. I am now in a rut – falling asleep in the evening so I am not sleepy at night. I then work into the early hours, have trouble waking, and feel tired during the day.

It is, as a result, difficult to say whether my lack of inspiration in the last week has been due to being tired, or being uninspired.

Julia has still not had the promised test kit from work and I am not working tomorrow because we don’t know whether she is asymptomatic or just healthy. It is an annoying situation, as I am trying to do the right thing but am stuck in limbo. If she’s clear I’m clear. If she’s positive I’m in isolation for 14 days. Or, if I fly in from abroad, I can self-quarantine for 10 days. Not quite sure why the two things are different.

I just looked at the rules. She has been in close contact with someone with Covid so should be in quarantine, but is being told by work that she should keep going in and test. I have not been in contact with anyone with Covid (in the absence of a test) and  don’t have to quarantine. But if I go to work I will come into close contact with someone who has a health condition and two people who have responsibilities caring for elderly relatives. I don’t want to be responsible for spreading it to the parents of other people after what happened to my father.

It’s an annoying situation to be in. However, it’s not appropriate to discuss my views on the way people are managing this, as I may be rude about people who can’t defend themselves.

Unfortunately, her contact came both before and after her vaccination, so it has had no time to work yet. Full protection takes two weeks.

I have been looking at private tests but there are several different tests available and several different prices. One was offered locally but they didn’t name a price. I can, however, have liposuction at the same place. There are at least two different tests and prices range from £65 to £135.

We can’t get NHS tests because we have no symptoms and, according to the website will be taking a test away from somebody who really needs it (we still have limited testing capacity, it seems).

Sorry, it’s a dull post, but in years to come I like to think it will be  an interesting historical document. I keep having visions of  a future PhD student basing a stellar thesis on my lockdown ramblings.. OK, maybe “interesting” was the wrong word – let’s try useful.

I’m off to bed now. I will review and publish this in the morning.

21 Minutes and some Serious Reflections

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I have 21 minutes to post and maintain my target of posting every day. I had gone off on one, writing a difficult post about something I read on LA’s blog. Unfortunately I keep wandering off the point.

Here’s the question – if somebody does something bad (and for the moment I won’t discuss how bad they are, or if they really were bad) do they deserve to be dismissed from their jobs, have honours and awards stripped from them and have record contracts annulled?

Or should we leave it to the public to decide? After the Brexit debacle I’m not sure we should ever leave anything to the public again.

And, if they have been convicted, should they be additionally punished? Do you believe  that the legal system is about revenge or rehabilitation?

I liked Gary Glitter in his 1970s heyday. I still quite like his music, though, like me and Glitter, it hasn’t aged well. These days he is known for much more than his music career.

I also quite liked Rolf Harris. He did some decent songs and he’s a good painter. He has such a likeable persona I actually still find it difficult to dislike him now. Sorry if that makes me appear a bad person, but I am, above all, a simple and a truthful man.

It’s very confusing when a childhood hero becomes a villain. I would still buy a Rolf Harris painting if I was offered one. I mean, I’d be a fool not too, the prices have gone way down and it’s clearly a good time to buy.

However, all joking apart – how much punishment is justified, and, in some of the more recent cases, how much indignation is really justified over an inappropriate tweet or word?

Mastermind

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My dull day picked up a little this evening. Years ago I beat a contestant on mastermind at his specialist subject (which was one I was interested in at the time). Tonight I did it again, which cheered me up a bit. I admit it was on Celebrity Mastermind so the bar was not at its highest, but nevertheless I beat a man on a subject of his own choosing, and after he had (I suppose) been reading up on it. The subject was Aircraft of the RAF 1939-45. Until tonight I didn’t even realise I had more than a passing knowledge of it. I’m sure the full strength questions on ordinary mastermind would have been harder, and that I’d have been less relaxed in a studio, so I won’t go on about it too much. In fact, apart from a quiet cheer and a short Victory Dance, I did little to mark my triumph.

