Trying Times.

Here I am again, needful of writing something to the blog because the night is dark and entertainments are conspicuous by their absence.

It’s been a trying day today. All days are trying these days, but today was especially so courtesy of attempting to submit somebody’s tax return online. The whole online business is becoming really quite silly now. More and more barriers keep appearing as both the corporate world and the bureaucrats dive ever deeper into the mania of online communication and security hysteria.

The days when business was conducted using paper and telephone calls used to be so simple. Now we’re increasingly required to be masters of mental dexterity if we’re to negotiate the maze of user IDs, passwords, time-limited access codes, security questions, and so on and so forth. Even the need to have a mobile phone ready to hand gets pulled into the picture. Suppose you don’t have a mobile phone. (Suppose you don’t even have a computer. It’s less that ten years since I had a neighbour who had neither, but the whole messed up juggernaut of modern systems presumes you do.)

I wasn’t brought up in this world and I don’t relate easily to it. I’m also not quite as mentally dextrous as I used to be and I’m growing tired of climbing barriers. And today’s efforts were occasioned by the fact that somebody much younger than me is even less able to cope with online communication mania than I am.

And then there was the rain which chose to fall at the most inopportune time, as it has developed a habit of doing every day for the past week or so. It should come as no surprise that persistent rain causes me a problem which it causes very few other people. It’s all to do with my mechanic friend not knowing what’s wrong with the car and being disinclined to find out.

OK, I know, I’m complaining again. Sorry. It was either that or nothing.

But I forgot to mention that Sainsbury’s is getting busier now that they seem to be allowing more people in. Social distancing is becoming increasingly difficult in there, and just at a time when the Covid infection rate in this area has increased tenfold in the course of a week. Should I hope for a brighter tomorrow?

 

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I’ve had my dinner, I’ve drunk my coffee, I’ve eaten a chocolate bar, I’ve written a blog post of sorts, and there’s still an hour to go before I can start trawling my YouTube recommendations and finding nothing but renditions of Bolero, self-styled gurus, cutesy animals, the-latest-from-the-government-on-Covid, Trump claiming he’s become Superman, and scantily dressed belly dancers for some inexplicable reason. Where on earth do they get them from?

Still resisting the scotch bottle.