Heart attack

Friday, December 17, 2010

Threat Of A White-Out

It rained yesterday, and then it turned into snow. There was a Christmas get-together at the Academy, so I met Carol in the Science department. The 'do' wasn't scheduled to start until 5 p.m. so we wasted some time watching something on iPlayer on her laptop and then went up to The Hub, which is at the top of the building. The room was set up with a really lavish buffet, so we lined up to help ourselves. Someone had worked extremely hard to prepare all this food. We sat and ate, and at least it meant that we didn't have to make a meal when we got home. I had a really bad headache, more like a migraine, caused, I think (although I'd say that I was sure) by the medication. 

Nobody else from Carol's department turned up for this 'do', and most of the people there were the ancillory staff, such as cleaners, caretakers and catering. So, where had the teachers and department heads got to? Somebody said that people had come in to the room before the 'do' began and had helped themselves to some of the food and had left. Why didn't they stay?

We went home about an hour and a half later. There'll be an awful lot of food left over today. A real waste of time and effort.

This morning the gas ran out so I had to put emergency credit on the gas meter, so I had to go through the rigmarole of getting the chair out near the meter cupboard, putting the card in the meter and trying to see the digital display (impossible, as it turned out.) I had to use my mobile phone's display to light the meter to read it and it was difficult to see whether the emergency credit had been accepted. You can hear a distinct sound when this works, so someone had the foresight to design this thing with something you could hear instead of see when there is insufficient light. Still, it's a difficult job, trying to balance on a chair outside in the dark and cold early on a December's morning.

We'd bought a couple of raffle tickets at last night's 'do.' The prize was a Blackberry (not a small fruit for making jam and fruit-filled pies, rather, a rather elaborate mobile phone, or, to our American cousins, 'cellphone.') We had no cash on us last night, so we had to go to an A.T.M. to take sufficient cash out to pay for the raffle tickets.  Our next problem was getting into the car, as the doors of the vehicle were completely frozen up. No amount of pushing or pulling would free either the driver or passenger-side doors. So I had to go indoors and fill the washing-up bowl in the kitchen sink with hot water and then pour this over the car door locks. This defrosted the doors and we  managed to drive to the Tesco Express at Oldbrook and take money out of the A.T.M. On arrival at Tesco I couldn't get out of the car as the passenger-side door had re-frozen! Carol had to get out and pull the door from outside and this opened the door and I was able to get out. It just showed how cold it was this morning, that the door had frozen up in the short time it took us to drive from home to Tesco's.

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