Yesterday, the plan for today was for me to head off to meet Val and Fred at 12noon and set the Scottish education on its path to previous glory over a cup or two of coffee, then for Scamp to meet me at about 1.45pm with the stuff the nurse was going to inject us with to stop us getting some exotic infection when we were off in foreign climes. I’d then drop her off at the station so she could get the train in to Glasgow to get even more Christmas shopping, leaving me the rest of the day free. That was scrapped after an early morning phone call. The nurse wanted the afternoon off, so could we come for our jags earlier, at 12noon. (not jabs you’ll notice, we’re Scottish. We get jags. Much nastier – there was even a sign in the surgery advertising Flu JAGS. Scamp wanted me to photograph it to prove to English people what the word should be). Anyway, we agreed and changed the schedule for the day accordingly.
After the jags, I drove Scamp to the bus stop – it’s almost as quick on the fast bus as it is on the train and then went for coffee with the other two. We solved the problem as I knew we would in double quick time. It’s simple when you’re an outsider. This is all you need to do:
- Start teaching the ‘3Rs’ again in primary school although Val tried to muddy the water by saying that it was actually two Rs and an A. Objection noted.
- Get rid of Curriculum for Excrement. That’s the core of the problem
- Sack Swinney and pay us the exorbitant salaries to run the whole system.
After that we discussed Celtic’s glorious exit from the European Cup to Fred’s delight and the new ‘Stones album which is actually very good. Also discussed were “Landscape painting with felt” What the hell is that all about. Last night’s documentary about the Italian artist who tried to steal another artist’s work and pass it off as his own.
After that we left and I gave Val a run home. By this time (2pm) the automatic headlights came on in the car. It was another dull day, but I had previously decided on today’s PoD and it’s almost exactly as you see it above. The other big thing today was the arrival of the new battery for my MacBook. It was fitted in jig time (That means quickly, Englanders) and gave just over 3.5 hours of service today from an initial 75% charge, out of the box. It’s now charging for the recommended 12 hours after which it must be run down to 7% again before repeating the exercise. One of the best bits of the experience was finding that the touchpad on the mac was working again. I’d read that if the bottom left corner switch on the touchpad stops working, it could be because the battery was beginning to swell and press on it. It seems that was the case for me. We’ll see what tomorrow brings in battery land.
Hoping for a better day weatherwise tomorrow. Intending to go to Perth.