X starts 2545 words, did you know?

Well, I haven’t quite achieved my challenge of 26 posts in the month, each starting with a consecutive letter of the alphabet, but I got pretty close. I suppose I could force it – write two more postings later today – but that would make it an inorganic and therefore unsatisfying achievement. So I shall instead carry ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ over into October, and then decide whether to start immediately with ‘Z’ and then ‘Y’ etc and go back through the whole alphabet. Forgive me, but I need these little weirdnesses in my life to keep things interesting and to stop me self-harming while stuck at work!

Can you believe October arrives tomorrow?

Normally I start dreading the whole Hallowe’en experience, but I’m guessing no-one will be trick-or-treating this year (unless they’re all dressed in biohazard suits and disinfect all the sweets before eating them). I normally offset that negative projection by looking forward to Bonfire Night, but I’m guessing that won’t be happening this year either (unless someone can launch fireworks so high in the sky that we can all watch them from home).

Strange times, indeed, and I’m getting bored with it all now. Maybe it’s a natural dip in mood caused by the lack of light that’s creeping in more and more each day, but I’m fed up with the Autumnal onset already.

And I have to stop there, or I might drift back into complaining about being fed up by another topic, and then you’d all have to sharpen your javelins……

RC 30-9-20

Why does it matter?

I’ve calmed down a bit after yesterday.

Who cares if my blog doesn’t look precisely the way I would want it to? If it bothered me that much, I could take the time to learn how to set it differently, but I can’t be bothered, and besides, the most important thing is the quality of the content, not the way it looks, and that’s something I CAN control. Those Behind The Scenes can convert it all to French and give it a pink background for all I care.

My mood was lifted, strangely enough, as a result of my old friend Insomnia. I was pacing the house at 2am, then remembered that Channel 5 have the rights to show NFL Monday Night Football live every week of this season, so I watched the last 3 quarters of Kansas City 34 Baltimore 20.

I have to say that I think the Chiefs are unstoppable. Assuming they don’t get half their squad ravaged by Covid the week of a play-off game in January I honestly think they’ll win the Super Bowl. I think 6 different receivers had 3+ catches, their rookie running back looked like a seasoned veteran, and their defence gave last year’s runaway MVP the least productive game of his career. How can you prepare to face a team like that and hope to come away with a victory?

That won’t mean much to many of you, but I hope I’m sounding informed…..

Now I need a shower and to plan an early night.

RC 29-9-20

VERY annoyed

BLOGGER have changed the way their website works, and it has pissed me off beyond belief. I’ve always hated technology companies that feel the need to change things for no reason other than to look like they’re always adapting. Nothing has become easier, nothing looks better, they’ve just messed around with things and made a couple of adjustments so they can say they’ve updated it and made it all shiny and new.

As usual when they do this, I am struggling to understand how the alterations have affected my own blogsite. So for the last few days, the writings I have posted have not looked the way I want them to, and I don’t know how to edit them. There’s obviously a setting somewhere that will bring back the format I used before, but for now I’m stuck with having some AI algorithm in the system saying ‘I can see what you’ve decided to do here, but my programmers know much better than you what you want, so I’m going to automatically change everything so it looks how WE think it should.’

BASTARDS.

RC 28-9-20

U-Turn

I need to go back to an earlier promise I made about this blog. Sometime, somewhere (I think it may have been about May time) I took an oath to make my blogging a virus-free zone. I had got caught up in all the speculation around the situation and I was mentioning it every day. I realised that you were probably sick of reading about it, and I pledged to make this particular blogsite a place you could retreat to when you wanted a break from the one bit of the news cycle that was dominating everything. I made that decision for readers, but I saw the benefits myself. Taking myself out of the coronasphere and refusing to comment on it did me the world of good and forced me to concentrate on other, happier subjects.

This past week, though, I’ve written about little else.

So I hereby promise us all – No Mention Of Covid In These Chronicles For Seven Days At Least. And you can poke me in the arse with a javelin if I go back on it.

