Month: January 2019

Winter, Work and Whinging

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Note to self. Don’t take time off work ever again. Sure, it’s all fun and games when you’re knee-deep in Homes Under The Hammer, viewing it through a hazy vista of drugs and self-pity, but when the inevitable return to work happens there’s more payback than you can shake a pack of paracetamol at.

So this week I have been in a meeting. I think there were changes of subject at times, but from the start of Monday until late Friday I was either physically in a meeting, some of which were down south, or sat on conference calls not quite being able to hear people, asking who has just joined and confirming that yes I can see your screen. I’ve had better weeks. All of this was endured manfully whilst still not being 100% fully fit. This lurgy just will not die.

Sure, earlier generations had jobs like coal mining, and at times that could be tough I’m sure, but they will never appreciate the misery of working in a warm office, filled with free coffee, having to listen to some blert talking down the phone line about the art of the possible and reaching out. The first victim of a conference call is my will to live.

To continue my ill-advised and unjustified whinging, added to all of this was the soul-destroying relentless winter weather. Everything feels harder in these dark, wet, cold and sometimes snowy months. Indeed, my drive down to Marlow earlier in the week was remarkable for the snow which seemed to follow me all the way down, only to be joined by freezing fog from somewhere around Warwick. I ended the drive realising that I had everything tensed with concentration for the previous four hours. I yearn for the more relaxed, lighter and warmer times for those three days in July when you don’t need a coat.

Louise now finds herself full of a cold. Clearly, it isn’t the same illness as I had. There’s no way she could handle that level of illness of course. Her affliction is a little more traditional than mine, as the mucus excess is real whereas I was too ill for such trivialities. I doubt I am to blame for passing that along. More likely she has picked it up from one of her many patients whilst undertaking one of the unmentionable procedures and treatments on them. Again, I’m sure that’s a tough job, but there’s no comparison as sometimes I have to work from home and do things like create Powerpoint presentations or write some emails. As the song goes, nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen.

With us both feeling less than brilliant, last night, with a weekend off from Mustarding, we took the chance to order in a curry and binge watch something. We absorbed all of Killing Eve off of the iPlayer and loved it. It was one of those things we’d heard good things about but hadn’t got round to watching. If you are in that same boat, seek it out. It’s a good one.

We are hoping to venture out later to the cinema to watch The Favourite so I can provide another gloriously in-depth review of that next time if I remember. I am the Barry Norman of Bolton. Anyway, things to do, must crack on….

Till the next time…..

Ill Behaviour.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Thanks for all your well wishes last week. They didn’t work, but thanks anyway.

Sweet Jesus monkey balls, I have been ill. Whatever it was that came for me took me out at the knees and reduced me to a sweaty, quivering, moaning mess for all of last week and I’m still not 100% yet. So this week’s musings will be brief again due to my continued roughness and the fact that you really don’t want me to document what I did last week. It was not pleasant.

It wasn’t a traditional cold or similar as I have been without the trademark excess mucus. Instead, it has been a high temperature that has seen me hot, cold and everything in between in the space of a few minutes. At its peak, I have been rocking myself back and forwards in bed, emitting low moans pleading for help or death, whichever would be quickest. Sleep has been a stranger for most of the week too due to the fact that I was instead locked in some hallucinogenic hell, with every muscle aching and a headache like Oliver Reed’s throughout the seventies.

It was only on Friday that I started to return to normality, and beyond bored with daytime TV and watching emails build up in my Inbox I did some work from home. I won’t claim it was my most productive day, but having lost almost a full week and cancelled more meetings than I care to think about, I felt better somehow having got back into it on a Friday, so the Monday to come won’t be as gruesome.

I don’t think they got it from me, as they wisely stayed away from my grottiness, but now Tom, Rebecca and Freddie all have colds. They went out last night to celebrate their anniversary and Freddie stayed with us.

