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where does all the time go?
20 September 2013 22:49


Finally home after running around all evening - which has been pretty much the norm for the last few evenings. Tonight was Basingstoke and Andover, which, as they are in opposite directions form Smalltown, seems to be a bit of a cock-up on the logistics front. Wednesday was Winchester and Andover; Monday was Basingsroke; and Thursday was Alresford. Tuesday I stayed at home.

While walking across the car park at Tesco I noticed a family who had just worked out why they couldn't unlock their car. They were at the wrong car. Their own car was a few rows further back.

The heating was switched on at work this week. First attempt didn't work and we were told it was broken. A little later we were told it was really, really broken and might take until the spring to be fixed. Come on, we thought, someone's taking the micky. Someone obviously was, as the heating came on later that afternoon. Maybe they found the bloke with the correctly-sized spanner.

I haven't resorted to heating at home yet - apart from a convector heater for a short while one evening. Well, it's not as if I've been here much (see above). I've probably mentioned before (ad nauseam) about the disadvantage of storage heating in that you can't just turn it on for a couple of hours of an evening. It's either on all day or off all day.

I'm teaching tomorrow - dealing with heart problems, mainly, including defibrillation. One of the students last week said that she wasn't comfortable with the idea of defibrillation because "when it's your time to go, it's time to go". This is an interesting point on a number of levels, and from a number of perspectives. I don't know whether her objection was based on religious, theological or philosophical ground - or just being bloody-minded. While I could see where she was coming from, my argument was "at which point do you draw the line?" Do you refuse to perform CPR? Do you fail to stem a major bleed? Do you not feed a starving person? Should hospitals withdraw all life-saving treatment? What if the Grim Reaper has made a mistake and tapped on the wrong person's shoulder?

Skyping mum the last couple of weekends, and she's had the America's Cup on in the background. There's been next-to-no coverage in the UK (I had to search places of the BBC website where I have never been before to find anything). Probably because there is no UK (or even European) entrant. I should find out a bit more about the competition. I seem to remember that the winning nation hosts it the next time (every four years?) and this gives them an advantage as they can practice in the home waters. This year it is between NZ and USA but it can't always be between just those countries. I'm sure the UK has competed in the past.

I used online postage to print an address label and my first attempt failed because "the first line of the address must be entered". I found this somewhat ironic, seeing as the address was for another branch of Royal Mail so I was entering the address they had given me.

We went to one of my regular organ concerts last weekend. It was of the usual high standard - this time with an organist from Germany. I was told that the organ itself cost £40,000 which is an impressive amount to spend on a musical instrument. However as the concert progressed I realised that having a $40,000 instrument isn't the end of it. You need to know how to play it. You need to play the notes in a way that the instrument you are imitating plays them. For example, when playing a Spanish guitar piece, it sounded like a guitar. It didn't sound like an organ pretending to be a guitar. The analogy I came up with was it would be like my having a £180,000 Ferrari. I'd put it in a ditch within a week because I wouldn't know how to drive it.

Going away with SJA next weekend. Rather than take our own cars we decided to take a staff car - that is what they're there for. So a few months ago I emailed the vehicle custodian to ask if I could use the car for the weekend. "You need to book it against the event on the computer-system-which-kind-of-works-but-not-as-well-as-it-should".
"There isn't an event on the computer-system-which-kind-of-works-but-not-as-well-as-it-should," I explained. "It's a national event, not local one"
Anyway, we got round that problem by creating a pretend local event that matched the real national one, and booked the vehicle.
Last weekend I happened to see this vehicle custodian and mentioned that I needed to arrange collection of the vehicle.
"What booking's that?" he asked
"The one that's on the computer-system-which-kind-of-works-but-not-as-well-as-it-should" I replied.
"Oh, you can't just book it - you need to email me as well. I might have let someone else have the vehicle for the evening"
He really is a tit-and-a-half.

Goodnight.

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