coldwatch #3
Minus one this morning. Almost tropical. I came out without a tie, and the flip-flops and Speedos seem to be wowing the crowd here in the office (I decided against the board shorts - just too bright for such a grey morning. Plus, when you’ve got the calves I’ve got, you may as well show ‘em off).
The other cold rolls on. I am so tired of it now. My right nostril is permanently blocked solid. There’s a tightness - more of a pinch, really - in the chest that causes occasional shortness of breath and little barking coughs. Believe me, as someone who has had pneumonia and numerous other chest infections (back in my days as a sickly child), this is nothing. But it’s a nothing I could do without. Tired, too. Like, today, reallllllly tired. I want an early night tonight.
Last nights dinner was penne carbonara. I wanted the bacon to be really crisped and salty, but it ended up sort of burned. Not acrid burned, just “Sweet Jesus, is this Pasta with Gravel sauce?” burned.
Still ate it, and largely enjoyed it. Todays lunch is a salad of Bitter leaves, Crumbled Stilton, crushed walnuts, oven roasted tomatoes, celery, and Parma Ham with a mild olive oil, white wine vinegar and mustard dressing. Yum. (And you could leave out the Parma for Vegtarians. Or tell them it’s Linda Mc Cartney’s Parma flavoured Quorn chips. Whatever; it won’t kill ‘em. Unless they’re allergic to meat. Can people be allergic to meat like they can to nuts? Do they choke on their own tongue if they have a little of something elses? I’m digressing. And, no doubt, offending. So I’ll move on…)
But before I can eat that, I have to get through two whole hours of a management meeting here at Feng Shui Bank Towers. If I haven’t gnawed my own foot off by the end of that, I’ll tuck into my lunch with gusto.
Meanwhile, the Guardian’s long vaunted “Atheist Busses” are on the road.
Not sure what I think about these, to be honest with you. I’ve said it before - I’m in agreement with the slogan: There probably isn’t a God, and I can understand that these adverts on the side of a handful of buses could be seen as an offset of sorts for the “You’re all miserable sinners and definitely going to hell” approach so many religions take in their ‘advertising’ (yeah, like half a dozen buses offsets two millennia of psychological and physical abuse), but it’s not really going to put off the ‘converted’ (of any religious persuasion) is it?
And to be honest, it makes me feel much the same way that those pontificating Religious Loons (of whatever persuasion) make me feel: Irritated that an opinion which should, truthfully, be a very private one is being yelled out loudly. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe I am bound for hell. Maybe I’m not. But what’s it to you? Why do you have to press my face down into your own shit? Why do you HAVE to be right, and to prove anyone with an opposing opinion (on something which, let’s face it, is hardly 100% provable either way), consequently, wrong? Why?
I guess it starts a debate (hey, I just blogged 200 words about it), but really, at the start of a nightmarish downturn in the economy, in the middle of the darkest coldest winter, when people are still humming the tunes from the Christmas Services, was this the best timing? I suppose that it’s in environments like this when most people are slightly despondent and they start turning to Religion that the ‘Churches’ (Mosques, Synagogues, whatev) get their biggest takeup.
But if I were backing these ads, I’d have gone for a late spring date: Rising Sap, brighter mornings, maybe (if you’re lucky) a heatwave, clothing and inhibitions being shed left right and centre. At that point, who’d care whether there’s an afterlife like some harp-filled seaside lodging house containing thousands of rooms, with an all-powerful landlord? Your job would be done. Easy peasy.