Musings – onetruekev

Obtuse Observations

A few things better off out of my head than in it.

We had gone for our second set of vaccinations, as we get ready for our holiday to Egypt in May. Both Hep B and Rabies require three shots. Most people would be thinking urg, more needles. Meanwhile I’m just sitting there quietly fuming as to why the Rabies shot is going in the left arm and the Hep B in the right. There’s a perfectly good alliteration possibility here that they are missing out on. Surely it should be rabies in right.

Anyway, after jabs it was a Maccy D’s breakfast, and the ticket I got was number 007, licensed to eat shit.

On the way to writing there was a bloke walking a pug through the town centre. It isn’t really a lead he has on the dog, more a blue piece of rope, roughly tied. Nearly as rough as the bloke who is tugging at the dog and muttering at it, “here”, “here”, and then when the dog doesn’t comply, he shouts at it, “are you fucking deaf?” Not sure the bloke is really cut out to be a dog owner.

In writing there was a bit of talk about having done a poem without any e’s in it. There was me thinking that on the whole it’s best to avoid any kind of drugs with poetry, only to realise they meant the letter e.

Helen mentioned to me that Firefox have now removed a line from their terms and conditions, with the line in question being “we will not sell your data”. That isn’t to say they will, just that they don’t promise not to anymore. That got me thinking about what other browsers’ policies might be. I’m fairly sure that Chrome’s would include the line, “Ha ha, we’ve already sold your data” and that for Edge it is likely to include the line, “We will sell your data, just as soon as we can find out exactly what the fuck co-pilot has done with it.”

She is therefore using Duck Duck Go as a browser, as they promise not to sell your data, so if they do end up selling it that may well have to change their name to Quack Quack Oops.

Everywhere online now seems to have some kind of pop-up box which is (ironically) advertising “Go Ad Free”. I don’t know how many thousands of times I’ve seen this but only realised (because of the font and spacing on one) that it reads as Goad Free, which I find totally appropriate, as a lack of adverts would in fact be goad free.

The Friday before last the decision had been made to take Sniffles for a final one-way journey to the vets. Nineteen isn’t a bad innings for a cat, and he had been struggling with motion for a while, and the silenzia injections weren’t lasting as long. A tough decision but the right one it was felt. He had survived quite a bit longer than the other two pets in situ when I moved in. Mainly because he was of sound mind enough not to lick me as the other two had. But he had picked up character traits from the other two once they had departed. From his sister Willow he had suddenly got a voice where he could be heard mewling out in the street, you’d go to open the door to let him in and he’s still half a dozen doors down the road (well, it made a change from lying in the road cleaning himself). And when the doggie dustbin Charlie went, Sniffles took over as the investigator of any food on any plate, have a sniff, have a lick, chew a bit, if left unsupervised.

It is odd as you think you can hear him mewling, even though he is no longer here, and you expect him to be curled up as a ball of fur on the fur throw on the settee, opening one eye like a feline Smaug, waiting for the opportunity to spring into action if you looked like you were going to settle down in comfort for the evening.

Today was the day to go and pick his remains up from the vets. They are very solemn about it all, and then they give you the bag. It looks like it should contain a very expensive high-end present, a posh gift bag. Not a cat’s ashes. In the bag there is a box, in the box there is a circular container with floral designs on the outside. It looks as if it should be in a cosmetics gift set, as if it may contain a diffuser and some reeds. And now we have a matching pair.

I was supposed to have had laser eye surgery last Friday – the letter wasn’t clear exactly what they were going to do, so I live in hope they were fitting a laser in one of my eyes – the same morning as the car was in for a service. We’re chivvying them along with the post service cleaning so we can make the appointment, only for the hospital to ring and say they are having technical difficulties and won’t be able to do the laser, less than an hour before it was due to start. We’ll wait and see how long they take to rearrange that.

Elsewhere, the camera club has six competitions a year which are judged by an external judge, I’ve not had the motivation to enter the first five but was just about motivated enough to put some images in for the final projected digital image competition. I’ve opted to be in group B, which is basically the beginners group, and so there is gentle critique and a top three picked, but they are not marked as group A are. And it was a pleasant surprise to get second and third place images in my group.

I also managed to get out and get some images printed and mounted. I used the G-Store in County Mall, as one of the others in the group had tipped me off about it. The print is done; the mounting card is all cut and the print mounted in it for me. Which is a good thing as the preferred method of mounting for club competitions is one of those things that look easy to do until some cack handed Clouseau gets anywhere near it, and the supposed central rectangular cut ends up looking like Dali on crack cut it out and stuck something to it. And the price is about the same as me getting the photo printed elsewhere, and the cost of the mounting card, and there are no wasting mounting cards because I’m not the one cutting them to pieces. Two of them are going to be on display at Ifield Barn Theatre from the 27^th of April, and then they will be joined by a third one to be on display at Crawley Museum from some time in August.

