Musings on the Day

A dull day weather-wise. That all covering blanket of grey. Really horrible. I did visit Wisbech with my wife for the weekly shop. We were determined not to spend too much so used a mini-trolley on the assumption this would prevent us from buying too much. We still managed to run up a bill of £49! I am convinced the same amount would have cost £10 less a year ago. It's getting truly ridiculous.
The 99p store was our next stop. A couple of years ago and we would never have considered shopping there, but now we make a point of visiting each time we're in Wisbech. Amongst the masses of crap, it is possible to find some true bargains. You do need to look though and I have become quite astute at doing just that. £20 can go a long way there and it's satisfying when you leave with two or three heavily packed bags. A sign of the times we're living in and while I was there an oldish chap asked an assistant where something was and the assistant replied in broken English and with a Latvian accent. The old guy really couldn't understand him and simply had to say thank you in the end, none the wiser. In fact every other person you see in Wisbech is a foreign national, often Russian, Latvian or Polish. They all have money, more than me. They have brand new mobile phones and they are driving very nice cars. Not like me.
I've been keeping a nasty secret since March of this year. I have had some library books, some very over-due library books. My wife remarks that I am the only person she knows who can get themselves deeply into debt with a library card. She is right of course. In fact the overdue charge was nearing £50. But luck was today on my side. The library service was having an amnesty for overdue books. So today, I took them back. I had previously thought of simply putting them back on the shelves and denying all knowledge when they eventually came chasing me for the fine. But instead I returned them legitimately. The have these machines that do the job of the librarians. You place your books into a hole and the machine reads the electronic tags and does the rest. I had half expected the machine to sound an alarm and flash red when it scanned my books. But it didn't thankfully and I quickly headed for the adult non-fiction section to hide. I overheard the librarian as she went through the returned books and came across mine. 'My goodness, these are very overdue', followed by a tut. Thankfully she didn't know me from Adam, but I do confess to feeling a little like someone who had escaped punishment for a serious crime.
I hear in the news today that the job market is set to get worse and worse. There will simply be fewer jobs for a growing number of people out of work. I also read a report on Yahoo stating that 36,000 people will become homeless this Christmas. Truly shocking. This could of course be our fate come February next year, unless of course something changes. Until then in a desperate attempt to postpone the inevitable, we are selling all we can on eBay. And things are selling, which is good, but just for £1 or 99p. But it's something and makes me feel a little better that we have 'some' funds coming in.
Tomorrow my wife is helping out on a school trip to Peterborough. She had her CRB check done, sadly essential in these times to volunteer with anything to do with the school. My son and his class are being taken to see the mosque and the cathedral. Wasted on a group of 4-5 year olds I suspect but it's a day out and he'll enjoy the coach trip more than anything else. So I'll be home alone. I may tinker with my newly acquired mobility scooter (another entry). I'll see what mood I'm in tomorrow...