So ... How's Your Girl?

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And Mrs M just got approved for a year’s extension to her PhD which we hope will include her scholarship I also made 200 Xmas cards for charity, compiled 2 special ipods for my sister and a friend together with a CD I created for them where I talked about the music I’d put on the ipods from my own Spotify Playlists, over an hour of me wittering on!. I’ve been listening to music through the year but mostly old stuff as not had the ability to keep up with the new. A few lovely holidays in our usual Lincolnshire bolthole which recharged the batteries and three more booked for next year already. We aren’t a very sociable couple so any restrictions didn’t affect us to much. We do have Stewart Lee booked for February, 50/50 probably.

In other areas, Grant says the UK has been weakened, particularly in its influence and power on the European and world stages. But in spite of all that, it has turned out to be a pretty good year in the end. In April I had an operation to fix the hernia my big cancer op of 2019 left me with. That left me out of action for longer than I expected but once I was up to strength again it was just all good stuff. I haven’t seen my son for 16 months in-person, and that’s starting to grate a bit. Still, hopefully see him next May when he graduates High School and goes to University, a steop I’m really not ready for.So I didn't know you knew his dorm room,’ I grinned, ignoring the flush rising up his face I continued. ‘In fact you seem to know him and his room fairly comfortably, how so?’

Xmas dinner out at a pub with Fam this year. All this week been half-expecting a call/text saying it’s cancelled but seemingly not. Been doing my twice-weekly Lateral Flow tests like a good boy for the last few months and so far so good. Most recent (negative again) was a couple of hours ago. The bus service was very unreliable when I was young and it remains so even today. (It remains very unreliable …) I love the work, and I love that I learn stuff all the time, both via clients and via loads of CPD courses. It’s a privilege indeed. On the WFH topic, I much prefer in-person work, what with all the non-verbal material that only really becomes clear when we’re in 3D relationship. Now I’ve decided to make the focus pretty much purely about the running, to try and see how good I can get. If I can run 5k in under 20 mins while eating for a serious calorie deficit, what happens when I forget about the calories, eat for running, and just try to be fast? That’ll be fun.

The kitchen is very old-fashioned, the living room more so. (The living room is more old-fashioned than the kitchen.) What I have missed is experiences – holidays and gigs (though we did get to over a dozen shows this year). Not just the events, but having reliable points in the calendar to look forward to. The furthest I have been from Essex since 2019 is Manchester to see my partner’s daughter, and I have my fingers crossed than some travel, even with restrictions, may be possible in 2022. Might as well have been in suspended animation, as far as my social life was concerned, until June when I finaly got to a (socially-distanced) gig at The Jazz Cafe in Camden with a friend. A few other scattered gigs, muchly appreciated, but mostly life was mundane stuff like grocery shopping, car MOTs and services, bills to pay, Covid vaccines and twice-weekly Lateral Flow Tests etc.

Not bad at all thanks. No major health concerns for me, other than an ongoing need to try and be a bit fitter…just the ability to have a bit more puff would be nice. The year has just ended with me leaving my job at a college thirty miles away for one only five miles away, so the work/life balance is only going to improve from here onwards. And only five and a half years till I can retire… My company has ‘enjoyed’ a merger and gone mad. As a colleague said the other day the new ‘leaders’ (not managers or anything silly like that) are trying to turn a global company with 5,000+ employees into a start-up. The results aren’t pretty so far. We’re good at what we do, could do with some updating, but that’s not going to work. WFH (apart from the brief interlude in the pueblo) was getting trying and solitary but a very brief return to the office wasn’t a great success. Hybrid working meant that there were about 10 people there at any one time. So, acres of empty space, very few water-cooler moments and plenty of tumbleweed. Did an open University course, just a mini thing (introduction to Arts) but felt great to challenge myself and was something different to throw myself into.Dislikes humankind? Generally, yep. I don’t see much to like in most of humankind (too much evil crap and shit stuff and we allow it to happen. And social media and YouTube are real windows into how utterly crap so many people are. And so are the governments we vote for). I’ll spare the gore, but after a rotator cuff injury that crept up on me and took weeks of physio to shift (but is now fine) Crohn’s was diagnosed (unusual in one’s 50s, I was told?), then treated, which resulted in 5 days in hospital with treatment-drug-caused pancreatitis (about a <1% side effect, apparently). I would classify this experience as "unpleasant". The arm full of morphine was the best bit. The early effects of this spoiled one of my "holidays", and one (world class whale watching in Indonesia) was put off for 2 years. My June 22 trip to the Galapagos is looking decidedly shaky just now, too. The last two are somewhat first world problems, I grant you. Work's been a slog, but I can never really complain about that. Lately I've seen the worse end (for me) of the things I'm in line to do now and again (i.e. not spreadsheets) and that takes the wind out of my sails a bit, but, in the words of Marc Riley "mustn't grumble".

Reland says that in agriculture, city regulation, and areas such as green taxation and fintech, new ideas and progress on divergence are evident but in big areas such VAT little or nothing has happened. “There is no joined-up thinking on divergence strategy across government,” he says.Lord Frost refused to have any form of structured relationship on foreign and defence policy post-Brexit with the EU – though the EU wanted one – and we are paying a very heavy price as a result,” he says. On New Year’s Day the UK will have been fully out of the European Union for a year: out of its political and legal structures, out of its single market, out of its customs union. The extent of economic damage from Brexit has been made clear by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which predicts that leaving the EU will reduce our long-term GDP by around 4%, compared to a fall of around 1.5% that will be caused by the pandemic.