RC 27-9-20

Three types of turd

Following on from my little rant on Wednesday, I have conducted a little survey among our most regular customers – the ones who know me well and are used to my little idiosyncrasies. I asked them their views on the ongoing ‘virus crisis’ and asked for their responses to the restriction changes brought in earlier this week. Most of them, I am pleased to say, are disappointed but supportive. They understand the importance of the situation and are willing to do the work to get through it. A select few, bless them, are simply too unintelligent to grasp the severity of what’s going on, and unable to get their heads around the constant changes in advice (maybe that’s a lesson for those making the big decisions – aim your advice and tailor your requests to the ones who aren’t so bright.)

Of the ones who are defiant and disruptive – and we see quite a lot of those over the course of a working week – they seem to fall into one of three categories:

A). “We’re going to end up in another lockdown anyway, so I may as well get out and enjoy myself while I can”

B). “They’re making it up as they go along. There’s no evidence anywhere that this stuff works and it’s just an excuse to control us.”

C). “It’s my life and it’s my body – it’s up to me if I want to risk getting Covid.”

Those aren’t direct quotes, by the way, that’s me paraphrasing what people have said to me for the purposes of clarity and conciseness. Category B) I admit is quite a broad one – I’ve squished about eight different mini-categories into one, but the sentiment behind the thoughts of the people in that group seem to be the same, even if their choice of words are different. They don’t trust the government, or they don’t trust the science, or both, and they want to express that externally by refusing to co-operate with the guidelines.

I have decided to name the three groups “Defying, denying and dickheads.”

RC 26-9-20

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Our store manager is suggesting we cash in on the lack of Christmas entertainment locally by setting up a grotto on the site. He thinks we can install a little booth that can easily be cleaned every few minutes, where a socially-distanced Santa can wave happily at passing children, and charge them ten quid each for a poorly-wrapped toy and a promise of a virus-free visit on Christmas Eve.

I was so bored in the meeting I fuelled his enthusiasm by saying he should present his plans to Head Office and he would have my full support in making it work. In truth, it is the latest in a long line of inept management choices made by inept managers, and yet another example of why Those Above Us should stop encouraging recent graduates to ‘think outside the box’ and start encouraging them to learn the fecking basics instead.

I’m confident this will be shut down long before it becomes a possibility. Dragging families full of grotty, snotty children out in the middle of an ongoing pandemic to queue up at a venue where the elderly and vulnerable want to buy their vital shopping? Even our Senior Management can’t be money-mad enough to let this move forward……

RC 24-9-20

Running uphill, with a backpack full of idiots

I do admire ‘The People In Power’ for the way they have displayed faith in the British public, but I think it may be biting them in the arse now. The lockdown we had was far more lenient than in a lot of other countries, and we’ve basically been let out to run around under our own superstition for the past couple of months, but the problem is that some of us have running around like greyhounds who have just been let out of a kennel. Now, with September drawing to a close, the top boffins have had to do a televised appeal asking for people to display common sense, and we’re having to get used to yet another change in restrictions.

I may be wrong, but back in late July the plan seemed a good one. The science was sound, the ‘R’ rate was acceptable, and as long as everybody did what was being asked of them, the virus cases would continue to fall and falter, and the outbreak would be kept contained. But instead of that we’ve had parties in people’s gardens, groups of dozens thrown together in pubs, and many premises who seem to have forgotten they are only supposed to be open under strict guidelines, or have simply chosen to ignore them. I popped through one of Suffolk’s larger towns on Sunday, and you would have thought it was 2003 and coronaviruses didn’t exist. Every table outside every pub was full, every pavement was packed, and I saw one mask all afternoon. I know it’s been a hard year, and people want to enjoy the late Summer sunshine, but by ‘making hay while the Sun shines’ we’ve all made it certain that Winter is going to be hard and f**king horrible.

And still, with the chance to avoid catastrophe hanging in the balance, we are being trusted to govern our own behaviour and make sensible choices for the benefit of all. The scientists have asked us nicely and are forlornly hoping we’ll comply. Which means it’ll all go to shit.

It’s like climate change all over again.