I’ve been painting some doors at home. Four doors have had two coats of paint, and one of them has had the first coat on the other side of it. So nine doors painted and so far, I haven’t managed to paint any floors, carpets, ceilings, walls, clothes, or myself. There are three more coats to do (two on one side of a door, and the second coat on the one already started on), but we need more paint.

Two of the doors were already in situ, but two are newly fitted. We have also had two other new doors downstairs. They have panes of glass in them. Both sides of which were coated with thin protective sticky plastic sheeting. I’m not sure how they manage to manufacture them to put the glass in, but the plastic sheeting goes into the wood of the joins, so all the glass pains have little bits of plastic sticking out of the wood all the way around them and we are at a loss of how to get them out without damaging the glass or the wood of the doors. Knives will tend to leave score marks on the glass, and heat may scorch the wood. Arse. I’ve survived the second week back at work on reduced hours. It’s difficult to focus or get into stuff like I did before I went off, and I look at some things which were second nature before, read through what needs doing and have an involuntary shiver and the word bargepole springs to mind. It feels as if I’m not being much use. At least the team are supportive though.

The Struggle

It is a struggle, despite it being blatantly work which tipped me over the edge, there is a part of me which misses that daily grind and the order it brings to days. I’ve been desperately trying to be up at a reasonable time each day. On the whole I have. There aren’t many days upon which it is after ten before I emerge grom the pit as some kind of poorly dressed monster, grunting, and snorting.

There are days I have appointments, so there is something to tether the day on. But time is such an elastic thing. Five minutes on the computer and five hours have gone by. Trivial pursuits (not the board game) are followed down whichever rabbit hole they lead to. Yet important tasks are forever on the back burner as if I am deliberately trying to sabotage myself.

Things such as sorting out cards and presents for birthdays, Valentine’s day, Mother’s Day, doing my required content for the matchday programmes, all of these are left far too late and the anxiety around being on time kicks in. sorting out tickets and travel for events are left until the tickets may be sold out, or all the cheaper options have disappeared into the ether.

There is a lot of cataloguing going on. Sorting has been done at home, but this only leads to knowing what to look for on eBay that I haven’t got, or which things it is going to be nice to pick up in shops along the wandering way.

I do get outside every day. Not as I originally thought (and planned) I would, apart from a couple of odd occasions (a random bus journey to Caterham for example). It is a very similar and formulaic wander each day. A visit to the shops on Southgate parade, a wander into town. I’m sure all of my footwear could make the trek along Malthouse Road, over the train tracks and through the bus station all by themselves.

It used to be once a week if that, now it is pretty much every day. TG Jones, Waterstones, HMV, nothing changes on a day-to-day basis. Which coffee place shall I use today (not Costa or Starbucks is the only definite there). Is it a takeaway coffee or is there a seat I can take and watch people go by from. Perhaps something to nibble on. And then into the charity shops. How long is it since I last went into British Heart Foundation, or Oxfam, or St Catherines. Do a different one each time, give them a chance to rotate what stock they have in there, but it doesn’t move as quickly as I want it to. Some are closing, four have gone over the last couple of years, with only new one in to replace them. Even the charity shops are dying on the High Street.

It is all petty distractions. I’m not really doing anything with my time. My thoughts (on the whole) are too fragmented to write. The photographs I was going to take are a difficult concept to complete when I don’t even take my camera with me when I do deign to leave the house.

To paraphrase Pulp, “I often go into a supermarket, I don’t need much but I have to go somewhere.” To pass the time as somehow outside the house and away from the computer it flows the other way, a four hour walk only takes one before I find a slightly different way to approach the house on the homeward leg.

An aside. That is a strange little foible inside my head. I can’t use the same paths to go a different way on the same day. Even if it means I just walk on the other side of the road, I can’t be seen (in my head) to be retracing my steps at all. It is just more strange behaviour.

Then there is the football which seems to operate me in a different sphere. I travel the length and breadth of the country, but on those travels, a lot of which have been alone, I rarely speak to anyone else when there. The thought I might have to terrifies me. It is all me not being right in the head. The people who speak to me at games are all lovely, but I struggle to remember their names, let alone much about them. And I am always questioning myself on how long I can go before I make an excuse to escape back to myself without being obviously and inexcusably rude.

It is why I get to the games so early, so I am less likely to bump into people as I travel, and I will already be positioned before others turn up. And I can watch the game scribbling away in the notebook ready to type up the moment I am home.

Work will have to return, and despite the lack of order, part of me obviously feels the thought of returning fills me with dread.

I would love to be back to normal, only for me to realise that at the moment I don’t have a clue what normal is anymore.

A postscript, as I’ve taken so long between writing this and posting it, I’m now back at work on a phased return. The first three short days weren’t quite as horrendous as I was expecting them to be, but mainly because my manager and the rest of the team are supportive and it’s a ghost return as the out of office is still on.

I should have had laser eye surgery yesterday, which I wasn’t looking forward to. Only for them to ring and cancel less than an hour before, a good job I wasn’t going on the bus as I’d have been there by then.

