Fadalach san obair

Chanainn nach robh mi fadalach ann an àite obrach airson nam bliadhnaichean, ach thachair e DiLuain; cha do dhùisg an t-uairedair-dùsgaidh mi ri tìde agus cha d' fhuair mi ann ach aig seachd uairean. Gu fortanach, bha seach-thìm gu leòr agam bho thoiseach a' mhìos, ach 's lugha orm sioftaichean maidne, 's lugha orm àbhaist na dùthcha gòraich seo gan tòiseachadh cho tràth 's sia uairean, agus 's lugha orm ùine samhraidh dar a bhios agam ri èirigh fiù 's uair nas tràithe.

Free EU movement

I don't gloat, after all I was only a very mild supporter of Brexit. But I find it ironic that after all the warnings about British economy's collapsing without free movement with the EU, European economies in general are now in danger of collapsing thanks partly to the very free movement across the member states' borders.

Back shifts again

After seven weeks of hated day shifts the second March week saw me, for the first time in my current job, doing back shifts. This pleased me no end: previously I'd been alternating days with nights, and alternating days with backs is even better. (The best thing would of course be alternating backs with nights, but that's one of those things too good to ever happen.) Sure, at the moment there's no saying when they'll close the factory because of the virus and there'll be no shifts at all, but I've learned years ago that, whether for better or for worse, things always turn out quite differently from what I expect, so I just try to enjoy the good things while they last, and try not to worry much about the bad ones to come.

St Patrick's Day / Jockie's 50th birthday

Jockie, my last bedmate, was born on St Patrick's Day 50 years ago. Unless he's changed very much during the two and a half decades since I last saw him, he must have been as disappointed by being unable to celebrate his half-century properly, in a pub with lots of friends, as any booze-loving Irish patriot must have been last week.

Endocrinology

On a morning at the beginning of the month I had my second appointment: it wasn't just overcast like the first time round, it was actually raining every now and then, but I was told my blood results were back to normal. Sure, the doc prescribed me levothyroxine again, but then I'd been warned by the NHS website that once I was prescribed it once I'd have to take it for the rest of my life (except I guess if my blood results showed a change in the opposite direction, which seems quite unlikely), and at least the next appointment was scheduled for after six, rather than three, months. So I had a lunch in my digs, four pints reading Salinger's Zooey in the Carpenter, which was quite serene that afternoon, and slept well into the wee small hours.

Listening to an album

Insomniac on Sunday night three weeks ago, I opened a beer can, put earbuds in my ears and listened to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band the way music (other than ambient music) should be listened to: sometimes mouthing the words, sometimes just listening, sometimes taking a gulp, sometimes puffing on an e-cig, sometimes reclining, sometimes in ardha padmasana, but always concentrating on the music. I hadn't done that for months, if not years, and it elated me accordingly.

J. D. Salinger: Zooey

After all those years I can't be certain, but I suspect that the scene in which Salinger describes the board on the door of Buddy's and Seymour's room with its welter of unrelated quotations was what made me, aged about 20, start putting down in an A5 book quotations from books that I was reading. A habit I keep to this day, although after starting a fourth book I transferred them to the text-file format, and put them in some order, so that the authors are arranged alphabetically, and quotes from the same book are kept together, even if they were added years apart.

Anyway, reading it again after years I added to those quotations I'd already written down from this book the following:

Scratch an incompetent schoolteacher - or, for that matter, college professor - and half the time you find a displaced first-class automobile mechanic or a goddam stonemason.

(Zooey)

This speaks to me because despite my degree in civil engineering the jobs I think I was best at were of the 'manual' sort, whether it was mixing mortar on a building site, stacking shelves in  a supermarket, or cutting and printing paper in a printing house.

"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said. - Kafka

From the above-mentioned board; strictly speaking this is a quote from Kafka's diaries, but I haven't read those, so I prefer to keep it under my source.

Blood samples

A welcome break in the day-shift run was the morning of Monday, 24 February: I went to give blood samples so the doctor could see what effect the levothyroxine was having on me. It was quite quick; before going to work I had enough time to go to Tesco, and would in fact have time for a breakfast, if only I knew about some suitable nearby cafeteria. I've been out of the place for too long and it has changed so much that I no longer know much even about the city centre ...

Hoarse

Whether I want it to or not, my life always seems to move in ways different from those of the general public. So at the end of January and the beginning of February, while the coronavirus was still only creeping into Europe, my voice became rather hoarse. No cough, no high temperature, let alone fever, no pain; I just couldn't speak up. Above my lowest register it sounded more like whispering than speaking. It took - and this is also typical for me - a decision to visit the ORL (out of fear of the cancer's recurrence) earlier than my next appointment for my voice to become fairly quickly normal again.

February 2020 weather

While my homeland was being battered by weekend storm after weekend storm, the part of the Continent where I stay resembled more a mediocre beginning of spring than the cusp of winter. The temperature would drop below zero at night and rise above it again during the day; the wind would often be biting, especially late in the morning; but while there was luckily nothing dramatic about those days, there was unfortunately nothing picturesque about them either. 'Drab' , 'dreary' and 'dismal' are the adjectives which probably describe them best.

Pubs closed

The coronavirus panic has finally become rampant even here, and on Friday evening all pubs were forced to close and stay closed until further notice.

But maybe it's a blessing in disguise for me. As an extreme night owl, all I can do after a day shift is have a night cap and go to sleep. Trouble is, for several weeks now the night cap used to be three or four pints in my favourite pub. And I would go there even at the weekend, out of pure force of habit. Unable to go there now though, maybe I'll be able to do with a beer can in my digs, and consequently spend more time awake after.

Diminishing, maybe nearly eliminating the various backlogs that I have in the meantime barely managed to keep from overwhelming me, like reading the articles I've bookmarked, processing the books I've read (in the pub), and catching up with what I wanted to write in this very blog.

In fact, on Saturday night I found myself even enjoying not having gone to the pub and sitting at my laptop instead.