Off Work... Again....

Well, here I am at home in the snow... my driver's mate didn't turn up today ("ill") and with no-one to help carry, and the roads supposedly bad, I was sent home.... so here I am, thinking about how much more snow we used to get.... I think the main problem on the roads nowadays in this sort of weather isn't the snow, but the fact that most drivers either can't remember how to drive in it, or have never driven in it anyway.... the amount of people I see revving too hard, using too low a gear, and turning the snow to ice is amazing... I usually get nasty looks as I effortlessly cruise by the poor unfortunates slipping ontheir own mess.... remember, start of in 2nd gear, using as few revs as possible, and you'll be ok... and if people didn't drive too slowly, spinning their wheels, the roads wouldn't be treacherous... keep up a fair speed, and the friction of tyre on snow actually clears the roads.... strange but true.... but I digress,.... so, how to spend my day....years ago, with the snow deeper we would have driven(!) to Bradgate Park and gone sledging, but we don't relly get enough snow for that nowadays.... and for some reason the roads get blocked.... but i won't start on that again... so today, the plan is, washing up, help my son build a snowman, try to do some more on a model railway I've been trying to finish, and see whether or not i can get to Beavers tonight... but there we are... anyway, until the snow turns to slush, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!

Off Sick....

Here I am, old Ironguts Wisebeard, off sick with stomach pains, leg ache and sore throat... must be a sign that I'm getting old... Time was I could eat anything (barring milk products, but that's another story...) without the slightest worry.... people would be off school for days with debilitating stomach cramps and diarrhoea, and the only effect it had on me was a slightly loose stool.... which always led me to wonder... were they really iller than me, or did i just make light of the burden?? Was I in some way more resistant, or just better able to cope?? Or (and I suspect this may be the truth) were they in fact wiser than the Wisebeard himself, using the "illness" to improve their quality of life and increase their "me-time"??? If so, I missed a trick... instead of sleeping at school, I could have slept at home.... The trend has followed me through work as well... since leaving school at 19, I can recall having about five weeks off sick... three days for hospitalisation, five after the removal of a cyst, two weeks for broken ribs... in six years at my current employ, this is the 11th day off sick.... that's less than two days a year on average.... most of my co-workers regularly have a week off for "flu" (read: I sneezed gently this morning...) and yet I can bet that if I have more than a day off now, I will be moaned at more than any of them.... but that, or so I am told, is life.... as soon as I get one, I'll let you know...

Illness, more than anything makes one think... usually about rubbish... what I'm wondering now (and I may put up a survey on KMC...) is this... When I moved into my semi-detached property, I automatically placed the bed in the master bedroom so that its headboard was along the wall adjoining my neighbour's property... in my job as a delivery man, I often see the same arrangement... obviously, in detached houses it is impossible to do this, but they seem to arrange their beds along exterior walls... even in terraced houses (or town houses if you're a bit posher) the beds seem to be along the adjoining walls.... but why??? is this just a British thing?? Or is it the same the world over?? Is it because we'd rather bang the bedstead against our neighbour's bedroom than our kid's rooms??My bed is now alongside the interior wall rather than the adjoining one, and I am using myself as a guinea pig to see whether this has any bearing on my life... if so, do i change for the better or the worse, and if worse, i shall look into getting government money to research this further....In the meantime, please let me know... is your bed against an adjoining wall or not?? is this simply because it's the nearest you have to an exterior wall?? did you just put it there without even thinking, or was it a conscious decision...??? as always, Wisebeard looks to you to help his beard grow wiser... until next time, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!