So ... How's Your Girl?

Product Information

On the plus side, all the people I love are still around, and they mostly seem to feel roughly the same way about me. Bless them. I'm a fortunate man, no mistake. Our latest Opinium poll shows that over 60% of people now think Brexit has either gone badly or worse than they expected. It also found that 42% of people who voted Leave in 2016 had a negative view of how Brexit had turned out so far I sometimes feel I should ask more questions, and the NHS have been great with regular appointments with a Diabetes Nurse, but it comes to my appointments and I can’t think of anything to ask. “LADA” for example: no, I’ve never heard of that. Googled it now though: and, no, that was never mentioned. They seemed to know it was Type 1 from the start and my blood sugar was sky high (42!) when they tested it after I first sought medical help. The doctor has mentioned that late onset Type 1 is getting more common these days. The bus service was very unreliable when I was young and it remains so even today. (It remains very unreliable …) There are so few people who know what it is like in our country for other people from different cultures.

If mysanthrope means having “a hatred of humankind” (internet says so) then I wouldn’t describe myself as such. But if mysanthrope means “a person who dislikes humankind and avoids human society” (internet says so) then hell yeah. I’m still pretty much ‘early retired’ after getting a payoff a couple of years ago. I’m still enjoying the lifestyle and we are financially secure so no real incentive to look for a new job – still the position that if something interesting comes up I’ll consider but I’m not actively looking for anything (I.e. I’m too damn lazy and want people to come to me….). The good people of the Afterword have kept me smiling and thinking all year, thanks to you all for your bounteous wit and wisdom. May your God go with you all. I’ve seen more of the inside of the NHS this year than I have for the previous 20, and they’ve been remarkable in all cases. Some just wonderful people. Not great, but better than 2020, am missing live music and my general socialising could be counted on one hand (almost), also work has been incredibly intensive, I wish I could retire.English–Arabic English–Bengali English–Catalan English–Czech English–Danish English–Hindi English–Korean English–Malay English–Marathi English–Russian English–Tamil English–Telugu English–Thai English–Turkish English–Ukrainian English–Vietnamese Probably because I’ve had this lifelong thing about fitness, I’ve no health insurance and my pension planing is piss-poor. This grand canyon sized oversight concerns me, and I, like, really ought to get round to doing something about it, but work this last year has been the highest volume ever. Like every other therapist I know, I’ve regularly had to say no to taking on new clients, something I’ve always found difficult what with being self-employed.

Xmas dinner out at a pub with Fam this year. All this week been half-expecting a call/text saying it’s cancelled but seemingly not. Been doing my twice-weekly Lateral Flow tests like a good boy for the last few months and so far so good. Most recent (negative again) was a couple of hours ago. By the way, I think the flip of covid and being indoors is that it’s led to a lot of people sitting indoors glued to screens and getting gradually angrier and angrier and less and less likely to see people and touch grass. Introversion and misanthropy don’t need to go hand in hand, but I think the one is a risk factor for the other, and those of us who find socialising tiring should always be watchful of where those tendencies can lead. Misanthropy is a proper sin, in my view.) This is a service Hannah used to provide each year – it was good to learn about what everybody had been up to. I hope I’m not treading on her toes in posting this. I look forward to reading anything and everything you want to post. I might even find the time to remember and write up what I did this year. As a corollary I have always kinda liked walking, and walking reduces my blood sugar (= good for diabetics), so this year I’ve been walking tonnes and really enjoying it. First thing I crave in the morning now is a big hike through a muddy forest with the dog. I think the UK is finding that it is really difficult to develop and there is more bureaucracy rather than less once you try to change everything,” he says. “The cost of getting all UK companies stamped with a UK mark rather than an EU mark … it is not worth the cost.”Family all okay, so blessed in that respect. My son has started playing bass guitar, so it’s great to see him get into music and find an instrument he likes. Work's been a slog, but I can never really complain about that. Lately I've seen the worse end (for me) of the things I'm in line to do now and again (i.e. not spreadsheets) and that takes the wind out of my sails a bit, but, in the words of Marc Riley "mustn't grumble". And Mrs M just got approved for a year’s extension to her PhD which we hope will include her scholarship My company has ‘enjoyed’ a merger and gone mad. As a colleague said the other day the new ‘leaders’ (not managers or anything silly like that) are trying to turn a global company with 5,000+ employees into a start-up. The results aren’t pretty so far. We’re good at what we do, could do with some updating, but that’s not going to work. WFH (apart from the brief interlude in the pueblo) was getting trying and solitary but a very brief return to the office wasn’t a great success. Hybrid working meant that there were about 10 people there at any one time. So, acres of empty space, very few water-cooler moments and plenty of tumbleweed. The student ignores him and clutches his phone tightly with both hands as the teacher tries to pull it from him. Eventually he takes the phone and walks to the front of the class to continue the lesson.

Offspring the Younger scraped into the local sixth form and is doing pretty well, despite missing a subject by one GCSE grade, so having to take an alternative third A-level.So is a very common discourse marker in speaking. It usually occurs at the beginning of clauses and we use it when we are summarising what has just been said, or when we are changing topic: There are others who will have suffered far more than me, either directly through Covid or indirectly from either health conditions which have been neglected or hating the life forced on them by circumstances. I don’t have any major life-changes to report as everything has pretty much been in stasis; it’s been dull much of the time, but for me not particularly unpleasant. I’m still only part-way through the book I’ve been working on (on/off) for maybe 4 years. Hopefully, I can finish it in 2022. Like the album above, it feels like my last. Maybe it’s largely a product of the past couple of years, though it’s certainly also influenced by the sense of impending doom around the climate/state of the world, but there’s a general low-level malaise or melancholy that I find hard to keep at bay. It’s okay when I’m busy and ‘in the moment’ and don’t have to think too much. Beyond that, I’m stunned that anyone at this point would, for instance, choose to have children. Spent most of the year alone trying not to get Covid (and succeeding – a positive). A boring, rather depressing year. Needless to say my endlessly patient wife bore the brunt of my bad moods and exhaustion. Strong words were had chez Moose and a lot of calculations were made and – long story short – I cut my hours by a third. I just had to reduce the presence of my job in my life. I’m doing a course with the spare days which may or may not lead me out of this hellhole of a job and into something where I get treated like a human being. It’s a good job I didn’t marry someone with expensive tastes.