2) Useful work on Monday was delayed owing to problems with the network that took most of the morning to be sorted out. Of course, this would have given us a good opportunity to catch up on the office “daily but not done every day” quiz, but we didn’t. We waited until the network was back – why waste good downtime doing a quiz when you can do it during work time?

3) I had one of those “coincidence or something more sinister” moments during the quiz. One of the questions concerned a film actor who had voiced a part in a cartoon film (I forget who or which). I was thinking “wouldn’t it have been good if it had been Dustin Hoffman as I know he voiced one of the parts in Kung-Fu Panda”. Blow me down with a feather if that didn’t come up in the next question.

4) The background wallpaper on our computer desktops has been changed. It’s an outline of Britain, filled with squiggly shapes that look like contours or isobars. It’s awful and makes it very difficult to see the icons. And no one has any idea what the contours / isobars are supposed to represent – if anything.

5) I mentioned last year how many of my Christmas cards arrived with uncancelled postage stamps, This year I kept a count(I can be sad like that). 40% were uncancelled. Though apparently the slits cut in stamps are designed to come off when you try to steam the stamp off the envelope, to prevent re-use.

6) And when did Christmas stamps become small – the same size as standard stamps. I’m sure they used to be the size of commemorative stamps

7) My outlook has stopped communicating with my Hotmail accounts, which is a bit of a pain. In fact, it won’t even recognise one of them as a valid account. Seeing as they are both Microsoft products, you would think they would have no problem in talking to each other. A trawl through the tinternet has shown that this isn’t a problem peculiar to me. However, the only effective solution appears to be to de-install and reinstall outlook, and I CBA’s to do that.

8) Lots of news about NHS A&E departments having to implement major incidents owing to “unprecedented demand”. Really? Unprecedented? Never done or known before (OED definition)? A&E departments are always overwhelmed by demand in the winter – I’ve been to hospitals where casualties are lined up in corridors. So it may be exceptional demand, or insatiable demand – but it’s not really unprecedented, is it?

9) Yesterday morning the boss of Sainsbury’s was on the radio explaining the drop in profits of the supermarket. He tried to put a positive spin on the story, by saying that the low prices were good news for consumers. That’s all very well – but isn’t his responsibility to the shareholders, not the customers?

10) And Sainsbury’s isn’t going to make much profit from me when they keep sending me money-off coupons. This week I succeeded in getting close to the maximum benefit by spending just over the qualifying spend. I had to go shopping because my fridge was looking like a bachelor’s fridge, containing only a pint of milk and a bottle of ketchup.