Soporific September Scribblings

Besides the fact that nobody knows how to drive, the main thing I notice when tootling up and down the A23 between Crawley and Hove is just how many vans, trucks, and lorries there are with the high vis striping on the back of them, and the infamous words ‘Highway Maintenance’. They are everywhere, always moving, going somewhere. But the question is where? Whenever you pass large sections of roads on ‘major’ roadworks, they are never to be seen there doing something, all that can be seen are tons of cones. And every minor road you travel down, from windy country lanes to speed bump afflicted side streets are full of holes. So the next question is, just what the fuck are all these highway maintenance vehicles doing, and where ethe fuck are they all going to at all times of the day and night, because there is absolutely no evidence of them doing any maintaining of any highways, all they do is drive around badly, being fucking menaces on the highways.

When I do make it to work it seems we are plagued by fuckwits in their four rings of the apocalypse cars who think that no entry signs don’t apply to them, and one-way systems are only advisory.

Inside the building, which becomes a more soul sucking shithole every day I am there, it is just a case of being plagued by more morons. Those who think banana skins and wet paper towels are recyclable, but somehow cardboard boxes are general rubbish. And the ones who have spoilt little shit syndrome who just dump their mugs in the sink for someone else to deal with. This despite the fact there is a dishwasher available to load up, or if full that the thirty seconds it might take to clean up after themselves will cause them to have a fucking aneurism.

And every day I’m in the office I become more convinced that the much-heralded revamp of the office space was actually designed by a drunken toddler using a buggy version of AutoCAD 95. The obvious routes to well used places, such as the kitchen or toilets are blocked by randomly position pieces of office furniture laid out at jaunty angles in a desperate bid to seem cool. Only for there to be wide open spaces in areas where no one would ever walk through and are totally unused. They’ve tried to be trendy and ended up with the worst of all worlds, making it difficult for staff to get from a to b without having to invade others personal space to get past the miniscule gap between desks.

On Saturday morning when I opened the curtains it was bright sunshine, yet an hour later by the time I’m walking there it is throwing it down with rain. Which as I sat in my usual window seat in Maccy D’s watching the world go by having my breakfast there is very little world to watch going by. It would seem anyone with any sense is hiding from the rain, which judging by the soaked appearance of my rucksack would be the right thing to do. At least the new raincoat works well though.

It is mornings like this upon which I really miss Debenhams being open. Not because I’d want to buy anything (although a browse through the Mantaray stuff might happen), no but because it meant I could get most of the way from Maccy Ds to the library without getting soaked.

There are always a couple of old guys in the library early on a Saturday morning on the computes. I’ve never realised what rude cunts they were until this morning. Shouting at a librarian because the West Sussex Times wasn’t in its place on the papers’ carousel. When they did find a copy for the bloke it was the previous week’s copy. When it was found by the librarian the bloke snatched it off her without a word of thanks, had it for thirty seconds at the computer and then went back to the desk and threw it across at her.

I wonder as I write these notes how long it will be before I get around to typing up publishing this. I have a few pieces dating from July and August which may well have been typed up now, but still haven’t been published, and I’ve got pages of stuff which needs typing up.

That seems to be part of a much wider malaise. The only thing that gets done at the moment is anything to do with the football such as match reports, they are usually written, typed up and published within a couple of hours. The football appears to be my main current obsession at the moment. Enthusiasm for anything else in life is next to nothing. I’m not really writing anything else. I’m going through the motions where camera club is concerned. I don’t really want to go anywhere or do anything and I’m forcing myself to do things just to stop me curling up into a ball and atrophying. I’m sure I’m probably driving Helen around the bend with the apathy.

I’ve got my next (and last scheduled) set of eye injections on Monday, but it seems as if I can’t help sabotaging myself. The absolute sugar free route has slipped, bread items are regular, and calorie control is a bit lacking. I know it’s not helping with anything, but it is like I can’t stop shooting myself in the feet. Just such a twat.

Random thoughts. I heard someone going on about being a ninja master. Not long ago that would have been a Japanese martial arts specialist, yet nowadays it’s more likely to be some muppet who thinks they’re a bit useful with a fucking air fryer.

On the train there is an announcement ‘if you have got bags on seats, please take them off,’ and I now have visions of some old Yorkshire bloke turning and saying to his missis, “you best get up then love.”

The train filled up massively at Kettering as if there was some mass migration going on. I never thought Kettering was that bad to be honest.

It always seems there is a large group of twenty-something blokes on any Friday train journey, off to get pissed somewhere and they’ve started on the cans already. They’ve always full of shite, talking bollocks, but why do they always all seem to have identikit black Helly Hansen duffel bags?

The woman making the announcements has the air of someone who’s never used a microphone before in their life, veering between ear splitting screeches and whispers, and speech more stilted than a Caribbean resort’s beach huts.

On the way back it shows how much I’m on the edge of losing it all the time, going ballistic at people getting onto the train before we’d had a chance to get off, shouting and screaming and swearing at them. It’s deeply ironic just how angrily impolite I get about moaning at others for being impolite.

