The Judge RANTS!
Date: 29/11/14
Minor Malignities
I've felt for much of this week like a character in a folk tale who finds himself pursued by a platoon of mischievous dwarfs; namely, that it has been a week comprised of a lot of small annoyances.
(Snow White had a similar problem, you will recall. In their defence, the dwarves claimed that they were simply all trying to get on together)
On Monday, the bus I was catching home from the supermarket was nearly fifteen minutes late, when it turned up it was very near full, and the passenger list featured no fewer than three ChavvyMammies (of the type which my mother used to categorise by the short-and-to-the-point phrase, "These bloody 'oors!") with their squalling brats. The driver was also a bit savage with his brakes, so that the journey had a certain San-Andrean quality to it.
Then in the pickle factory the next day, we were shunted on to a type of work we hadn't done before. First, we were told, "Do this work!"; then a couple of hours later, we were informed, "No, wait a minute, don't do it, we have a couple of 'issues' with it"; then an hour later we were told, "Do it, and follow the instructions to the letter". This was then followed by, "Do the work, follow the instructions as much as you can, but use your common sense". This was then inevitably superseded by, "Forget common sense, follow the instructions to the letter", and then by, "Hang on - the instructions haven't been finalised yet. But follow them anyway".
On Wednesday, I had to sit through a training session which was at least half an hour longer than it needed to have been, due to far too much background information being given to us, and what we actually needed to know more or less tacked on to the last hour.
Thursday found me in town, looking to buy a four-pack of Guinness and half a dozen eggs from the town centre Co-Op...only to find when I got there that said emporium was closed for refurbishment. On getting home, I was deprived of my afternoon nap by the Council's contractors coming to enquire about the leak in the roof. This I had reported to the ever-wise at the Housing Department in mid-February after a particularly squally evening had led to rainwater getting into the tank cupboard. When I had chased the job up a couple of weeks later, I was told that there was a backlog of work, and could I give them a few more weeks? I duly did. in fact, I gave them until early June. When I rang to see how things were shaping up, I was told that they had no trace of the job on their system. Anyway, the two guys from the roofing company had a look from ground level, and said that they'd get their ladders up and have a shufti at it. They then got back in their van, sat there for about ten minutes...and then drove off. Well, I suppose it was getting dark by then.
Finally, this evening, I was going to do a post in the Raves section featuring two pieces of music which I had been listening to on Friday night. Two songs from the early eighties which linked together perfectly in terms of the style of music and the personnel involved in making them. Except that I can't find a video for the second song. Or, at least, not of the version which I wanted you to hear. So that has gone by the board for now.
Add to this the fact that I have been suffering from The Clumsies for most of the week (dropping things, banging into things, that sort of thing) and it has been a week which, in consumer terms, I would have taken back to the shop as being not of merchandisable quality.