RC 23-9-20

Quite the showman

I spent an hour this morning (while in my office ‘working’, obviously) watching the Radio 2 ‘Live at Home’ concert that is currently available on the BBC Red Button. Tom Jones has never been my favourite artist, but by God that fella has a voice on him. Eighty years old. EIGHTY!!! He should be retired in a tax haven somewhere, having tanned maidens waft him with palm leaves and keeping himself away from Covid, but instead he is jutting and strutting around an enclosed garden somewhere, filming a concert for Radio 2.

Bravo, Sir. I am less than half your age, and can only dream of displaying your enthusiasm and professional when I reach the hallowed age of 80.

RC 22-9-20

Pressies in a third of a year...

Four months from today, it will be the day after my 37^th birthday.

RC 21-9-20

Optimistic? Not this morning I wasn't...

My insomnia attacked me with a new tactic last night – let me have an hour’s sleep at a time, then wake me up for a while, then shut me down again. Normally, if it hits, I have a small sleep, then a long spell awake, then a bit more sleep. This was a new pattern, and it was most unpleasant. I feel like I had three bad nights in one. If you asked me how I felt when I went to bed, I would have said that nothing was worrying me and I was nice and relaxed. By 4.15 this morning I was buying into all the negative news that’s been thrown at me in the last couple of days, anticipating a lockdown worse than the last one, booking a funeral for everyone I know because obviously we’re all going to die before Christmas, and generally feeling lower and lower.

Luckily, Mathew woke up not long after that, and he pulled Daddy up from the floor and gave me a great rest of the day.

RC 20-9-20

Not again...

I realised today that I’ve made exactly the same mistake I did the last time I did a long challenge that involved blog titles – done it in chronological order, so it reads the wrong way round when you look at the list on blogger. That probably doesn’t make sense, but I know what I mean. So when I’ve reached the end of this particular sequence, I have to do the whole thing again, but in reverse…

RC 19-9-20

Makes me wish I was a dustman

I am about to head home, and I am extremely happy to have reached the end of the week.

I was pi**ed off royally on Monday, and the feeling has not subsided a great deal since then; if anything, it’s been amplified. Our Head Office people (the ones who are still there, rather than the stupid ones who buggered off abroad in August and are still having to quarantine at home) seem determined to drive their underappreciated workforce into a suicidal frenzy of despair. Terrible decisions, pointless paperwork, unnecessary changes and incomprehensible strategies are piling up at a rate that would make you laugh if you weren’t being affected by their implementation. One hopes that sensible heads will prevail, but one is not confident in that hope.

Those Above Me were so impressive during the lockdown. I genuinely mean that. We had clear direction, great support and the welfare of their employees was paramount. Now it seems to be sod-em-all, make-a-ton-of-cash, screw-social-distancing-in-case-it-sends-our-customers-to-our-rivals and lets all plan a week in Malta at Christmas.

Thank God I have my family to get home to. I shall post this blog, turn off this computer, and get the Hell away from here until Tuesday at least. My work-at-home Monday ploy has at least been approved, so it’s three days til I’m back in the office.

RC 18-9-20

Love is in the air

I had a strange dream last night in which I was a pilot.

We were flying low over an ocean somewhere, in a small but expensive luxury jet, and after a few minutes I had to go back into the cabin to conduct a wedding ceremony, because I was also an ordained minister.

Maybe this is a great idea for my future. This could be the business venture that makes me. An all-in-one wedding planning and travel agent service – speak to us from the moment you get engaged and we can give you the wedding itself and the honeymoon in one easy, moving, location. Imagine it – your invitations would go out saying ‘join us at Such-and-such Airport for an out-of-this-world ceremony to remember! Watch us tie the knot as we tower above the clouds!’ No more bored children ripping pages out of Bibles, then disrupting the reception by scurrying under the tables. No moving from church to hall, no threat of disaster if it’s raining, and the photos (from the windows) would be incredible.

I’m sure it would be a hit, and I’m sure it would be cheap to get off the ground. How much can a private jet cost?

