Albatross, for Chrissake!

Hush.

Don’t tell anyone but I am supposed to be on a coaching course. I didn’t want to go on it and I have just found a great excuse to stay at my desk.

It means doing actual work, but it is important and against a deadline, so I can live with that. It also means that I can play with LJ from time to time and check my email, all the things I hate missing when I have to do something away from the PC. Right now, mind, I have to contact Three Valleys Water and spin them a yarn as to why we haven’t paid the water bill yet, and give them a good reason not to:

a) demand the entire year’s bill in one dollop;
b) cut the water supply off, and
c) sue our arses to next year and back.

Oops.

Still, I have a plan, and that involves them not having updated their records to include unfortunate little me on the tenancy list, so how was I to know they need paying?

For these sound tactical reasons, colonel_maxim is keeping mum on this one.

Albatross, for Chrissake!

Hush.

Don’t tell anyone but I am supposed to be on a coaching course. I didn’t want to go on it and I have just found a great excuse to stay at my desk.

It means doing actual work, but it is important and against a deadline, so I can live with that. It also means that I can play with LJ from time to time and check my email, all the things I hate missing when I have to do something away from the PC. Right now, mind, I have to contact Three Valleys Water and spin them a yarn as to why we haven’t paid the water bill yet, and give them a good reason not to:

a) demand the entire year’s bill in one dollop;
b) cut the water supply off, and
c) sue our arses to next year and back.

Oops.

Still, I have a plan, and that involves them not having updated their records to include unfortunate little me on the tenancy list, so how was I to know they need paying?

For these sound tactical reasons, colonel_maxim is keeping mum on this one.

Passing the time

The world is all topsy-turvy again today. Only in a small way, but nonetheless the natural order is subverted just a little.

Outside the summer temperature and humidity levels have dropped to comfortable levels; there is even rain about (I had to use my tote brolly this morning). In short, it is overcast but pleasant; a proper English summer’s day with none of this semi tropical heat blowing across Spain and the Bay of Biscay wafting desert heat and dropping sand on us. It’s cool, it is damp and it is English.

Contrast this then, with an office where there are no opening windows, an office where the powers that be switched the air-conditioning off over the weekend while the weather was still ripe and Mediterranean, and have now either forgotten to switch it back on or have left it so late that it will have no realistic effect until tomorrow (probably midday tomorrow, bearing in mind that the system closes down at 6pm every evening).

The place is not fit for people to work in, though should these conditions prevail I might be interested in investing in a couple of sacks of potting compost and try my hand at growing tomatoes.

The air is oppressive and I am developing a mild headache. I don’t think it’s dehydration: it’s more like that feeling you get before a good thunderstorm, though I think we can all remember how well my predictions worked on the weather front (for once, no pun intended) a while back. Beside, my dickey foot isn’t playing up.

We shall see. Anyway, it’s games night tonight, so I shall be out of here around 4 ‘o’clock both to ensure that I am home when people arrive, and to give me the opportunity to nip into the pharmacy and order up a new prescription. I hope they have the renewal slip, as I don’t and I don’t fancy nipping down to the doctor’s surgery since they will want to know why I haven’t arranged the blood test they asked me for back in January¹.

In other news, I seem to have inherited a couple of silver plated cigarette cases from my ex-boss. They are the sort that you would see people using at posh do’s in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s to show that they were big city sophisticates. That always struck me as odd even as a child; since I lived in an area that was semi rural in parts and strictly working class elsewhere (we had a colliery just a mile down the road, and open farmland a mile in the other direction. There was a sewage farm out there too, which could be quite exciting when the wind swung round to the north west as it did on occasion)² and the height of sophistication was to eat a pot noodle in front of the telly while drinking a glass of something you had to uncork.

Like people, cigarettes were smaller in those days. You can probably get Woodbines in these cases, or even Players Navy Cut. You’re damned if you smoke something with a filter and king-size are definitely beyond the pale. Super kings? I don’t think so. Not even with the filters ripped off.

I guess they will make good props for role-playing games, if ever there are any of the correct periods. It does occur to me that I could fill them with roll-ups, but Golden Virginia goes really dry after a while if you aren’t careful and it’s like smoking a taper, which can be exciting if, like me, you sport a beard and moustache.