A lovely meal, drinks and paracetamol is not the ideal mix for a night out but, they soldiered through and have just taken Freddie home for an afternoon of cuddles and TV on the sofa which always makes things better.

So with apologies for the very poor word count, I have little else to report after my lost week of illness. Hopefully in the coming days I can declare myself back to full fitness and then we can get these blogs back to the thrill a minute action fests they always are. Right?

Till the next time…..

There’s Not A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow……

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Rebecca's Wedding

This time of year is all about tradition. Today, that tradition is me googling ways to fake my own death to avoid having to go back to work. I accept that may be a little over dramatic, but right now, staring down the barrel of having to work for a living again/still, it seems the only viable option.

I have loved my time off and it has again confirmed my belief that I would be the best lottery millionaire on the planet and I demand a chance to verify that fact properly. Surely my balls must drop soon? That didn’t sound right but you know what I mean.

I have done very productive things, like playing my new PS4 games and I have re-watched all of The Thick Of It on Netflix between walking the dogs and (Louise reads this) spending hours on household chores whilst she was having fun at work.

Friday saw me gigging with Mustard again, this time in Blackpool. You can keep your Live Aids. Until you have played a Blackpool club on the first weekend after Christmas and New Year you can’t call yourself a musician. Mustard have had a busy few weeks, so much so that we had to have our band Christmas do last night like taxi drivers do, once the festive stuff is over. We went for a curry and a few drinkies and the fact that I haven’t dared step on the scales since I finished work tells you all you need to know about how I have enjoyed myself gastronomically as a whole and there will be a price to pay for that for sure.

Following last week’s news about Rebecca’s wedding (I know Tom will be an important part of the event, but let’s be honest) the save the dates have been going out this week. At this point little else needs to be done but I know for sure that Rebecca will have lists of stuff picked out already. It’s just how she is wired.

Christmas also saw a couple of Williams households crash into the 21st century. I bought Louise one of those fandangled Alexa things for Christmas and she loved it so much that she then went out and bought another so there could be one in the bedroom too. If you’d told me just a few years ago that my wife had added an Alexa to our bedroom I might have raised an eyebrow. So we are voice activated and futuristic in a big way.

We also got my Mum & Dad one. Then, for my Dad’s birthday yesterday, we added two smart sockets to their set up so they can now turn a couple of lamps on and off with just their voice. It hasn’t escaped me that with a VR headset next to our telly and us all turning stuff on and off with our voices we are finally living in that final scene from Carousel of Progress.

Even the dog looks not too dissimilar from Oli.

Thankfully we won’t be burning turkeys with our voices, more making it less dark or playing an 80’s play list.

Have I made any resolutions for this new year? No. I hate all this New Year, new you shite. If any business sends me an email with that in the title I have to burn their head office down. I should do lots of things of course. I refer you to my earlier comments about my waistline, but I also really need to finish that book I started years ago. I mean the one I am writing (or not) rather than reading, but I should of course read more as well. I could also do with finding a way to earn a living that I truly enjoy, but I guess that applies to most of the working population. I am finding the rat race routine more and more tiresome the older I become. I need to be like those couples on those property shows. One of them makes African pottery out of phlegm and dandruff in their garage and somehow they have a budget of £2.5 million.

So, I intend to milk every moment out of today, doing as little as possible before the horrors of tomorrow. If I didn’t have to walk the dogs I would consider not even getting dressed…yes, I am blogging in my dressing gown…calm yourselves. With the state of my recent diet, I may have to wear it to work too.

I always try to take off a few extra days at the end of the festive period to reduce the horror of the return, but even on the 7th day of the new year there will still be some idiot wishing me a “Happy New Year” or asking me if I had a good Christmas. Just stop it.

If you have been working all the way through, as Louise has, you are well within your rights to call me all the names you are currently muttering under your breath, that’s fine. Allow me to wallow a little.

Alexa, play my EMO play list.

Till the next time……