Christmas lights

Shortest day: The solstice is at 9.47pm. The sun rose at 8.03am and set at 3.53pm.

I’m pretty glad that I do not have to commute into an office at the moment. Out of interest I was checking the train times and, although there is some discrepancy between systems, the first train into Waterloo this morning was either 0746 or 0804 which is not good.  As I re-read recent entries here I am very conscious that, on almost all the days I’ve had to get a train recently, I have a complaint about them.  Earlier this week I learned that Earlsfield (where we used to live and is close enough to London to get a metro-like service from the mainline railway) is, apparently, getting no trains until 2nd January.  I wanted to look up why it is chaos even when there is no formal strike and I discovered that there is also an overtime ban by some rail unions which leads to too few staff. That aspect is somewhat under-reported at the moment. 

It has also been a day where thousands of paramedics, call handlers and Ambulance technicians are taking action. I am not sure what this country is coming to but we are in a mess right now. 

The day was a little quiet at work. I suspect many people are starting their holidays. I don’t have the vacation days so I am sitting at my desk. I followed up on all the comments on the documentation I wrote yesterday. There were some strange comments about a paragraph where I had suggested an update to existing docs that implied the feature hadn’t been released. I queried why we already had documentation and, by the end of the day, I was still waiting on the response.  It’s quite collaborative though. 

Mark B messaged from Japan suggesting virtual Christmas drinks. Turns out that, to match the time zones, it needs to be tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping that’ll be OK. My boss sent a ‘Merry Christmas’ email this morning which suggests he might not be doing much for the rest of the week. 

This evening I decided that I wanted to try and find some Christmas lights around the streets between here and Wimbledon Village. So we went on a walk up the Wimbledon Common and back along Ridgeway.  There were a couple of houses with nice light displays. In contrast to our multi-coloured visual feast on the Isle of Wight last week, most attempts here were simple white lights in trees or along railings. A very different experience. But there were not as many as I had hoped. 

On the way back I suggested PY look at the 2good2go app and see if there was any ‘magic bags’ at the Co-op on Ridgeway. It’s a branch of the Southern Co-op and not the main group. The Southern Co-op does the 2good2go bags whereas our nearest branch doesn’t. I thought we might get something for dinner tomorrow and lunch on Friday as we don’t have anything in for those meals.  We walked away with three bags of food. It was amazing. I think they just have been trying to get rid of things as Christmas closures approach. It’s all end of life produce but we will eat most of it and a few bits can go in the freezer. Amazing. 

We had another portion of the Chicken Wellington tonight. It means it’s already done ten meals which seems like incredible value. Dessert was a warmed chocolate croissant from the Co-op bags

Finished the evening with episode 2 of Slow Horses. I am already hooked on this second season.