Up All Night, TV Marathon, No Ordinary Family, Paper Round, Kenya Interview, Dinner...Yuck, Cubs, JDM Back, Bye Bye Lotto, Manuals, Mersey Mouth, Gun,

Having slept for most of the last four days when I got up last night I stayed up for the rest of the night catching up on some TV programmes. I rode with Nat on his paper round before we returned home and he got ready for school while we got Hannah out of bed. Asked Nat how his Kenya interview went on Friday; he told me he’d answered all the questions asked of him but couldn’t recall one of them. Those he remembered weren’t too bad, what will you contribute, what will you get out of it sort of thing but there was one specific question that he perhaps answered before thinking. This question was “what would you do with the children you are teaching if there was a One Hour power cut?” Nat’s 1st question was; “was this at night or during the daytime?” followed by “was the power cut inside or outside?” Whoops, I don’t think he’d be teaching them during the night and power cuts are generally inside! But hold on a minute Mr Criticism, he’s only 13years old and this was the 1st time he’d ever been interviewed by a panel of adults. All in all, that had to be quite stressful so give the kid a break!


After everyone had left I watched the 3rd episode of the new super hero series “No Ordinary Family” which isn’t at all bad; this was followed by two episodes of Silent Witness by which time it was 1:00 O’clock and time for bed. I tried to list to a few podcasts, All About Symbian which I managed to stay awake for and BBC Radio Four’s Friday Night Comedy “The news Quiz” which I kept falling asleep during and kept having to rewind. I still don’t think I heard it all and I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

Got up for dinner at 6:00 but was unable to eat it; the rice was dry and tasted awful while the chicken sticks were over cooked and hard and dry. These two things have never been on my list of foods I like/enjoy eating and tonight they were too much for me to stomach (ouch)! Hannah had no such reservations and proceeded to wolf the rice off of my plate before being collected by Donna and whisked off to cubs…not many more cubs meeting for her as she’ll be moving up to scouts shortly, where Nat’s a Sixer!!!

I got changed (still winter gear) and prepared to cycle to work; JDM’s back tonight so it’ll be nice to return back to the status quo; that’s saying nothing against Haskh who’s done a sterling job standing in for him. There were more changes in store as tonight yet another new person joined the team (Sharon); if Prash is serious about coming back he’d best get his arse in gear whilst there’s still a place for him, one more new starter and we’re at full complement and the door closes behind him permanently!

JDM arrived just before the shift was due to start and all the girls gave him huge hugs to show him how happy they were that he’d returned. He seemed, understandably, a little subdued but looked a thousand times better than he had last week. He ensconced himself with PD for quite a long and I imaging awkward chat in order to clear the air between them and let that religious man alleviate his feeling of guilt over having set off the whole sorry incident.

Later we had a team meeting where once more JDM was not yet his old self but hopefully a few days back in the saddle will have him feeling more like his old self.

There will be a few changes taking place, no more missed briefs and buzzes now we’re taking what we are entitled too and finally we’re killing off the lottery syndicate which has become completely unwieldy and a nightmare to administer. Maybe, or maybe note, we might start another smaller one at some point in the future but only time will tell. When the premium bonds are cashed in hopefully we’ll all end up approximately £40 the better off; oh dear reader what on earth will I do with such an enormous windfall…will it change, me will I become one of those arrogant wealthy self appointed people who look down their noses at those who are less well off…only time will tell, gentle reader, yes only time will tell?

Oh, I was on manuals tonight so nothing really to say, C withering on to the new girl, if Hashk only had a gun!

Home, Florida Nightmare, Hurricane Katrina, UK/US Society Compared, Nudie Cycling…Not! E.A. and Manuals

I’m at a loss for anything to write about today. Deb picked me up this AM and shortly after we got home she left again to do a little shopping. I decided to catch up on some recorded TV but didn’t really fancy much of what there was to watch. In the end I settled on, the documentary about Brits in Florida followed by another documentary this time looking back at Hurricane Katrina on the fifth anniversary of it devastating the city of New Orleans.


The Florida documentary was somewhat misleading because the title implied it concerned those Brits who’s American Dream had become a nightmare whereas, in fact, it was much more 50/50 focusing on as many successes as failures. It did bring home the fact that while the US and the UK “almost” share a common language they are very different societies, very different indeed! Until they hit on bad times I don’t think that the majority of the Brits realised quite what it means to live in a society that espouses, and practices, private health care and self reliance. If you get ill and can’t afford the treatment then TOUGH TITTY matey you’re on your own. Similarly, if you don’t earn your own money you don’t get to spend mine instead. In fact, even if you do earn your own money, but you’re not a US citizen, you can still get your Visa revoked if the US government decide that you don’t earn enough of it! In the US you can soar to incredible (indeed to what some would consider obscene) heights, of wealth and success but the corollary is that you can plunge to depths of hardship that are “supposedly” unknown and unthinkable in the UK. Even if the current coalition government, in the UK, manages to rein in the welfare state to the degree that it would like to the remaining provisions will still offer a far greater safety net to the disadvantaged than the existing system in the US does.

The Katrina documentary (which Nat and I watched together) also brought home these differences in particular how much underlying racism continues to exist in modern America. You couldn’t help but know that if the population of New Orleans, that was most affected by Katrina, had been white then much more and much more rapid help would have come their way. Indeed it was difficult not to get the impression that many white folks, especially rich white property developers, saw this as a heaven sent opportunity to gentrify the Big Easy by losing much of it’s” more ethnic” population. The actual flood footage provided a timely reminder, in view of what’s currently happening in Pakistan, of how incredibly powerful Katrina was; houses with only the very tops of their roofs above the water brought home the sheer extent of the devastation.

Afterward, I went to bed and slept until 6:00 when I woke, washed, ate and cycled to work. Halfway there I turned back for home having realised that while I’d washed and eaten I had in fact forgotten to get dressed. Despite the fact that it appeared that I had grown a perky set of bossoms (see below) and now possessed an anatomically correct lady's front bottom I decided it would probably be best if I returned home and got dressed!

 Once I was properly clothed, and my body had returned to normal, I resumed my journey to work. For the first time since I returned I covered EA and manuals. It wasn’t all that hard; apart from learning the new patch codes.