I have worked myself up into a state of ridiculous anxiety about starting a new job on Monday.
I am going to go and learn how to keep people in cages.
I am not very good at this even when it is livestock, they either breed immoderately or don’t breed at all and they always poo more than you expect.
I am In A Tizz.
I suppose it could be worse, I am going to be an officer, not an inmate, although I can’t help but feel at least the inmates just relax and put up with things, helped along by copious quantities of illegally imported drugs. Nobody is going to expect them to have professional standards or be disapproving of them for having a peculiarly illustrated camper van blocking up the car park. They are not flapping about whether or not they have got sufficient quantities of appropriately coloured discreet underwear or worried that their new boots will cause blisters on their bunions.
We went shopping to Asda today, in order to restock the cupboards at home for Mark, and to stock the fridge for the camper van, for me.
This is a disconcerting experience.
It is a long time since I have shopped simply for my own benefit, and I was not really sure what I thought I might like to eat.
I have settled mostly on rice and cheese and yoghurt. I can eat any sort of yoghurt that I like, since nobody else will be around to complain, so I bought coconut flavour.
I wandered vaguely round Asda whilst Mark took the camper van to refill the gas and fuel. The whole getting in a tizz was not helped by Asda having installed some new self-scanning machines that you carry round with you and scan things as you go. I am very much in favour of modern things, and so obviously I thought I would try one.
You have got to write things on a touch screen before it will let you pick up the scanning thing. Once you have got it then you just point it at the bar code on anything that you want to buy, and then wag the laser beam about until it dings. You have bought it then.
The nice thing about it is that it tells you how much you have spent as you go round. This is not exactly nice, but saved me the tiresome nuisance of having to remember to write things down and then to keep totting up a long column of figures all the way round. I always get depressed by this just before the end, when I am putting things in the trolley that I can’t afford, and stop adding up, as if that would help. In consequence of this the shopping always costs lots more than I am hoping.
The not nice thing about it is that it is quite difficult to manage crossing things off a shopping list and pushing a trolley and brandishing a ray gun all at the same time. I got in a tizz about this as well, and when Mark came to join me I could see him laughing from the end of the aisle.
He rearranged everything in the trolley and wondered why I hadn’t just packed everything directly into the shopping bags. I wondered that as well when I thought about it, I will know better next time.
Somebody was on the mighty Internet tonight saying that self scanning things are wicked because they put people out of jobs, like the flying shuttle and the spinning jenny did, but I thought it was splendid. You could purchase haemorrhoid cream or adult nappies or enormous boxes of chocolates all for yourself, and you would not need to be brave about the checkout girl with judgement in her eyes. Also you do not need to make polite conversation about the weather, or what a lot of children you must have to eat all of those sausages. Self scanning is ace.
We lugged it all home and unpacked. I put it all into our fridge at home because I have not yet turned on the gas fridge in the camper van, obviously, and now I am feeling worried that we might accidentally eat it all before I go. Not the coconut yoghurt, obviously, some things have got a limited audience.
Whilst I was busy reorganising the kitchen and flapping, Lucy came down so that I could go on and on about her UCAS application. She has written her personal statement, which more or less says that she likes ballet and getting into fights, and this afternoon we were wondering about which universities might want a street fighter with elegant poise.
She had a long letter from Merseyside Police this morning, explaining the best ways to become a Merseyside Policewoman, which, to their credit, was detailed, thoughtful and very useful indeed, and clearly not just copied and pasted chunks from their manual. We were jolly impressed, and have followed their advice to the letter.
With this in mind she has applied for one policing apprenticeship, and for several degree courses in policing and forensic psychology. None of them are at Oxford or Cambridge, which was disappointing, but one was at Nottingham and one in Liverpool, and one in Carlisle.
Rather to our surprise we thought that the Carlisle course looked to be the most interesting of all. It is not in policing, but is called Security, Intelligence and Investigative Practice, and has modules called things like Crime Scene Investigation, and Investigative Interviewing.
It does not yet appear to have been accredited by the College of Policing, so we don’t know yet if they will accept it, but according to the website the university is doing its best to persuade them.
I do not know if you are allowed to have really interesting degrees accredited, you might have to have a certain percentage of dull bits, like the history of criminology, in order to balance out learning useful stuff, certainly that is my experience of studying.
I can’t help but hope that they get accredited, Carlisle is just up the road and very handy for coming home at weekends.
It might be a splendid thing to happen.
The picture is of Mark doing some garden shed activities. He might not have it all done for Christmas.
The Rentokil sticker behind him is on his newly acquired water tank. It looks as though it might have had an interesting history. We will not be drinking that water.