It’s only taken just over a week since I started writing this before it goes to print. Best to do it before there is an all-day work team meeting.

I failed, and that was as horrific as expected, I don’t think I can deal with people anymore, it’s too overwhelming, and certainly in the morning session it was all I could do not to burst into tears. Lunch was mainly sandwiches, which in my current frame of mind wasn’t going to do me any favours, far too many of them eaten, but they made the afternoon more bearable, but that doesn’t stop me being a twat for eating so many.

Even More May Mutterings

There are hundreds of dreadful pothole pocked roads in Crawley that desperately need resurfacing. I walk down Malthouse Road a couple of times a week, and drive down it often enough, and in doing so I doubt I would rank Malthouse Road in the top thousand of roads in Crawley which need resurfacing. So, although it was a surprise to me, perhaps it shouldn’t have been that there were workers out there resurfacing the whole of it. the crew were in full flow there this morning. They had already done the part between Brighton Road and Brewer Road and were working on the first side of the stretch down from Brewer Road to East Park. It was fascinating watching them do it. All the drains, and the other metal coverings embedded in the road were covered up with what looked to be just massive strips of duct tape. And the machine laying the black surface was going at a fair clip with three blokes with smoothing brooms walking behind it. They were halfway along that side as I walked into town, and when I came back the other way, they had got that side completely done, and the other side had had its first coat. It is also bin day, so one of the road workers was running up the road shouting and swearing at the bin lorry driver to get onto the finished side of the road. Although you do have to wonder about the joined-up thinking of doing the resurfacing on bin day.

I do have some random things go through my head, and I’m never sure why I suddenly think of them. I don’t know what triggered the next nugget, whether I heard someone say the word or saw it written. But according to my brain the secret of comedy is all about the combination of smart neckwear and vases made during Chinese dynasties. Yes tie-ming.

Whilst I was having breakfast, sat in my favourite window seat in Maccy D’s, my gast was well and truly flabbered. I saw a sight rarer than rocking horse shit. There was someone on the pavement outside with a bicycle, but they weren’t riding it, they were walking along the pavement pushing it. I had to do a double take to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. And then I did a treble take as I realised that the person pushing the bicycle was someone I knew and who was also on their way to this morning’s writing group.

When I got to the museum there was a decent number of people waiting for it to be opened, and there was a conversation taking place about the large horse chestnut tree to the side of the museum. And my random brain kicked in again, and I wonder whether there are smaller versions of the tree, and if so then are they called donkey chestnuts or pony chestnuts?

It the group, as usual my concentration was drifting, but I did hear the mention of the word dragonfly. Which reminded me of something I missed from Friday. We had stopped to have a drink outside a café at the end of East Street in Horsham, and a pair of coupled dragonflies had settled on the edge of the table. When we put our drinks down the took off still joined (I would say at the hip but I’m not sure about the physiology of dragonflies). Only for them to settle on my forehead and carry on where they hadn’t left off before. I kept my head still long enough for Helen to get a couple of photographs of the copulating couple on my head before I moved my head and they departed and flew off somewhere to finish the job in peace.

More May Mutterings

I was having one of those days. It would appear I had forgotten how to eat. First of all, when having some toast in the office, I half coughed, half sneezed and somehow ended up with a small lump of toast stuck in the recesses of my nasal passage. Which irritated the hell out of my nose and made it run like a tap, but no amount of blowing or sniffing would dislodge the piece I knew was in there somewhere. It was half an hour before an especially big blow forced it out and into the tissue.

I suppose that should have been a hint and a half to stay away from bread, but on the way to writing I had intended to get a Maccy D’s, but it was chaos in there, so I got a sandwich from the Asda convenience store next to it. A plain cheese one on white bread, only for my first bite to not only get the sandwich, but also take a chunk out of my lip. Which meant I then proceeded to leave little red marks on the white bread with each subsequent bite I took as the blood seeped out of my lip.

On the way to writing I had a touch of vertigo and nearly careered off the road. The exit from the A27 at Shoreham down to the A283 is an interesting long loop down. I wasn’t going that fast, but I caught a glimpse of the drop down from the side and my head went funny and I had to slam the brakes on in a panic as I felt I was going to go sailing off the side.

It is my own fault for going that way. Every time I go to Horsham straight from work for writing group, I vow to myself I’m going to go the other way so as to not have to drive the damn A283, with its cyclists, tailgaters, and general fuckwittery. And every time I find myself coming down that loop and swearing at myself.

On the A24 after getting the sandwich I come out at the junction with the A272 and to go north there is a slip road for about quarter of a mile to allow you to get up to speed to get into the traffic. But can anyone else use the bloody thing? No, of course not, the SUV in front of me stopped blocking the entrance to the slip road as it waited for a gap in the traffic to get across into the lanes of the A24, and once it edged out, I went up the slip road, undertaking it and leaving it far behind. Learn to read the fucking road.

I was back in Horsham on the Friday as well and whilst in Deichmann I overheard someone say, “I couldn’t live without my Uggs”. I looked up and they were wearing a Packers (Rodgers) jersey. And thought to myself ‘that explains it all.’