Onwards and upwards, I suppose.

Look busy, Bryan. Look busy; seventy-five minutes and you’re out of here...


¹I shall actually arrange it sometime over the next month, it is just that doctors do so like sticking needles in one and extracting random fluids for their arcane practices. While this is probably natural for the profession, I dislike being a pin cushion to their whims and maintain a strict policy of allowing myself to be punctured and have blood extracted but once in every twelve months (unless I have Legionnaires Disease or something like that, which is entirely possible with this air-conditioning). Anyway, the anniversary of the great bleed is coming up, so I fancy that I have regenerated enough red cells to be able to indulge the quack for another year.

¹Mind you, the fields around there were VERY fertile. The earth was black where the slurry was ploughed under, and after letting it lie fallow for a couple of years the farmers could grow strawberries the size of er… big strawberries.

Passing the time

The world is all topsy-turvy again today. Only in a small way, but nonetheless the natural order is subverted just a little.

Outside the summer temperature and humidity levels have dropped to comfortable levels; there is even rain about (I had to use my tote brolly this morning). In short, it is overcast but pleasant; a proper English summer’s day with none of this semi tropical heat blowing across Spain and the Bay of Biscay wafting desert heat and dropping sand on us. It’s cool, it is damp and it is English.

Contrast this then, with an office where there are no opening windows, an office where the powers that be switched the air-conditioning off over the weekend while the weather was still ripe and Mediterranean, and have now either forgotten to switch it back on or have left it so late that it will have no realistic effect until tomorrow (probably midday tomorrow, bearing in mind that the system closes down at 6pm every evening).

The place is not fit for people to work in, though should these conditions prevail I might be interested in investing in a couple of sacks of potting compost and try my hand at growing tomatoes.

The air is oppressive and I am developing a mild headache. I don’t think it’s dehydration: it’s more like that feeling you get before a good thunderstorm, though I think we can all remember how well my predictions worked on the weather front (for once, no pun intended) a while back. Beside, my dickey foot isn’t playing up.

We shall see. Anyway, it’s games night tonight, so I shall be out of here around 4 ‘o’clock both to ensure that I am home when people arrive, and to give me the opportunity to nip into the pharmacy and order up a new prescription. I hope they have the renewal slip, as I don’t and I don’t fancy nipping down to the doctor’s surgery since they will want to know why I haven’t arranged the blood test they asked me for back in January¹.

In other news, I seem to have inherited a couple of silver plated cigarette cases from my ex-boss. They are the sort that you would see people using at posh do’s in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s to show that they were big city sophisticates. That always struck me as odd even as a child; since I lived in an area that was semi rural in parts and strictly working class elsewhere (we had a colliery just a mile down the road, and open farmland a mile in the other direction. There was a sewage farm out there too, which could be quite exciting when the wind swung round to the north west as it did on occasion)² and the height of sophistication was to eat a pot noodle in front of the telly while drinking a glass of something you had to uncork.

Like people, cigarettes were smaller in those days. You can probably get Woodbines in these cases, or even Players Navy Cut. You’re damned if you smoke something with a filter and king-size are definitely beyond the pale. Super kings? I don’t think so. Not even with the filters ripped off.

I guess they will make good props for role-playing games, if ever there are any of the correct periods. It does occur to me that I could fill them with roll-ups, but Golden Virginia goes really dry after a while if you aren’t careful and it’s like smoking a taper, which can be exciting if, like me, you sport a beard and moustache.

Onwards and upwards, I suppose.

Look busy, Bryan. Look busy; seventy-five minutes and you’re out of here...


¹I shall actually arrange it sometime over the next month, it is just that doctors do so like sticking needles in one and extracting random fluids for their arcane practices. While this is probably natural for the profession, I dislike being a pin cushion to their whims and maintain a strict policy of allowing myself to be punctured and have blood extracted but once in every twelve months (unless I have Legionnaires Disease or something like that, which is entirely possible with this air-conditioning). Anyway, the anniversary of the great bleed is coming up, so I fancy that I have regenerated enough red cells to be able to indulge the quack for another year.

¹Mind you, the fields around there were VERY fertile. The earth was black where the slurry was ploughed under, and after letting it lie fallow for a couple of years the farmers could grow strawberries the size of er… big strawberries.