Going for a long stand

Some of you will be aware that many years ago (back in the early 1980’s), I worked at a paper mill. As in many factories in the UK, new members of the workforce would have tricks played upon them, especially the young and innocent. One of the classics used at the mill was to send the newby to the stores with a chit for a glass hammer, long stand, or bucket of steam. In the time I worked at the mill in the lab, we had some YTS (Youth Training Scheme) teenagers (the last one, Melanie I think, ended up with a job because I left to go to University). One of the lads (whose name escapes me) was two sandwiches short of a picnic, but a good lad at heart, so Barry, Nick and I sent him off to the stores one day with a chit for something a little more unusual - a packet of Fallopian tubes. He had no idea what these were so went blithely off to the stores to get them. He was gone so long that Nick decided he needed to investigate so called into the stores on his way to the effluent plant. He didn’t make it as he had to come back to the lab in fits of laughter to report what was happening in the stores. Not only did the YTS lad have no idea what Fallopian tubes were, but the elderly store man didn’t either! At the time the stores were being computerised and he was playing merry hell with the techies for the absence of Fallopian tubes on the new system. I think one of them quietly took him on one side to explain why they never would be. As you can image, for the next few days any stores request from the lab got a grumpy response.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when having a long stand myself outside the supermarket. The queue was 3 or 4 times longer than it had been the previous time I had visited, so my heart sank a little, but I discovered with much joy that when I had finished my shopping there was no queue for a checkout, which enabled me to do the whole trip in under an hour. Under normal circumstances such a shop takes me 30-40 minutes as I shop in two different locations, but my first shop of the week had taken over 80 minutes, the queue to get to a checkout being much longer that the queue to get into the store. I don’t know if it was just coincidence or if they had changed their approach to queue management. I will see what happens next time.

Apart from Monday, when we had a few showers, the weather this week has been stunning. Clear blue skies, lots of warm and hot sunshine, and balmy early evenings. We have been back into shorts and T-shirts with the ranch sliders open most of the day and the Barlow Recliners back to living on The Rattigan.

We have settled into a new routine of rising later the usual - first pot of tea at 7.30am!! I’ll have breakfast and a walk and coffee, while Nicky reads and potters (this often includes cleaning of things). We punctuate the middle of the day with news at 12, then briefings from parliament at 1pm and 3pm. The Chase at 5pm marks the beginning of the evening viewing on the tellybox, though some evenings it finishes at 7pm due to lack of things to watch, or better things to read.

Work has generally got quieter for me as the week has progressed. Monday was quite busy, but by Friday I had nothing. My financial year ended this week so I have got my accounts ready for my accountant and my record keeping set up for the new financial year - Year 13 of MacOnSite. As my charge rate for remote support is half of my rate for on-site support, I have applied for the government wage assistance as my income will drop by more than the 30% required to qualify even if I get as much work as I do usually in April, which I doubt.

Nicky had her flu shot on Tuesday and a walk down to the reserve to have a 2m+ chat with Jancis, and I had a video chat with Paul on Friday evening as we couldn’t get up to The Block for our monthly beer. Some bright spark has started a website when you can “pay forward” and buy vouchers at you favourite cafés to help them with their cashflow during the lockdown. None of the BHB cafés have signed up, but one of our favourites (Angel Louise in Raetihi) has so I have bought a $25 voucher for when we next go down to Wanganui.

We had planned to have Maria (a friend of mine from Deep & Meaningful) over for afternoon tea with her new man Paul yesterday, but had a video chat instead. I got some peach muffins out of the freezer (which Nicky had made in January) and she also made us some cheese butties (which were great) and we laid a table cloth and put smarter clothes on and had a good chat. The rest of Saturday was occupied with another jigsaw, our prime weekend activity during lockdown.

Nicky and I are doing OK with the lockdown. We try and make a difference between weekdays and weekends, more for my benefit I expect. There are some positive aspects to the lockdown too: there are fewer ads on the telly. With many of them being the “loud, noisy, come and buy things in our shop” type, there is no point in running them at the moment as the shops are closed. There is also less sports news, which is just lovely. We also like seeing the press briefing from parliament, so we are getting the information un-modified by the media, and just have to work round the political spin.

We put the clocks back yesterday, so darkness will arrive sooner this evening, but Nicky is making cheese scones for tea to compensate, so it can’t all be bad.

Take care, Rick.