Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent
May. 5th, 2015 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3Well that’s not quite entirely true.
Some elements might be slightly inaccurate.
Oh, ok, it’s a lie…
Things are very busy indeed.
Work has settled down from the weekly visits to Inverness. I might still have to do the odd single day visit, but no extended stays (that might change, in the summer, but for now I’m mostly in Edinburgh). That makes life a lot simpler for me, or at least it would if I weren’t…
Currently house-sitting for a friend. She’s off in Chicago, leaving a dog, two and a bit cats, and a lot of birds and squirrels to be looked after. She lives out in the country (well, by my standards) but within 10 miles of my office. So the commute is cut down, though the pre-work routine is quite a bit more extensive (feed two and a bit cats, give dog three types of medicine and food, fill bird and squirrel feeders). At night things get quiet. Maybe too quiet – I’m used to a bit more going on at night. Still, after the first week of two I’m starting to like it and settle into a routine, or at least I would be except…
My mum is in hospital. She was on holiday, and started getting really bad headaches half way through. The local doctor was giving her injections (which she later found out were Tramadol!) but no diagnosis. My brother picked her up from the airport on Saturday, and took her straight to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. After a couple of days of tests, during which possibilities like meningitis and aneurism were thrown about, they’ve settled on shingles in her head. Which sounds better by comparison, but is actually pretty horrific in terms of pain. So she’s going to spend two weeks in bed having anti-virals and pain killers pumped into her at Gartnavel hospital, which is only five minutes from my Glasgow flat. It’s a place of ill-omen for me, since it contains the Beatson cancer centre, and it’s where my friend Bill’s sister got her diagnosis. It’s also harder for her husband to get to, since he doesn’t drive. So she’s very upset, and in a lot of pain, and that puts a lot of things in perspective for me, especially since…
The General Election is coming up on Thursday (in case you haven’t noticed). I haven’t said a lot about this, here, but it’s been on my mind a lot. For one thing, I won’t be voting Labour, breaking the voting pattern of every GE since I was able to vote, back in 1983. I’ve decided to vote SNP, along with a lot of other Labour voters. There’s a lot of reasons for this – I voted SNP in the last Holyrood election, based on their record in government, and they’ve done well in this term too. I voted Yes in the referendum, which maintaining my Labour Party membership, with the intention of being part of the Scottish Labour Party after independence. That vote was lost, and (to coin a phrase) in the past it must remain. But I was shocked by Labour’s behaviour in the referendum campaign. Not just the relentless negativity which had failed them so badly in the 2011 Holyrood elections, but an actual hostility to policies like nuclear disarmament and land reform, things that brought me into the party in the first place.
Hmm. This post is growing, and will grow further… I’ll cut it short here, for those who aren’t interested in North British politics, and post a new one this afternoon…
Some elements might be slightly inaccurate.
Oh, ok, it’s a lie…
Things are very busy indeed.
Work has settled down from the weekly visits to Inverness. I might still have to do the odd single day visit, but no extended stays (that might change, in the summer, but for now I’m mostly in Edinburgh). That makes life a lot simpler for me, or at least it would if I weren’t…
Currently house-sitting for a friend. She’s off in Chicago, leaving a dog, two and a bit cats, and a lot of birds and squirrels to be looked after. She lives out in the country (well, by my standards) but within 10 miles of my office. So the commute is cut down, though the pre-work routine is quite a bit more extensive (feed two and a bit cats, give dog three types of medicine and food, fill bird and squirrel feeders). At night things get quiet. Maybe too quiet – I’m used to a bit more going on at night. Still, after the first week of two I’m starting to like it and settle into a routine, or at least I would be except…
My mum is in hospital. She was on holiday, and started getting really bad headaches half way through. The local doctor was giving her injections (which she later found out were Tramadol!) but no diagnosis. My brother picked her up from the airport on Saturday, and took her straight to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. After a couple of days of tests, during which possibilities like meningitis and aneurism were thrown about, they’ve settled on shingles in her head. Which sounds better by comparison, but is actually pretty horrific in terms of pain. So she’s going to spend two weeks in bed having anti-virals and pain killers pumped into her at Gartnavel hospital, which is only five minutes from my Glasgow flat. It’s a place of ill-omen for me, since it contains the Beatson cancer centre, and it’s where my friend Bill’s sister got her diagnosis. It’s also harder for her husband to get to, since he doesn’t drive. So she’s very upset, and in a lot of pain, and that puts a lot of things in perspective for me, especially since…
The General Election is coming up on Thursday (in case you haven’t noticed). I haven’t said a lot about this, here, but it’s been on my mind a lot. For one thing, I won’t be voting Labour, breaking the voting pattern of every GE since I was able to vote, back in 1983. I’ve decided to vote SNP, along with a lot of other Labour voters. There’s a lot of reasons for this – I voted SNP in the last Holyrood election, based on their record in government, and they’ve done well in this term too. I voted Yes in the referendum, which maintaining my Labour Party membership, with the intention of being part of the Scottish Labour Party after independence. That vote was lost, and (to coin a phrase) in the past it must remain. But I was shocked by Labour’s behaviour in the referendum campaign. Not just the relentless negativity which had failed them so badly in the 2011 Holyrood elections, but an actual hostility to policies like nuclear disarmament and land reform, things that brought me into the party in the first place.
Hmm. This post is growing, and will grow further… I’ll cut it short here, for those who aren’t interested in North British politics, and post a new one this afternoon…
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no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 02:08 am (UTC)2 and a bit cats? Do tell.
Oops - just read the comments. Sounds more like 3 and a bit cats... :)
no subject
Date: 2015-05-07 09:06 am (UTC)