Tuesday 6th January 2015

Monday.

And so it came to pass, that the endless holiday stretching back to that boozy afternoon on the 19th December spent in The Rack of Ale. In that time, we walked, drunk and ate cake. Lots of cake. But most of all, we got to generally waste time in a non-productive manner. For over two weeks. It was wonderful.

But all that was now over, and on Monday we had to all go back to work. The alarm went off at quarter to seven, it was still dark, and the cats we all meowing to be fed. Oh dear.

So, we get up, Jools feeds the cat, make coffee, and gets her stuff ready for work. I am to work from home, as there is no guarantee that there would be a desk for me at Ramsgate. I had had two, whilst not quite nightmares, but unsettling work-related dreams about things going badly at work, of course, being a dream it all seemed so real, and so I sat at the table trying to get my head around the going to work thing. I did switch the computer on, and found as Outlook loaded, I had a two hour department meeting to sit through. Welcome to the working week.

And so the day progressed, in much the usual way, meetings, mail, tea, coffee, more meetings.

And then the VPN client failed. So, I could not get to my mails, the intranet was unavailable. I sit there watching the program tried to connect. And again. And again. And again. I go to make a brew, I can hear the chiming of the program from the kitchen, still trying to connect. I drank my tea whilst the chiming continued. My mind wandered, I did check my phone at regular intervals, no new mails came in. So at half four, with still not having reconnected, I switched the computer off.

By which time the twittersphere was alight by the news that the Norwich manager, Neil Adams, had resigned. (see previous post). I go to the BBC website to listen to Canary Call on BBC Norfolk, and listen to what the fans thought. And what I learnt is that fans really should have nothing to do with running their club, in that either the manager is the greatest person in the world, or should be sacked. Nothing inbetween. We would hire and fire on a weekly basis, and those who even see all the games could not agree on whether the team, the manager, the club management were any good. What chance have the rest of us got? I hate listening to phone ins, as the usual answers are: buy more players. get a new manager. poach that manager. should never had been made manager in the first place. stop sitting on the fence and tell me what you really think. I switch off after an hour, thankful that Norwich fans are pretty much as clueless as fans of other clubs. No real surprise there, then.

In the evening I sat down to watch Wimbledon v Liverpool game, an FA Cup tie, a replay of the 1988 final. Since then the two clubs have had different paths, Wimbledon having moved to Milton Keynes, a new club formed by fans and about to move back into SW19. It was this Wimbledon that were playing, the new club, the fan-owned cub. The result did not matter, but in less than a decade after having been form, they were live on TV, playing Liverpool and already a football league club, having finally beaten the old club in the league cup this season.

The phone went off at half five this morning: Nan was in a bad way, should they give her a sleeping tablet? Can you give her something in liquid form? Well, she's isn't really with it. Pardon? Well, she has been seeing things again. At this point I would have said seeing hallucinations, but I can't spell that. Google spelt that. The doctor is called, we go down to wait. Nan is looking paler than usual, she looks tiny. And frail. But then she is. She wants to die: she has no real quality of life, she cannot get out of bed now, and is so sad. It is just as hard on everyone else, Jools and her siblings. Its not nice to say that we wish people dead, but she wants to go, and we don't want to see her suffer any further.