Tag Archives: students

Spring is Here! Probably.

It’s been a bit cold today, which is the story of our spring – one false start after another. Despite everything, the blossom is out now. The sun made a bit of an effort today and the world looks like a sunny fairyland. Most of it, to be fair, happened on Sunday. The day may have been dreary but the blossom had an inexorable drive to open. This makes things easy – I can merely re-use pictures of blossom from previous years.

I sorted things out this morning, using my desk space at work. It’s small and cramped, but it’s larger and less chaotic than my home equivalent. I’m tempted to drop the solicitor a few lines af advice regarding the quality of their website, and the dreadful design of their forms but have noticed before that people don’t often appreciate my attempts to help.  Anyway, why give them something for free. When did you last hear of a solicitor doing something without expecting payment?

There are quizzes on TV tonight and I particularly like to see if I can beat the contestants on various things. I don’t understand all the questions on University Challenge, but I do like it when I can show my mastery of a subject compared to the gilded youth of the student body (though some are nearly as old as I am). They couldn’t, for instance, identify the voice of Elvis Costello last week, which was noted on Twitter by  number of people. It’s nice to feel superior.

On the other hand, when they ask questions on physics or enzymes I don’t actually understand the questions . . .

Blossom at Wilford

Vaccination!

It was flu vaccination day today. My original time was mid-morning but, before I could ring and ask for a change to an earlier time they sent me an earlier time. That was good, as it allowed me to get to work on time.

We arrived at 8.05 and by 8.10 we were on our way home. This was, I have to say, excellent service with a great turnout from the practice staff and a well thought out system.

It’s 8.40 now and I’m having a cup of tea before going to work.  I thought I’d write a quick post now because tonight we will be preparing for an epic journey to Leeds tomorrow. They are in lockdown, of sorts, as from last night but as Number One Son is moving to a new house we want to take some things up for him.

As I understand it, we can’t enter the house or garden to socialise but as long as he isn’t in the backyard (note to US readers, a yard in the UK is a small, generally cheerless enclosure with hard floors and walls) we can unload the furniture and things into the yard, leave and watch him emerge from the house to collect them.

After not socialising in the house or garden we can then go to the pub and stay there till 10,00 pm with a group of strangers who aren’t wearing masks.

It’s a little inconsistent, but that’s the way life is at the moment. No point moaning, just do our best and protect our own family. The best way to do that is to protect everybody, by sticking to the spirit of the regulations, It’s just sad that not everyone is taking that view.

Having said that, I wonder which academic hot-shot decided that it was a good idea to bring all the students back. Not someone who knows much about young people, I imagine. Of course they are going to party. If I was forty years younger I would be out there, knocking back a few beers, telling everyone that alcohol was a disinfectant and asking if anyone wanted to try a spot of social undistancing.

It’s not the students who are at fault, it’s the universities who wanted to get income from the accommodation.

Anyway, just look who they have for role models – full pubs and hypocritical politicians.

Rant over. Time for work. I’m going to add a general purpose, though hopefully tranquil photo as the system is jammed up again. See you later.