 

Okay – I just looked it up. A fair sized GulfStream would set you back at least £25million. You can rent a decent jet for about £5k an hour, but then there are stunning insurance costs on top. I want to fly myself, so we’d save on hiring cockpit crew, but the total cost of qualifying as a pilot is anywhere from £40,000 – 100,000, depending on how deep you go and how quickly you pick it up. So we’re looking at a huge outlay upfront, and a need to charge astronomical fees to our customers.

But I still believe its a winner.

 

Now, how do I apply to be on ‘Dragon’s Den’?

RC 16-9-20

Killer material

I am re-reading the Hannibal Lecter books of Thomas Harris, and I had forgotten just how good they are. Disturbing, yes, but brilliantly written, full of well-researched medical and procedural information, and with very little filler or waffle; every line is well-crafted and relevant. Every character is deep, believable (albeit hyper-exaggerated) and interesting.

I got through ‘Red Dragon’ in three sittings and tonight I will start on ‘Silence of the Lambs’.

The real triumph, I think, is in making the ‘bad’ guys so damn likeable. Francis Dolarhyde bites chunks out of people and massacres families, but you still find yourself sympathetic towards him and understanding some of his decisions. Anti-heroes as heroes has become a bit cliché in the 21^st Century – every central TV character seems to have serious underlying mental issues – but when these books were written it was nowhere near as commonplace. Murderers were Evil and needed to be caught or killed. But Thomas Harris’ murderers are intelligent, charming and relatable.

Or maybe that’s just me thinking that, and I should take some kind of online sociopath test to see if I need therapy…

 

Okay – I just took an online test and scored 10%, meaning “you do not have any sociopathic tendencies”. It was a free test on a website with the word ‘health’ in it, it took me 3 minutes to complete it and nearly all the questions had spelling mistakes in, so I’m seeing this as a definitive diagnosis.

I’m fine.

RC 15-9-20

Just about enough

My incompetent Senior Managers are freely displaying their incompetence again. I don’t want to bore us all by going into details, or re-live the pain by talking about it again, but in a country where the government are changing and adapting regulations on a frequent basis, my bosses are about to instigate a plan based on what was happening nearly two months ago. There’s been no consultation with the poor people who will have to go through with all this, just a ridiculously long e-mail, with an even longer document attached, telling us all what is going to happen and that we have to make it happen by October.

Honestly – if I didn’t have a game of CodeNames to look forward to tomorrow, I would resign with immediate effect.

RC 14-9-20

Intense

Ted is planning to overthrow the government. We spoke today and he’s livid. He’d just got used to seeing his family again and now he’s convinced he’ll be a hermit. I tried to explain that nothing too major has happened and that the only real change is that the ‘socialising with six’ guidance is becoming law, but he’s convinced there is a conspiracy to stop him enjoying his family. The fact that none of his children live in a group of more than four, so he will still be able to have a whole family unit round to visit him and Beryl each time, has been lost. So has the fact that he actually HATES having to have a gathering with more than 6 people anyway. He’s complained to me for years about ‘having the whole bloody brood around’ because there isn’t much space and he hates feeling crowded in his own home.

“Bastards want to cut us off completely,” he said. I told him (again) that none of this was aimed at him personally, that the legislation is aimed more at the people who have been having parties, rather than the likes of us who have just been bending the rules a little, and that – to be fair to Mr Johnson & his colleagues – we’re not supposed to have been getting together in groups of more than six anyway. All that changes tomorrow is that it’s now law, rather than guidance, and is therefore enforceable.

Ted was not impressed.

I’m not a huge fan of our current leaders, but it can’t be easy to make a long-term virus plan when a large proportion of Britons are either too thick to understand it, or too stubborn to go along with it. Even when you try to simplify things, people like Ted will be up in arms and planning a coup.

RC 13-9-20

Haiku, of the Friday variety

Lockdown returning?

No – just enforcing the rules

That people ignore

 

Why make such a fuss?

Just pop a mask on in shops

How hard can it be????