In Ask I overheard another conversation where a woman asked what is Calamari? Her partner obviously didn’t know and Googled it and then read the search result entry out to her. I looked around expecting it to be youngsters, but no, it was a couple in their seventies. How does anyone get to being in their seventies and not have heard of, or know what Calamari is?

On the Saturday, the next-door neighbours were having an FA Cup final get together, and I’d agreed to put a quiz together. The teams ended up being males against females, and in a reversal of fortune not seen since Greg Norman’s collapse at the 1996 Masters to gift the victory to Nick Faldo, the males lost a five point lead going into the final round to lose by three points as they were clueless on FA Cup final songs, whereas the females listened to the lyrics (which gave massive clues) and had been paying attention to the answers from previous rounds.

It was good that there was a new winner of the FA Cup, and that Manchester City didn’t win a thing this year, even if they might have been a bit hard done by with the VAR decision on the handball outside the box. Though if I were a Manchester City fan, I would be laying the blame squarely at the feet of Puma. As I noted at the Charity Shield back in August, using comic sans as a font on the back of a football shirt for numbers and names is not a great look, and their season has been quite comic (at least from the view of a great many other teams’ fans).

Nipping to the local shop on Monday I saw the driver of a Red Bull van. Their saying is ‘Red Bull gives you wings’, but judging by the demeanour and gait of the driver of the van, it looked more like they were giving him chronic back pain and a bout of depression.

I was looking at a cardboard box dumped next to the recycling bin outside the house, fascinated by the big label with NAFOON written on it. It took a dozen passes before I realised that it would have been a parcel for Helen’s son, and that the name had obviously been taken over the phone and that was how they thought that was how you spell Nathan.

April Assorted Anecdotes

The sun brings them all out. Fortunate weather for a school holiday. The café’s tables usually sparsely occupied are all filled. People stopping for refreshment, to sit and bask in the sun. the fountains gurgle away happily, the sound of their upwardly expelled water crashing back down onto the concrete slabs is accompanied by the little squeals of joy or excitement from the small children playing among the jets. Short sleeves on the whole are the order of the day and eager men, women, and children take the opportunity to get their legs out on display. Baggy three quarter length, tailored just above the knee, or short short and tight tight hot pants, the whole gamut is here. The sun’s rays are reflected off the chrome and glass of the modern buildings surrounding the square. And there are smaller glints, flashing motion, rebounding off the plethora of sunglasses worn. The pace seems slower, the quick head down scurry of the winter months has gone. It is more a casual stroll, head up as if to enjoy the sun, or for them to pose and show themselves off now they no longer have umpteen layers to protect themselves from the cold and rain. And there are smiles on faces as if the warmth has caused the edges of mouths to curl up instead of pointing down. There is chat, there is energy, but it is relaxed. It is a surprise how little of the masses of flesh on display is milk bottle white. The tanning salons of the town must have been busy over the shorter days and longer nights.

No watching the world go by as I had breakfast on Saturday morning before going away. I wasn’t in any rush and was happy to let a couple of undecided people go in front of me at Maccy D’s, and all the window seats were free. Big mistake, those I let in front of me took all of those window seats. Although the watching isn’t as interesting now that the market stalls have moved from their spots in front of Maccy D’s to their new home of Queensway. Though having walked past their new location since the move a couple of times, they do look better over there.

Inside Maccy D’s none of the usual Saturday morning crew were on, which means it’s the usual piss poor attention to detail. The first words on any order ticket are ‘eat in’ or ‘take out.’ I always select eat in, the sticker attached to the order says eat in, but they dump it all in a bag for take-out, and when I said I ordered it as eat in all I get is a gormless expression of a teenage zombie. It is always the same when there isn’t at least one of the two regular full timers working there.

And they are making a pigs ear of the Just Eats / Deliveroo / Uber Eats collections as well, but as I’m sure I’ve mentioned lots of times before, anyone who uses those companies to get Maccy D’s breakfast deserve all they get. Cold congealed food.

I’m having a coffee with breakfast and as always, I wonder why (apart from misplaced snobbery) anyone would pay two quid more to get a coffee from Costa (especially one of their random convenience store machines where it’s not even being made by a barista) or Starbucks.

Speaking of the latter, now that Amazon Prime foists adverts on us, we have seen the terrible Starbucks start of day advert more times than any sane person would ever need to. The advert is of course made far worse by the fact that AC/DC have lost their collective minds and licensed their music for the soulless corporate coffee smucks to use. If only Starbucks could be thunderstruck, lightning struck, earthquake struck, tornado struck, flood struck, any kind really just as long as they are struck off (the rhyming implication is deliberate).

