It was just as well that I got my Conspiracy Theory about the Trumpian Virus in quickly as the newspapers and the internet are awash with the assumption that there is more to this than meets the eye. Trump of course (of course, naturally) fuels uncertainty by doing things like having pictures staged in his hospital presidential suite where he is signing bank pieces of paper: The King of Lies Lying Again!
The fact that there is even the remotest chance of that vile anthesis getting anywhere near a chance of staying on in the White House is beyond astonishing.
After a series of inappropriate sexual liaisons between staff and students coming to light in my university and nothing being done about it, I asked one of my lecturers what someone would have to do to be sacked. “Well,” he replied, “I think buggering the Dean in the Quad might do the trick!”
What would Trump have to do? The mind cringes at the grotesque extent of depravity that he would have to show before his ‘base’ Base would turn on him. Though, thinking about it, I would like to hear some of the terminally deluded MAGA supporters try and explain away Trump doing what my lecturer suggested might be a terminal sexual escapade!
But, enough of such trivial problems when there is the tragedy of my Significant Birthday Party being cancelled. United Nations Day will now be just one day among many – though at least the two of us can go out and celebrate.
I will have reached the age at which, I have been told, getting travel insurance becomes a little more problematical. As travel is not on the cards at the moment and is unlikely to be for the next six months, or nine months, or? It is not a pressing problem, but it is one of those niggling tasks that you set yourself and then forget about until you are about to travel and you suddenly discover that the cost of immediate insurance is more than the cost of your holiday.
Writing about it makes it Something To Be Done and, in my world, the word makes things more real so it is now lodged in my mind as a concept that must be dealt with. Like the vacuum cleaner.
I have recently become the proud possessor of a new cordless vacuum cleaner – it’s the three flights of stairs that make a cordless machine essential and I am therefore faced with the problem of what to do with the old one.
To be fair the old one works intermittently, which in many ways is the worst form of fault. If the thing is dead it can be thrown out. But if it sort-of works then there is something deeply uncomfortable with jettisoning a machine that is sort-of useable.
The problem could be a connection in the floor cleaning (i.e. the most important part) of the hoover. The thing still has suction, but unless the little blue light comes on you can push the machine around but the brushes are not turning and the efficiency of the thing is low.
So, I am going to take it to a repair shop. God alone knows how I am going to eke out my Spanish to explain what I think is wrong; but it is an exciting prospect! I have passed even more difficult linguistic challenges with the aid of handy Spanish nouns and hysteria with a dash of Marcel Marceau thrown into the exciting performance that comprises my attempt at communicating in a foreign language.
Unfortunately, my past dealings with the repair shop have not been of the most fruitful, as the last time I brought something in for repair they dismissed my concerns and told me to buy new. I called (via email and telephone) on the ‘authorities’ of two countries to refute their claims and they had, ignominiously, to admit defeat and replace the defective item.
I suspect that the fault in the hoover is a simple mechanical or electrical one, but one constantly has to deal with the grasping tendrils of planned obsolescence, the lack of technical ability and a built-in disinclination to repair rather than replace that frustrate a desire to make do and mend.
You might be asking, “But, you have already bought a new replacement for your ‘broken’ machine, so why not simply get rid of it and make full use of the new?” A good question, but one that doesn’t really work with the way that I buy things. My logic is not the sort that says that I have to use a brush and pan while the old machine is repaired. Buying is an end in itself. And “argue not the need” (or “reason not the need” as Shakespeare might insist he actually wrote) as sufficient unto the day is the purchase thereof. So, to speak.
