It’s taken me quite a while to do today’s blog as I was feeling pretty miserable after all of the angst and upset of yesterday. Anyway, I’ve made all my notes and am doing this a few days’ later as, to be perfectly honest, I just couldn’t be arsed writing anything at all! I’ve been missing my restaurant and theatre reviews a bit but this diary is a fabulous way to be creative without even leaving the armchair.
I’m not known for my diplomatic skills but I have to exercise them every day by keeping the senior people’s disappointment to an acceptable level as we can never hit their aspirational timescales balanced against the team’s motivational levels as they want to hit these ridiculous aspirational targets but only if they are feeling valued. To be blunt, work is crazy with the usual playground antics and I get shouted at quite a bit which is very much out of kilter with the world in general as we all seem to be going to hell in a handcart over proper serious concerns not this pretend important corporate deadlines.
Being in a much better frame of mind today, I was hearing the morning news with a more mischievous ear. Iain Duncan-Smith, IDS to his friends, mentioned that “Boris has children elsewhere”, which did make me actually laugh out loud, and the introduction to “Dom Raab” made him sounds like the 2020 holiday destination of choice! As for most people, I am hoping Boris gets better very soon and is back to running the country. Shame about the internet trolling about a very sick man whether you voted for him or not. I did think it was particularly strange that some of the politicians were saying they would be praying for Boris as I thought us Brits left that sort of stuff to the Americans?
We knew we had to do the Supermarket top-up shop today as we had misjudged some of what we needed the other week and with Easter coming up, didn’t fancy standing in the long queues we’d seen on the TV. In true Padbury style, we risk assessed it and agreed, based on the new “just one adult per shop to keep us all safe thank you very much” rules, it was better for me to go. There were definitely more people with masks and surgical gloves on but I just found myself getting very cross with them as I believe it was giving them a false sense of security. You still shouldn’t touch your face with your gloves on and wearing a mask still means you have to keep 2 metres away.
I was MUCH MUCH better in ASDA with the arrows now that I know they are there but found myself getting bothered about others not following them. I couldn’t work out if they’d not seen the great big lines or if they were just being incredibly irresponsible. I was amazed to see lots of couples and families in the shop without being challenged by the staff as there was more than one adult.
It’s another sad example of if you leave people to their own devices, some just don’t think the rules apply to them. Lock them up, fine them at the very least, or else we’ll be in this lockdown until Christmas. Have you ever played the game “Very British Problems”? The premise is that we are posed a question and it demonstrates time after time, with hilarious results usually, the strange day-to-day behaviours and peculiar worries of the British. Well, I could have been in a live game of this walking round the shop with all this nonsense.
The upshot of this is that the 2 of the 3 freezer drawers available are now crammed full of lovely food. I had a little niggling doubt that I’d over-filled it as I remembered that frozen stuff expands by a 1/6 but I’m sure it will be fine. Fingers crossed!
My List: Not much time for anything today but made time for a couple of chapters of my book – it’s really rather good.
My Lowlight: There must be a piano teacher or somebody teaching themselves the piano somewhere near us. About 4pm every day there is some God awful piano music – it’s not loud enough to hear properly but not quiet enough to be completely unheard. Torture!
My Highlight: Great news that the lockdown in Wuhan is going to be lifted. Let’s hope, and possibly pray, it is not too soon.
My Anxiety Level: Medium anxiety levels as an overspill from yesterday and on account of the supermarket shopping.