 

This week, while drumming

Whacked left knuckle on cymbal

Now swollen and sore

 

Autumn colours show

Blackberries ripen and tempt

Winter on its way

 

Work is a hindrance

I wish I could just get paid

For eating Wispa's

RC 11-9-20

Good grief

Double-figure days in September already? Not going to go on about it – just making an observation.

 

I wrote yesterday’s blog in the morning, but didn’t post it til late afternoon, by which time it had been announced that the virus was spreading again and we need to change the rules about socialising. So my ‘staying on top of it‘ comment probably looked a bit uninformed and silly. Ah, well – not the first time, and I’m sure I’ll cope, and at least the News switched over from Brexit again! (which kind of proved my point).

 

I’m not enjoying the realisation that it’s dark at 8pm. Cycling after tea has become very difficult very quickly. By the time I get in, cuddle the family, have some tea, and let it settle, there’s barely time to get the bike out before it’s night. I might have to ask if I can ‘work from home’ more regularly, so I can have a couple of afternoon trips a week on the Velociped.

 

Mathew has some teeth coming through and is consequently very unhappy. Must be one of the most horrible things we go through in our entire lives and it happens when we’re too young to understand it, and too young to be properly comforted by an explanation from our parents. Poor little chap. I might buy him something nice to chew on as a present. I gave him my finger last night and ended up in more pain than he was….

RC 10-9-20

Four thoughts

If every Autumn day could be like this one, you would hear me moaning less about the weather…

 

I’m really enjoying keeping up with all the US Open tennis action this year. We’re in a new world, and that’s been highlighted by the fact that we reached the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam without Djokovic, Federer and Nadal being in the last eight. AT LAST!! I know it’s not exactly down to defeats – one of them is injured, one didn’t show up, one got disqualified – but it’s still bloody brilliant to have completely different players within touching distance of a Major.

 

I’ve gone on (quite a bit, to be fair) about the British media and the way they’ve behaved during the coronavirus months. Now that the restrictions are lifting and we seem to be staying on top of the spread, they are switching their attentions back to Brexit. Different topic, but the same tactics: scaremongering, exaggeration, doom-saying and gossip. The entire BBC News channel should be re-named “24-Hour ‘What If???’s”

I’m not disappointed that they’re doing this, it’s what they do and we can expect little more, but I am disappointed that the people who fell into their trap of being terrified to open their front door during the lockdown are now falling into their trap of being terrified about a catastrophic exit from Europe. According to the ‘experts’ that have been dragged up by television schedulers we’ll be running out of food in January, and cut adrift from the mainland by torpedo boats and trained sharks. And people are believing them.

Are we just a nation of worriers now, brainwashed into spending every waking second locked in an anxious bubble?

I fear so….

 

My likelihood of having dreams seems to be affected by the time I go to bed, rather than by what I consume during the evening, or whether or not I have a window open. If my head hits the pillow before 11pm, I tend to sleep through unhindered. Drift the wrong side of midnight and I can end up lost in an imaginary weirdscape of my mind’s creation. Last night, I was Boris Johnson’s hairdresser, trying to tame his barnet while he conducted a meeting on a beach.

I have never before woken up feeling so dirty.

RC 9-9-20

Enjoyment, decoded

We had another epic game of CodeNames at work this afternoon. Eight of us – all at the same management level and in all different parts of East Anglia and the South East – indulging in high-stakes online tomfoolery and problem-solving. I don’t care what Head Office’s take on this might be – I think it’s boosting morale among the workforce and greatly improving inter-site interaction which can only serve to increase our productivity as a group as we move forward into an unusual future. I’m amazed it hasn’t been noticed yet, although Those Above Us do tend to take an extraordinarily long time to take their heads out of their arses long enough to acknowledge anything that’s going on around them. But even if they do work out what we’re doing, I don’t see how they can complain. We’re salaried, not paid hourly, and we’ve all put in a ridiculous amount of extra hours over the course of this year. Speaking for myself, I have covered sicknesses amongst my staff, I have taken on extra duties at the store itself, to help the other department managers out over there, and I’ve frequently spent evenings at home keeping up with things via my laptop. Do I get thanks, bonusses, praise or promotion for that? No, I do not, so I think it’s perfectly fine for me and my colleagues to take an extended lunch break once a week, and hook up online for some silly fun, and some fun silliness. It’s team-building, and it’s also utilising parts of our brain that we need for work tasks. We’re not wasting time and energy on a no-brain, neanderthal shoot-em-up or a button-mashing platform sports game, we’re indulging ourselves in a work-it-out, strategy role-play that gives us all a break from our usual office-based mundanity.