Modesty in all things, as they say.

Before anyone mentions it, I did just look up the Mastermind Application Form, and applications are currently closed. I’m currently, after looking at the list of things I can apply for, wondering if I should attempt to forge a new career as a reality TV star. I can’t be worse than some of the people who currently fill this niche.

The problem is that I will need two specialist subjects. I may go for Books of the Great library Series by Laurie Graves. I was thinking of the Chronicles of Narnia, but there are seven of them. Laurie has only written three so far, so there will be a lot less to read.

I think this would be a good photo to send in with the application. I look trustworthy and moderately intellectual . Julia says I look mildly surprised, verging on shifty.  It also makes my head look longer and thinner than it really is.

 

A Dying Fall

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Life is a bit dull at the moment. It’s like my normal life but with added tedium and a dash of boredom thrown in. Of course, if it were exciting it would probably be worse. Excitement, in the form of boundary disputes, car breakdowns and pandemics, is not good either. I know I should be grateful for the monotony, but when the most exciting event of the week is watching Sharpe on TV, there is something wrong.

I really need to do more writing, send more submissions out and start playing editor roulette again. There’s nothing quite like a rejection letter for rousing the passions as yet one more philistine fails to appreciate your endeavours. Ans similarly, there’s nothing quite so worrying as an acceptance, meaning ta the whole world is about to laugh at you when they see your work and realise it’s rubbish.

Currently I don’t have too much out, just two competition entries, one lot of haibun and an article. The competition entries are doomed, they always are. The haibun are currently under consideration and the article is, I think, doomed. There’s going to be very little in the way of excitement coming from there.

There isn’t much coming up in the next month in the way of deadlines, though the month after that is going to be busy.  I am preparing my material for March and April, but I am, unfortunately, not the most industrious of men unless I have a deadline coming up.

I was reading an essay by a writer of haiku recently, in which he notes that most of his haiku have been in progress for about a year by the time he gets round to finishing them. He is quite clearly a patient and focussed man. I, of course, am not, and should probably go back to writing clerihews.

Ambitious PM Boris Johnson
had trouble keeping his pants on.
Thanks to Dominic Cummings
he now looks a bit of a muggins

A List, and a Letter I Will Never Send

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Next time I write a to-do list towards the end of the evening I am going to include Number Eight – fall asleep and sleep past midnight in my chair, Number Nine, wake up feeling like rigor-mortis has set in and Number Ten – make sandwiches in the early hours of the morning.

If I’d done that I would at least have achieved three of my objectives.

As it was, I didn’t even reach Number One – write sarcastic letter to TESCO. We had a delivery at just after 8.00.  It gives us time to relax and cook before bringing the shopping in from the door. There were no brown cobs with this delivery, and  a few other bits and pieces of omission or change that I found a little annoying, but that’s the price (plus £4.50 for packing and delivery) that you pay for not jostling with the germ-ridden denizens of our local supermarkets.

The prize for the most bizarre substitution ever, and the reason for my planned outburst of sarcasm.

It was going to be along the lines of –

FAO CEO TESCO

If you opened your sandwich box in the Executive dining room, looking forward to a lovely cheese cob, only to find a mere heap of cheese and pickle, because your grocery supplier couldn’t be bothered to supply any bread rolls, and had failed to find a suitable substitute, I bet you’d be disappointed, and wonder how people can stay in business if they can’t even supply bread rolls.

If you then reached for your delicious finale – an easy peel citrus (as they call small oranges these days) and bit into a lemon, I imagine you would become quite annoyed.

I am, I confess, more than quite annoyed that you substituted lemons for my order of easy peel citrus. I was tempted to pack one for my wife’s lunch to see what happened, but am, frankly, too frightened.

Remembering last week’s non-delivery debacle, I think I will be going back to ASDA. They are useless, but not quite as useless as you.

I am, yours etc…

Of course, I won’t send it. I never do…