Doctor's Orders

My local pharmacy: Come and get your FREE flu jab!

Me:

My local pharmacy: Come and get your FREE flu jab!

Me: I’ve come for my FREE flu jab.

My local pharmacy: That will be £16.95, please.

Me: I’ve got two text messages from you telling me it’s free.

My local pharmacy: Are you pregnant? On dialysis? Undergoing heart surgery?

Me:

My local pharmacy: Do you have asthma?

Me: Bingo!

ERROR 55 - Internal Communication Problem

Boss: Can you order a new printer for the office?

Me: Sure. *orders a new printer for the office*

Office: Did you order a new printer for the office? It’s arrived.

Me: Yes, I’ll come over and set it up.

Office: No need, we already moved the printer from the other office. And we have a tech person coming in Monday to set it up.

Break in Transmission

Last week’s swimming lesson was cancelled, and the week before that, we went away for half-term. To a very wet and wild north-east Lincolnshire right by the sea (or the Humber Estuary). With no wifi, and very poor data connectivity. In a tin can caravan.

But we all had fun, and the kids got to spend time with their grandparents who live nearby. And use their wifi.

On the night before we left I met up with a couple of my oldest and best friends, Murray and Aaron, who I hadn’t seen for ten (Aaron) and thirty (!) (Murray) years. It was really great to have a couple of pints and talk shit with them, just like the old days, as if it was only yesterday.

Any Old Pots and Pans?

Following on from the successful installation of our new front door (which my wife is now quite happy with), we now have new stainless steel pots and pans to replace the old and “dangerous” non-stick pans we had before.

My wife “read something on the internet” which said that the non-stick coatings are toxic, and so that that was the end of the matter.

Still, they are very nice new pans, even if a little more care is needed when using them to cook and clean.

Frank

Frank was my great grandfather on my dad’s side.

I only met him a couple of times. One time, me and my brother were made to wear the most ridiculous and embarrassing outfits, and we just felt very uncomfortable and ill-at-ease meeting this very old man from another time.

He was born in the early 1901. So he must have been 80 or so when we met him. Not so old these days, but back then he really was like a dinosaur, or a fossil.

I remember a couple of stories about him. After the Great War, when he was a young man with a new wife and baby daughter (my grandmother), he had to walk twenty-five miles to work, where he would labour hard for sixteen hours before walking home again, only to be brutally murdered by his father before going to bed and getting up the next morning to do the same thing over and over again. Well, he certainly had to work hard, just to survive and raise a family.

Life was no doubt much harder then than any of us can really imagine, but you try and tell that to the young people of today. Would they believe you? No!

My great grandmother, Ellen, was committed to Lancaster Asylum some time after my grandmother Freda was born. I don’t know what the reason was, but it’s possible it was because she was suffering from what would now be recognised as post-natal depression.

In those days, it was a life sentence, not to mention the shame it brought upon the family.

Frank divorced Ellen and married “Auntie Florrie”. I don’t know if Florrie was actually Ellen’s sister, but it’s possible.

Freda never forgot her mum, and secretly visited her whenever she could.

When Frank got the cancer that would kill him, Freda took him in and looked after him in her bed until he died.

Propaganda

Last night, I was away in the middle of nowhere with no wifi and very poor data connection, so put on the TV to watch the BBC/ITV news at ten.

Haven’t watched it for fifteen years or more.

It was pure propaganda for Israel.

Jeremy Bowen even said as much: “This is what they want you to see” (as opposed the genocide in Gaza).

Getting Dressed

My three and a half year old is going through that stage where he doesn’t want to get dressed in the morning to go to nursery.

I remember with my oldest lad some mornings I used to be in tears trying to get him ready.

Fortunately, their mum is now working from home and has taken on this task with the little one. My main job now is to remind my nine year old to “sit at the table and eat your breakfast” every two minutes.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, my secondary role was as assistant little kid dresser. I would sit him on my knee with one arm around his chest holding his arms down, while trying to hold a leg or a foot so that his mum could forcibly put on his underpants, socks and trousers without him kicking or pulling them off again.

Mum has now found a much more kid-friendly method, with no tears.

Underpants are now butterflies, fluttering around looking for somewhere to land. Socks, of course, make great foot-puppets. Trousers are caterpillars crawling on a tree branch, and his coat is a big brown bear who just wants a hug.

It’s still exhausting, but it makes the morning a little bit happier for everyone.

Haircut

My nine year old had a trim the other day. No one else can really tell, but his massive afro isn’t quite so massive as it was last week, and certainly a little less knotted.

Should make it easier to get his swimming cap on.

His mum cuts his hair. We took him to a barber’s when he was younger, and I literally had to hold him down while the barber did his work.

I never liked having my hair cut. I used to have very thick curly hair as a boy, although not an afro. My mum used to use what she called thinning scissors, which were kind of like scissors with teeth. It felt like having my hair pulled out.

I think as kids we’re just so much more sensitive to all these things. And my lad’s hair is a core part of his identity. (When he was younger, he used to identify as a lion, so his hair was his mane.)

I managed to overcome my fear of hair cutting as an adult, and even found a reliable barber pre-covid. Since the pandemic, like many others, I bought a pair of clippers and do it myself now.

Catwoman

Last week, we had a visitor.

Catwoman appeared, to save the day!

All the way from leafy Surrey, she turned up in her Porsche 4x4 and catsuit to catch our community cats and take them to the vet “because they have cat flu”.

With her ten year old assistant, and cat trap, she tried for (what seemed like) hours to catch a cat, or a kitten, to no avail.

Too Much Pressure

Inevitably, as I sit here in the cafe next to my son’s swimming lesson, unable to drink coffee because the cafe is permanently closed, my mind wanders and starts thinking about coffee.

For most of my adult life, I’ve started the day with a cup of tea. Regular English breakfast tea. PG Tips, Tetley. Milk and sugar.

Tea was always my preferred drink, but I did like a cup of instant coffee or two later in the morning, but only if it was one I liked. I wasn’t fond of Nescafe or the other regular blends.

A few years ago, I switched to Rooibos (redbush) tea, and never went back. I also started appreciating real coffee made in a French press, and later got my own Aeropress. What really sealed the coffee deal, was discovering fresh coffee beans that aren’t burnt (Pact Coffee).

About three years ago, I backed a Kickstarter campaign to build an affordable, portable espresso maker, CoffeeJack.

Now, I’m not one of those people who backs a lot of these types of things, although it wasn’t my first or last. I understand that it’s not like ordering from Amazon or anywhere else. You’re backing a project with money in the hope that it’s successful and that you end up with a product that works as described. There’s no guarantee.

Now, CoffeeJack delivered about three years after they got my money. Which is a long time! They had lots of problems along the way, including, of course, the covid pandemic. So fair play to them for getting their project finished at all. And it was worth the wait, in my opinion. They produced exactly what they promised, and for six months I had two cups a day of the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.

Sadly, just when I thought I’d cracked it, I cracked the bayonet on my CoffeeJack. Too much pressure, to quote The Selector.