How was your day? (Random off topic chat)

A week ago today I spent hours and hours on trains to and from Leicester so I could see A Chorus Line. Today I couldn’t face going to the local cinema to watch the new Spider-Man film.

Feeling a bit sorry for myself I guess, as I’m supposed to be going on a short London trip in January and I’m growing increasingly resigned to the fact it won’t be happening. I was never naive enough to think that a global pandemic could be resolved in a few months, but still, it’s frustrating how every time I start to feel a little optimistic we seem to end up back on the cusp of a lockdown.

I had a nice day, in amongst all the madness that is life at the moment. I work at library headquarters and there aren’t many of us in the office, with all the windows open, heating on and big jumpers. I miss the other people but old books in the stack are surprisingly good company ….my first job of the day is always to find books that readers have requested, and today was lots of Arthur Ransome books that were the same age as those my mother read me when I was small! After sending out all the requested old books I unpack and receipt all the new books for our 40+ libraries and satisfyingly print out any requests and send out to imaginary readers (they are real people!) who have asked for them! Add in some fulfilling of random stationery orders from libraries (punched pockets anyone?) and putting sets of reading groups back in the stack (sets of 12 books that we loan out to our over 150 reading groups in the county for free) and you have a pretty prefect day. Radio on…..there were even Christmas chocolates to be had, left by the boss!
I have worries, like everyone else, and I’m sure it won’t always be so perfect, but today it was lovely!
Plus I saw a lovely book….The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein ….about a tree that gives its all…..has anyone else read it?

It’s very simple, with lovely line illustrations, about the passage of time,  and in the end the tree has been chopped down (with its consent to use the wood) and the boy who loves the tree is now an old man….and it is all ok as actually all he wants then is somewhere to rest, so he can sit on the tree stump. So very few words but touching. 

Our stack is full of treasures! 

I also sent out “Beyer, Peacock, locomotive builders to the world”  Also a lovely book! 

Watched a game show on C4 which I think will live forever as featuring the most hopeless contestants in the history of television.

Jimmy Carr's I Literally Just Told You is well worth a look on catch up to see four people in a state of total confusion give answers so stupid Jimmy Carr almost lost it.

eek, fingers crossed for you Dawnstar, been there and it's always there that ours might go again at any moment. Let's hope we all keep nice and warm.

I had my boiler replaced a few years ago. It was an old and inefficient back boiler; scrapping it cut my heating bill in half.

Imagine how good a world it is when you have only seen the first Matrix film 

This afternoon my mother nipped out to the garden as it was getting dark & managed to walk into the remains of a box hedge she's recently cut down. Result: a 3 inch cut down one shin & having to keep her leg up to try to reduce swelling. The chicken was already in the oven so I got landed with having to cook Christmas dinner at no notice (bearing in mind my cooking rarely rises above boil-pasta-and-veg variety). The result was edible but not Instagramable. Well, mostly edible: I had to throw out a sausage that I only remembered was still tucked under some tinfoil after it had been marinading in washing up liquid for 10 minutes!

The bold bit made me laugh aloud! :)
I hope your mum feels fine and it's not a deep cut.

My life has been a sort of a whirlwind of unusual but absolutely magical events for the past 3 weeks, and I still cannot fully grasp how I found myself here. It may just be the best Holiday season I've ever had. I hope everyone else's is just as great! :)

Oh dear. Hope you're staying warm enough. At least the weather isn't perishing at the moment.


It made me laugh out loud when I suddenly realised what I'd done! It seems to be better this morning, thanks. We were worried about bleeding, because she's been on blood-thinning medication since her health problems earlier this year, but it seems to be okay.

In the olden days ( before my time stop sniggering ) they used to make soap from animal fats so there would be a bit of a whiff, no? That might explain it but as a proverb it doesn’t explain it. The proverb is “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good’ so this is a version..