So there.

RC 8-9-20

Decision

I’m going to make this Winter about music. Been saying for a couple of weeks that I want to find a new hobby, or at least dedicate more time to ones I’ve started before, and I think this may be the answer.  I have a drumkit, I have a harmonica, I have found a decent keyboard going for a ridiculous price, and I have experience – albeit very minimal - of performing live with a group. I want to get back into all those and get better at them. The best way to do that, as all music teachers and successful musicians would probably tell you, is practice, practice, practice. Put in the work and you’ll see the rewards. The more hours you spend getting on with it, the more improvements you will get.

I know I have a history of starting these little projects and later bailing out of them, but I’ve decided to at least try to stick to this, and to kick-start it, I hereby commit to spending at least some part of every day this month practising one instrument or another. I’m hoping the process of doing something daily for the next three weeks will get me into a good habit and it’ll be easier to keep it going as we head into the horribly dark spell of Winter.

I even have a name for this current ‘Month of Music’:

SepTimbre.

Thank you.

RC 7-9-20

Cirrus, altocumulus, insomnius

Yet another stunning sunset this evening. It’s been quite the week for them. Thursday night may have provided one of the most gorgeous skyscapes I’ve ever seen. I always used to say that August was my favourite month for cloud formations and great skies, but it seems to be creeping later and later each year. That’s climate change for you, I guess.

 

In other news, I lay awake until 2am this morning, for no apparent reason. It was odd. Like a meditative state without the serenity. My mind was completely empty, but I still couldn’t drift off. I wasn’t worried, or excited, or anxious, or anything, I was just numb. Completely parked in neutral.

 

Tonight I am planning to drink some nice red wine and relax into a couple of Gary Oldman films. “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is a nicely-paced and yet engaging thriller that I know well, so I won’t have to pay it much attention and hopefully it will help me dull my senses enough for me to have a pleasant spell in bed. If I’m still awake at 2am again, I’m not going to fight it, I’ll just get up and put on “Darkest Hour”. Might as well fill the time usefully…..

RC 5-9-20

Back to rain

Droplets draining down my windowpane.

Sounds like I’m starting a poem, but no. Just a coincidental rhyme in the opening line of today’s blogpiece.

Late Summer sun has given way to an Autumnal downpour and I feel myself acting as if it’s dark already. On my own in the house, so I have no excuse for boredom. Drums await, as do many online opponents should I decide to fire up the old games console. Yet I find myself staring through the window at the depressing atmosphere outside.

Maybe a strong coffee will help….

 

Yes – that helped. Heading off to the drumming room now. See you later!

RC 2-9-20

A chilly start

I might try and post 26 blogs during the month of September, each beginning with a consecutive letter of the alphabet.

 

Nice and bright here today, but with a distinct Autumnal feel, rather than a late Summer one.

 

It’s always a wee bit depressing when we say goodbye to another calendar month, but in truth I’ve always preferred Sept to Aug. It pains me to wish away Summertime, but August is normally a month that promises so much and normally delivers so little – we hope for bright days at the beach and end up with cold days, cuddling for warmth. September normally bring exactly what you expect – darker evenings, cooler days and a distinct slide towards the Hell of Winter. On the positive side, however, there are gorgeous colours once again as the natural world sheds its Summer skin and proudly displays its Autumn hues, the NFL kicks back into life, and we also get the delights of LESS holidaymakers in the East of England. I hate to sound like one of those people who wants to put up the shutters and keep out non-county-born visitors, but it is nice when litter-leaving families bugger off back to their homeland and we see an older, better class of tourist! Ones who appreciate our countryside, rather than just using it as a playground.

RC 1-9-20