Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • Annoyed

    Have decided that if another person goes in before me I shall protest. Previous queue jumper has just emerged. Shortly followed by consultant who has uttered my name.

  • That Didn’t Work

    No sign of consultant. Trying again.

    I decided that this year I would purchase a blanket of fairy lights for the tree in the hope that it would stop me obsessing about symmetry and balance for twelve days. Or more , as I have been forced into early purchase of tree by offspring pointing out that you only get the dregs if you shop in Christmas week.

    Best Beloved and I only swore at each other once, trying to wrap it round our rather pretty tree. I was initially very pleased with the results as I threaded my random assortment of baubles and such like through the plethora of wires.

    I moved the sofas around and settled down to watch the box before realising that it didn’t look nearly so balanced at a marginally different angle. Hmmmm…

    Am now contemplating moving the telly to the other side of the room and shifting the sofas again.
    I think a bloke who arrived after me has just gone in.

    Bloody queue jumpers. Bah humbug.

  • Dum di dum di dum…

    If I start typing a new post the consultant will miraculously appear to peer at my knee.

    I have just had it x-rayed. This is a bit odd as he should have access to the scan I had done in September.

    I am hideously over excited at prospect of getting a new knee. I think I might cry if he says I need to wait for further deterioration. I am not sure how much more it can deteriorate before I can’t walk at all.

    Best Beloved is sitting in the car park, giving remote moral support, having had the flu all week. As the news has been littered with dire warnings about the NHS having its annual bout of the vapours, he is mindful of spreading germs.

    One is trying to be supportive as he really is ill. There is no ‘man’ in this flu. However I am also getting a sore back from leaning away every time he splutters through a coughing fit, determined as I am not to catch his lurgy.

    I haven’t had my jabs as I am fed up with getting the flu straight after. Like clockwork. Honestly, I can set my cover work by it (teacher joke). Get stuck with a needle. Receive germs into my anatomy so they can a fandango with my immune system. Go down with a lurgy.

  • Appalling Behaviour

    Twice this week (actually last week as for hot to post) I have been reminded of just how appalling the previous government was. Once while watching Prisoner 9**51 as Boris Johnson made an ill-informed and counterproductive statement to Parliament, giving the Iranian government yet more reason to stall. And then the BBC investigation into the costs of the COVID inquiry.

    Public money has disappeared down the drain of legal fees (presumably with the rest of the sewage) as the previous government attempted to avoid, prevaricate and hide its mistakes rather than fess up to poor decisions made in a high pressure crisis not seen since the early 20th Century. Holding your hands up and admitting such mistakes ends the accusations and wafts away some of the stench.

    There are many epithets that can be applied to elements within the Conservative Party. Self-serving,, scandal-ridden and stupid is an alliterative selection. And our otherwise beleaguered chancellor Rachel Reeves gave us a timely reminder of quite how nasty they could be when focusing on the “rape” clause applied to the Two Child Benefit Cap.

    So great was the desire to punish women who do not reside in a three bedroom semi in the suburbs, to punish their offspring, to turn families who have the temerity to want more than a population shrinking duo of sproglets into social pariahs, that they inserted a vicious clause into legislation where a woman who has been raped, and therefore had conception inflicted upon her, had to prove it if she chose not to abort a child which she could not afford to feed. That is just plain nasty.

    Child benefit is means tested. Fine. Not every family needs it. Child benefit is paid to mothers by default so they have direct access to monies that might otherwise be p*^%#d up against the wall on a Friday night. Child benefit amounts to £43.30 a week for two children, roughly what you might spend on a meal out with a glass of wine.

    Is it enough to put food in the mouths of children? Given the frequent reports of parents going hungry so their children can eat plus the plethora of food banks… perhaps not. But it is something. And such benefits are how we avoid the extremes of poverty visible elsewhere in the world.

    Harrumph.

  • Modern Dating

    Best Beloved and I are making like the youth of today and visiting the gym together. Not so much a date night. More of a date afternoon squished in before the place is overrun by teenagers and small people soggy from swimming lessons.

    I am peddling away in glorious silence as my ear buds haven’t charged. I am annoyed as I have had them plugged into my in car charger for several days. Modern technology? Pay!

    Actually it isn’t glorious silence. They have some annoying beat box (or whatever) music going on and several groups of older teenagers are flirting over the weight machine thingies.

    Whatever happened to getting into the pub with a cute smile at the doorman and sipping lager laced with lime for an hour or two while trying to catch the eye of some boy who is way more interested in she of the more artfully ripped jeans t’other side of the bar??

    Best Beloved is doing some energetic jogging on the machine directly behind me. I don’t do energetic jogging. I do lackadaisical peddling in a sitting position because I keep slipping off the upright bicycle seat.

    I have had a busy morning attempting to make a jelly set. I overdid the gelatine last night and created a lumpy mess. I think I have underdone it today as it was still swishing around in the pyramids rectangle thing I have carefully lined with cling film. A last minute dash to the shop to purchase another’s looks imminent.

  • Laws of Unintended Consequences

    A handful of labour MPs are making like Tory backbenchers again, throwing their hands up because the government has abandoned its plans for Day One Workers Rights.

    I can’t help feeling that this is one of those nice idea in theory policies but with awkward consequences.

    There is a strong argument to stop companies dismissing workers the day before union rights come into force or on the last day of probation.

    But you also don’t want to tie a hand behind the back of a company where an employee is simply not up to the job, is unreliable and/or a sloppy narcissist incapable of putting their coffee mug in the dishwasher (a sackable offence in my book).