On Good Friday I’d gone to Birmingham to watch the football. It’s well known that I’m not a fan of the city, the routes there and back were strange because its Easter weekend and there are engineering works going on all over the shop. On the way there I went via Leicester (no time to have a wander around there though), and into New Street. Which is one of the reasons I have a deep-seated hatred of the city, down at platform level it is the place where the seals between worlds will break, and the demons will pour out from platform nine. Fortunately, I arrived at platform ten. Upstairs they have improved it massively. On the way home the train was from Moor Street to Marylebone. What a difference. Only five platforms, but the whole station is above ground and looks like it belongs to a bygone area and wouldn’t be out of place on a heritage railway. I know that New Street is where all the through lines go, but when terminating in Birmingham why can’t they all terminate at Moor Street. I’m sure that if that had been the case when I was younger then the city wouldn’t seem so horrific to go to now.

March Mutterings

I may be getting sensitive due to having all the eye injections over the last six months, but I do find myself wondering more and more whether my eye and brain connect the same way as they used to, and as they should. On the train I glanced up at one of the posters in the clipboards on the train and automatically thought it said, “A little blindness goes a long way”. Which is a very strange thing to be advertising. I immediately thought, are they trying to take the piss? Are they trying to say that blind people end up travelling further because they can’t see when the train is at the station they need to get off at? Only for it to click on about the fourth or fifth glance up at the poster that it didn’t say ‘blindness’, but the word was actually ‘kindness’, which makes a lot more sense. But I’m still left with the quandary of, is it my eyes or is it my brain that is fucking with me now? Spookily, I wrote that in my notebook on Saturday afternoon. I started to type it up on Monday, and I had only completed as far as saying eye injections when my phone rang. It was East Surrey hospital, saying that looking at the scans from last month they want to arrange further, urgent, eye injections for my right eye, and could they book me in for later in the week. It would therefore appear to be my eyes which probably have the issue.

Anyway, up in London on Saturday and we have arranged to meet in a pub called the Earl of Essex, which we followed up by going in one a hundred yards along the road called the Duke of Cambridge, as if we were doing a tour of East Anglian lorded gentry before heading for dinner in the Tamil Crown. And all on a day when we had been to the football playing against a side nicknamed ‘the Royals’. So of course, after having eaten the post food pub would be called the Island Queen. But only one of the group was heading on home via King’s Cross.

I did an author talk on Sunday. Even writing that still doesn’t feel right. It is difficult to label myself as an author, even if I do have three books published. I had been asked to do a talk on life writing and self-publishing. For a change I had done some preparation. I had put a slide pack together and written up extensive notes a long time before the day. The problem is, between writing them and the event I hadn’t really looked at them, and was then internally flapping about how I would cope with getting the words out and making it sound as if I knew what I was doing. Lots of dread and nerves. But it was fine. Nobody left during the session. People laughed. In the right places. And there were relevant questions. I even sold a couple of books. And the time flew past. Whether I’d do another one is debatable. We’ll see.

After more than four months having camera club meetings via Zoom, we are back in the huts in Tilgate Park, which to me is a blessed relief. I don’t care if it is cold, or if there is rain. It is a good twenty minute walk each way, well twenty there and about nineteen back. it may seem strange for someone who doesn’t do social activity very well, but I fucking hate Zoom, as who wants to be on conference calls in the evening when I’ve spent most of the day on calls at work. People are sat in the huts in their coats, some hats, some gloves, but it is real life and not a little screen. And as it is prints competition night, there is a need to have the physical items there in person. (Came in the middle of the entrants, three of my four photos were middle shelf, so reasonably happy with that.)

Then it was another night, something else to do. It has been one of those fortnights, Previous Monday was camera club on Zoom, Tuesday Mother Tongue, Wednesday camera club in the huts, Thursday, a writing group, Friday, wilding talk at Ifield Barn, Saturday was a writing group, football, then up to London for Helen’s birthday meal, Sunday I was presenting a session on life writing and self-publishing, Monday fantasy author’s panel, Tuesday football, Wednesday camera club, Thursday crime writers panel, Friday book club / romance authors panel. So roll on Saturday and a break.

Well, I say that. I’m well known for DIY standing for destroy it yourself. As a child my nickname (from my parents) was Clouseau. But there was a success on Saturday. The old blinds in the living room have been up there longer than I’ve lived in the house. There has been a new set of venetian blinds sat in the storage cupboard at the front of the house for at least three years waiting to be put up. Mainly because I’m scared of making my usual monumental mess, this time of the walls around the window and / or the new blinds. Taking the old blinds off was interesting, they hadn’t been screwed into the walls or the lintel above the window space, no, they had been screwed into the pvc frame of the double-glazed windows themselves (and I thought I was a fuckwit at DIY). But we managed to get them down, drill holes into the walls for twelve plasplugs and they all worked, a wooden block was added to mean the blinds would fit snugly and then installed the blinds. More than twenty-four hours later they are still in place, and working as expected, which means they are doing a hell of a sight better than the fold down desk I attempted to put into the spare room which fell off the wall on its first use.

