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Monday, June 15, 2009

The school in limbo


Today external examinations and lists flying around as if there was no tomorrow.

Pupils had to remember to bring their identity cards for this examination and, of course, a reasonably number of them have done no such thing. There are fall back positions today, but for the examination tomorrow (their written exam) they must have their cards or passports or I don’t know what will happen. This sort of reliance on identity cards is presumably what our so-called Labour government is looking forward to for us. I abominate the whole concept of an identity card: I should not have to prove who I am on a daily basis. Presumably the carrying of the card will become a legal necessity: in the USA it is the responsibility of the individual to have some form of identification at all times. Why, yet again are we slavishly following the discredited policies of the US?

Such musings are obviously the frustrated results of intellectual displacement activity. What I should be doing now is packing the china, or working out exactly how many Billy bookcases will fit in the new house, or getting the parking sorted out, or arranging the money for the deposit, or getting legal advice about what the Owner can insist on, or arranging the delivery of the electro-domestic white goods, or buying more boxes, or cleaning the flat, or buying paint or any one of a few hundred other activities which will be more productive in facilitating the change over and calming the incipient feelings of panic that I have left undone those things that I ought to have done.

My pressing need at the moment is for M&V (Muscle and Van) to assist with the sordid physical demands of the actual move. It has been suggested that I might like to lurk outside IKEA when I next go and accost the likely lads who themselves lurk outside flaunting their M&V credentials seeking who they might devour. The only thing I have to do is get a telephone number and Toni will do the rest. It is worth a try, especially as I have to call in to IKEA this afternoon to get more boxes.
I am sure that there are other things going on in the world, but I do not recognize their significance when compared to my move to the house. All pales into triviality when compared with The Move. I now understand why an entire book of the bible was given over to the inexplicable wanderings of disgruntled Egyptian workers each one looking for an eastern des res!

I am gaining what information I can about what the Owner is legally allowed to do in terms of keeping my money. We have virtually given up seeing any of the two month’s rent that we put in as a deposit but we are going to fight like hell to ensure that we get the aval back. The infernal simile is well chosen as we are going to resort (if necessary) to union subsidized legal help. Desperate ills require desperate remedies and the money from the aval is already ear marked for filling the new house with those little essentials which make life worth living. Like beds for example!

This should be a period of unalloyed delight for me with constant trawling through shop after shop with the fully justified mission of ‘buying stuff for the house.’ This is not the case because the supply of money to make such an enticing prospect reality is being withheld by the almost comic-book, evil, tight-fistedness of the Owner!

I am still waiting for my expensive money to arrive from the UK. When that money was earned it was 70p for each € and now I am too depressed to ask the people in First Direct to give me the exact exchange rate because I automatically work out how much I am loosing with every transaction.

That way lies madness.

I am now starting to read the short stories of Henry Lawson the ‘master Australian story teller.’


Time will tell.

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