    Perhaps yet another mandatory bit of paperwork might be in order, detailing concrete reasons for dismissal, supported by evidence as needed. Not only will the company be able to justify its actions, but the employee will gain valuable feedback to take to their next job. Where, with any luck, they will be a success.

    Must get up now I have found a solution to a knotty issue. Am available for further sage advice on national and international current affairs and/or how to load a dishwasher in the most efficient way possible. Am genius.

  • Just Knackered

    Term time hump… it seems that even when you teach part time in sessions rather than full days in the classroom there is a point in the term when you are just knackered.

    In anticipation of my evening online class last night I set my phone alarm to 6.45. Just in case I got so engrossed in writing slides for a lesson on expressions next week (as if! … well, it happens. I like making slides).

    Said alarm failed to go off and I had a brief panic at 6.55 only to find no one else had arrived for class.

    Said alarm did go off, however, at 6.45 this morning. Followed 15 minutes later by my bedside alarm.

    My bedside cabinet – or rather the floor around it – now look like a post apocalyptic war scene, after I knocked everything off trying to stop the successive infernal rackets.

    A cup of tea was required, so I made one.

    I shall tidy up later. Perhaps.

  • Incensed, Again

    Toothless Ofcom has taken yet another light touch approach to protecting women and girls online with its optional guidance that the tech giants introduce a prompt for those trolling on their platforms.

    Quel surprise. Because we couldn’t possibly stand up to or even have the modest expectation that a bunch of juvenile dweebs take some social responsibility for the garbage that is too frequently published on their platforms.

    I could digress here on whether we should regard a social media platform as a publisher (we should) in the same way we do print and broadcast media. Primarily because the same defamation laws could then be applied and all sorts of garbage would have to be withdrawn.

    But I must keep to the point.

    The irate pundit on the Today programme has just announced that schools and colleges need to take a lead on teaching students how to behave on social media platforms and respond to the nastiness that has transferred from the playground to the ether.

    After over a decade of doing just that in form time, PSHCE, parent teacher conferences not to mention using up my balsam tissues (I am so good to my students) comforting a variety of distraught teenagers following an online, late night spat with former BFF, I find this kind of demand vexatious in the extreme.

    What on earth do politicians and pundits think we have been doing?! Advising our junior citizens to read a good quality broadsheet over their boiled eggs and toasted soldiers?!

    Most schools in the locality have introduced magnetic phone pouches to take it a step further. And introduced fines for broken pouches. And identified students who have two phones if not three. And confiscated the lot.

    Pray tell. What more do people want? Perhaps parents need to take up the cudgel in the 17 hours students are under their supervision. Perhaps parents should encourage their offspring to come off platforms which make them unhappy. Or remove phones at least an hour before bedtime to be produced again at breakfast.

    Perhaps parents need to take a lead and be prepared to withstand the temper tantrums that will ensue. It won’t be easy, but the results will make for a happier young person whose confidence and self esteem isn’t constantly undermined. After all, you would conduct an intervention if they were addicted to drugs or alcohol.

    Twice I persuaded our youngest to take herself off InstaSnapShit for a while and she was so much happier.

  • Sunday Night TV

    Last night I sat down to get my weekly fix of quality drama (can’t tell you how much I enjoyed Riot Women – awaiting release of the single) anticipating the latest “obsession” (daft phrase) on BBC One.

    And switched over to Netflix for another couple of episodes of the anodyne and predictable “Nobody Wants This” (which is curiously sweet, as an extended advert for Judaism, complete with cute rabbi who delivers thoughtful sermons on life, love and relationships).

    Anyway, I am curious as to why I swerved away from the dramatisation of Nazanene Zagari Radcliffe’s abduction and imprisonment by the Iranian government. When I switched back to catch the headlines before bed, Joseph Fiennes had morphed into the epitome of terrified, helpless husband, already exhausted at the very start of his battle.

    Just two minutes of watching him try to engage the FCO was enough to convince me that this will be well worth watching. On another night.

    Like many people in the UK, I watched to snippets from this lengthy saga as Richard Radcliffe battled all and sundry to get someone to sit up and take notice. Then switched my attention to the latest war, famine, and taxation v. benefits brouhaha.

    Therefore I really was surprised at myself that when Nazarene’s release was announced. I was driving down the motorway at the time and found myself sobbing with relief. Sobbing because this strong, brave woman was going to be reunited with her young daughter, after years of separation.

    It genuinely surprised me how much I cared about a woman I have never met.

    Such is the nature of news that random figures who pop up on a regular basis and worm their way into your subconscious. John McCarthy was one such person. When a litany of bad news breaks into a ray of light, we are inevitably moved as we should be.

    So I shall watch this on a Monday, when I am not in search of distraction. Or a wet Saturday afternoon with a tissue box to hand. It is an important drama well done.

  • Am Shocked

    Salman Rushdie has just selected Walk on the Wild Side on Desert Island Discs. Apparently he had Lou Reed’s phone number.

    Well, it is quite filthy. And I quote,

    “Candy came from out on the Island

    In the backroom, she was everybody’s darling

    But she never lost her head

    Even when she was giving head”

    I think there are lots of songs like this. Of which I am largely oblivious. Not prone to remembering lyrics as I am. Am prone to telling filthy jokes on occasion so am not a prude.

    There is nothing wrong with this portrayal of a liberated woman. After all we should be allowed to do what she wants. As long as it what she wants.

    The world described is one where the young travel to the big city in search of adventure. They land up on “The Wild Side” by accident or design.

    Whether they enjoy it, thrive on it and, more importantly, live to tell the tale is a different matter. Some do. Some don’t. Rites of passage and all that.