Sometimes you’re not sure how things are going to be for any given weekend. But it is harder and harder to just wing it and go to away games of football. Despite following a League One side which never sells out its allocation of tickets, a lot of clubs refuse to sell to the away fans on the day at the ground, which means you have to plan ahead by at least one day, if not two because you have to go to the club to get a ticket, and the cut off is usually 3pm on the Friday, sometimes the Thursday, which takes the last minute decision making off the table. Add the ridiculous on the day train fares, and it could be expensive. I was looking out of idle interest at what it would be to get to Huddersfield and for just me a return was £166, reduced to £119 via ticket splitter, but would have been another forty quid less if booked a week before. It is a lot for an impulse decision to go. It turned out it was probably a blessing not going as it ended up being a 5-1 walloping, which would have definitely put a damper on the day out.

I Wonder Why

I wonder why.

About many things really.

Following on from my previous witterings, why, after a few days of not much activity with the digging up of the pavement, was there suddenly a flurry of activity on a Sunday afternoon to work on filling it in? Is it just the cynic in me thinking that the only likely reason would be because it is a Sunday, the people doing the work would be able to claim double time overtime for it instead of the standard wage for doing it during the week?

Am I as bad at not being self-aware as some other people are? I don’t think my work at anything is brilliant, but at the same time I don’t think it is shockingly awful, but some people make me cringe as they struggle through what I think is really poor stuff, yet they are under the impression Shakespeare has nothing on them.

Why does the cat automatically gravitate to the most awkward or inappropriate place to settle down and pretend to be comfortable. Surely wrapping itself up in amongst all the leads from the computer can’t be comfortable.

Do companies do it on purpose? Do they wait until you are at the point where you are going to give up on them, on their services, on their website, on their app, in their queue, and at the point you are turning round, logging off, hanging up, they are suddenly working, and up in your face, effectively shouting, look at us, we are here, how can we help? Just as the writing group are getting ready to leave Lloyds Bank due to them introducing charges for their community account, they have finally given me a working online log on for them. Only twenty-one months after the account was opened and it was requested from them.

Why is it that the moment you are not around is the exact moment people turn up to do what it is you have been waiting for them to do. It doesn’t matter if you have been waiting minutes, hours, days, or weeks. The moment you let your guard down and go off to do something else will be the time they will be there to do it and they will be moaning because you’ve had the audacity to go and do something else because you got sick of waiting for them.

Was I always this irascible? Or have I used up what my lifetime quota of patience was. Is it natural for everyone and everything to annoy me? Should it be such a struggle for me not to want to scream at people to shut the fuck up or for them to stop being so deliberately stupid. I’m sure life in general used to be more fun than this. Finally, was work always such a crock of shit. On my way back to work (after a less than wonderful writing group session), I found myself desperately disappointed that in the couple of hours I was away that, I hadn’t come into a sudden fortune which would mean never working again, or that the world hadn’t ended. The most worrying thing being that where work is concerned, I don’t appear to be overly bothered which end of the spectrum it is, as long as it means no more work.

January Witterings

There is an everlasting lack of coordination when it comes to digging up roads and pavements. Or so it would seem. I make an almost daily trek up from my house to the parade of shops nearby. It isn’t very far to go, but if working at home it does mean an outside venture at least once a day. The row of shops is much in demand and the parking spaces there are often full (especially bearing in mind it is also the parking for the flats above the shops). And people are more impatient now, and often don’t give a shit where they park their enormous beasts of cars. Quite often the open space on the corner of Wakehurst Drive and Southgate Drive will have at least one gigantic SUV abandoned there. Normally some tosser in the typically arrogant collection of high-end German cars. You know the types, BMW, Audi, Mercedes Benz. If you are in a wheelchair or having to steer a pushchair or pram around, they make it difficult. And it would appear all this abandonment adds up to damage the paving slabs there. Just before Christmas someone had been round inspecting the slabs and had spraypainted marks on a number that needed replacing / relaying. On Monday they were all replaced with fresh black tarmac. Two days later I go to the shops at lunchtime, and that new tarmac, and quite an area around it was all dug up and piled up as UKPN conducted planned work. Note. Planned works. So if they were planned, what the fuck were the council doing putting in fresh tarmac in the area being dug up just two days before it was dug up? And they moan about budget constraints. I think it would benefit us all if they spent a bit of the budget on learning how to read. And plan. Or how to read plans even. It really can’t be that difficult, can it?

From there it was off to hospital again, and the journey gave lots of examples of where some of that – now wasted – tarmac could have been put to better use. There are some potholes on the way to East Surrey hospital which would put the Grand Canyon to shame.

It’s strange that at quarter past four, they are only running five minutes late on appointments. Seeing (pun intended) as when I went in December and was the first scheduled appointment in the morning, they were running fifty minutes late. Both eyeballs injected again. The right one feels it more, and the pools of liquid moving around in the eyes is a weird sensation for hours afterwards. I was glad I’m not allowed to drive afterwards, as the journey back was during the heaviest of the local snow flurries. It did make our minds up about the possibility of going into the office on Thursday. Not happening.

