The future looks grim
I watched Prime Time last night.
It’s one of those “topical events” discussion programmes where the “topical event” was the Virus. Quelle surprise?
Anyhows they had a Top Doctor in the studio along with a Smug Cunt who fancies himself The debate was over the gubmint’s approach to the pandemic.
Now TD made a hell of a lot of sense. He pointed out that the initial lockdown was to “flatten the curve” to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed. That worked well so he said that the best approach now was to just let the Virus spread as there was sufficient capacity in the hospital system to cope. He quoted statistics to point out that the Virus was relatively mild to those who were under 65 and who weren’t obese. He said that this Virus will always be with us and we had better just get used to it.
SC however took a different view. He declared that the Virus had to be eradicated and the only way was a more or less permanent lockdown. He quoted the Faeroe Islands as a perfect example of how this can be achieved [seriously?]. He seemed oblivious to the fact that Ireland is close to Europe where there will be constant migration and fuck all chance of an entire continent eradicating a virus.
At this point I should mention that TD had to resign from his post because he didn’t chant the gubmint mantra, while SC is actually one of the gubmint’s advisers.
God help us all.
Calculating the odds
Last August I brought our Penny to the vet.
It was a serious visit and involved an overnight stay, x-rays and a load of other stuff. In other words, it was expensive! However, I have pet insurance and the vet said he would duly put in a claim and that I would be reimbursed.
I haven’t heard a word since.
I decided today to chase this up as it involves a decent chunk of change. I phoned the insurance company and having waded through about six of seven fucking menus, several messages about fucking Covid and a hideous fucking bit of “music” I finally got through to a very pleasant female. She checked my policy and laughed. “You won’t believe this” says she, “but the cheque went out today!” I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn’t just press the Send key in a panic. It was just coincidence? Nearly six weeks after the claim went in, I happened to pick the precise day they paid up?
What are the odds on that?
I bought a fill of central heating oil a few months ago.
I have a little gauge thing on the oil tank which sends a wireless signal to a small display in the kitchen. It’s very handy and is a great reminder to get a refill. After the delivery though it packed up. Fuck! All the display showed was a flashing triangle which from past experience meant that the battery on the tank had probably died the death. It’s a weird size battery that is hard to find locally so I sent off for one about a week ago.
This morning the postman delivered my new battery. Great. It was raining at the time so I decided I would have a mug of tea before replacing the battery on the tank. I glanced at the display thing. It was fucking working perfectly and I know for a fact it wasn’t working yesterday! It sat there for months displaying a fault and decided to fix itself on the very day the battery arrived?
What are the odds on that?
Showing off my flange nibbler
I was doing a little reminiscing this morning.
There’s no law against that so far as I know, but that’s probably just a matter of time.
Anyways, for some unknown reason I remembered a little incident back in my college days.
After leaving school I went on to study electronics. I have absolutely no idea why I should have chosen electronics as a subject as my real passion lay in geography and cartography in particular. But some strange quirk of fate found me studying telecommunications and electronics instead.
So there I was, studying a subject that I had a mere passing interest in. With hindsight I should really have studied computers but they hadn’t really been invented yet so there were no courses in the subject which would have made studying difficult.
The college I was at had an open day each year where parents, friends and the Great Unwashed were invited in to show off what we were at. It wasn’t a particularly popular day as it meant turning up in the lecture halls or the laboratories when we would much prefer to be in the Common Room smoking and playing cards.
On one particular open day myself and Noel [one of my good pals] and myself were teamed up and given an experiment to demonstrate. It was [as far as I remember] a simple oscillator that didn’t do much, but it had the great advantage in that we were given one of the few oscilloscopes which had a screen displaying a little green wavy line. It looked impressive.
Because we were one of the few “experiments” that looked interesting we gathered quite a few who came over to see what we were at. We explained the principles of the oscillator and you could see their eyes glaze over. They hadn’t a fucking clue what we were talking about but then neither did we, so that was fine. But we decided that we needed to glamorise things up a notch so we invented our own spiel. We started explaining to people how we were examining the interaction between grommets and nudgers and producing a little chain reaction on the screen. This went down a lot better with the audience.
There was one old bloke who came over and showed great interest in our “experiment”. He asked all about the flange nibbler and the groover and we explained the Nudgey Reaction in great detail. We were getting quite good at the game and were very inventive. The Old Fart was delighted and went away happy.
As we packed up at the end of the day, our electronics lecturer came over. “Well, lads” said he, “you did a great job today.” Apparently the Old Fart was a sort of secret guest visitor – he was head of engineering at University College Dublin. He had spoken to our lecturer after and had praised our little demonstration saying that he had found us “most interesting and very inventive”.
The Old Fart obviously had a sense of humour.
Thank God.
Needled
I had an appointment with Doc this morning.
“There y’are” says he. “How are ya?”
“You’re the Doc. You’re supposed to tell me.”
“Right! Get all your kit off.” He started putting on one of those rubber glove things.
“No way!” says I hastily. “I’m not here about myself. I’m here in loco whatyoumaycallit.”
“Ah! Is it the dog? Is Penny all right?”
“Penny is grand. I’m here about Herself.”
“Oh. What’s wrong with her?”
[Ten paragraphs redacted to avoid potential legal action. GD]
“That should fix her and keep her well sedated” says Doc, handing me a prescription. “Now what about the flu jab?”
“What about it?”
“Do you want it?”
“Not particularly.”
“Maybe you should, just this year. You’re a high risk category.”
“Fuckit. Go on then…”
So I got my jab. I don’t like the idea of being injected with unknown shit, but I’m beyond caring at this point.
If I get the Virus now then at least I can sue Doc.