With the now on roofs from overnight, and a heavy frost earlier in the week, the seat at the kitchen table when working at home gives a view out over the backs of houses on Malthouse Road. I can see the backs of three pairs of semi-detached houses. And on all three pairs it is easy to see that the one to the left as I look at them is well insulated, and the ones to the right aren’t. The snow and ice stays on he left hand ones well into the afternoon, but is gone by nine in the morning on the right-hand ones. If you were selling insulation, these kinds of days would be great for trying to suss out new business.

Just before Christmas one of the many, many, many food purchases was a box of dates. On the top of the box it says Dates From Jordan. And every time I pass the box, I have the same insanity running through my mind. That it should read Dates With Jordan, and be the ultimate in car crash (quite often literally) reality TV shows.

More November Musings

Lloyds Bank are muppets. As it would appear most banks are. I’m the treasurer of the Crawley Writers Circle. We took ages to get a bank account opened, and even when we did, they took ages to get a card to me for me to be able to use the online account facilities. I only got one about four weeks ago. Only for less than a fortnight later then to send a letter to say that from the 15^th of January next year, they will no longer be allowing clubs and societies accounts free banking. No, just for holding an account they are going to charge £4.25 per month, and then charge 0.8% fees on any incoming or outgoing transaction. Before the ins and outs that is fifty-one quid a year. For an account that at the end of the CWC’s last accounted year had less than one hundred quid in it, so they want half of the account just for fees. Needless to say we will be looking elsewhere, although the options aren’t massive. Two banks who are open to all, and three who allow clubs and societies accounts, as long as one of the signatories already bank with them. That’s all who don’t charge. That number will probably shrink, so changing accounts may become an annual event.

I had an interesting chat with the doctor at my eye appointment las Friday. It would seem the injections I have been having into my right eyeball are working and the condition in the back of them is improving. All of the eye drops, scans, photos, and general prodding show my right eye is getting better. My left eye meanwhile has got slightly worse. The reasoning behind why that may be the case is surprising. The fact that my blood sugar has been reducing a lot during the year can cause the macular oedema to worsen as the blood vessels adjust to the lower blood sugar before they calm down again. There was a fair bit of fence sitting by the doctor when pressed on whether I should start having injections in my left eye to help that one along. Yes, it would help, but we can’t advise as there are the potential side effects. Yeah, the same ones I’ve already agreed to for the right eye. It took a lot of pointed questions before they would even give a yes or no answer into whether injections would help the left eye. When they finally relented and said it would then I’ve agreed to have the course of injections for the left eye as well. It would appear it would be easier to get blood out of a stone rather than to get a straight answer about helping the blood vessels in the back of my eyes to calm the fuck down.

Whilst in Horsham hospital waiting in the disorganised queue for my appointment, I was looking around and looked at my shoulder bag. Tie fighter are the words in largest print on the bag. And I was thinking it seems a strange thing to have a fight with. What did the tie do to offend you in the first place? Was it the wrong king of knot? Did the bow not bow to your will? Seriously, who fights with inanimate objects? It’s just stupid.

The night before I was at my Horsham writing group (a lot of Horsham visits this month). There was an exercise run getting people to write about Christmas. Which is not a subject I am happy to write about. It would appear that any kind of Christmas spirit I may have had relied on me having copious amounts of spirits at Christmas. Seriously, being drunk was the only way to be able to deal with all the faux jollity. They say it’s a time to spend with your family. Why? You can see those fuckers any time of the year. Don’t let them come over and interrupt a few days of work when you can spend the time relaxing instead of having to put up with all the family bullshit. Being teetotal nowadays I can’t even mainline rum and port to block this shit out. And don’t get me started on the food. What’s the big deal about turkey? It’s like a chicken on steroids only not very tasty and dry as fuck. And I’m not a fan of roasts anyway. Curry for Christmas dinner was one of the high spots of living in Manchester. No need for seventeen different types of vegetable. No sugar anymore means the nice stuff is off the menu for me. No mince pies, no Christmas pudding, so what is the point? Roll on Boxing Day when all the fuckers piss off back to whence they came, and we can go to the football and watch even more stuffing balls.

It would appear there is no such thing as a quick nip into town. Leaving the house just after ten in the morning, and it nearly being five at night when we get back. But on the plus side a lot of the Christmas shopping is done.

Speaking of shopping, does Poundland actually sell anything for a pound anymore? There’s a bloke with a random trolley/table down near Queens Square selling perfume off it. I’m sure there is no possibility that they are knock off perfumes, or that they have been knocked off the back of a lorry.

Whilst out I think a goldfish would do better than me on the memory front. I have little snippets of what I think are great (and often funny) ideas for things to write flash into my head, only for it to disappear into the ether in the couple of minutes before I get to sit down somewhere and whip the notepad out. Perhaps I should go full Alan Partridge and start carrying around a Dictaphone.

Taking the cat to the vets for his monthly arthritis jab, I saw a poster on the wall which said that 1.2 million cats visit a shelter every year. Why do I think that 1.199 million of that number are just nosy little bastards having a quick look around to see if there is anything to eat, or something interesting to sniff?