Cakes, ducks and blood pressure

Hi everyone,

 

Updating the blog again.  I was just dead tired last night.  Sorry!

 

It's been a busy couple of days.  Work has been keeping me well occupied, including on some genuinely interesting jobs, which is a massive bonus.  Although I was a bit disappointed at work by this:

 

 

Why was I disappointed by this, you ask?  Because it was a bake sale. Normally bake sales are a good thing: aside from being a source of goodies, the money raised usually goes to the Lower Bullamakanka Football-Netball Club, or the Bandywallop East Fire Brigade, or the Woop Woop Red Cross Auxiliary.  What was this one to support?  One of the business' departments wants money to buy decorations to support its entry in the corporation's Christmas decoration competition.

 

 

The colossal tragedy of Syria is being played out this festive season.  The world seems richer than ever in human misery.  Virtually any number of humanitarian causes need donations.  To do 'fundraising' for as trifling a thing as a corporate Christmas decoration competition seems shameful.

 

Here endeth the Ebenezer Scrooge moment.  Thursday was otherwise good.  SES training took the form of a major cleanup and working bee at the shed, which now looks a lot more spruced up and tidy than it did before.  I have to say, there was much hilarity when a pager message came in for an "animal emergency": there were two ducks and fifteen ducklings on the footpath opposite the lake in Shepparton.  I think the caller was worried they'd try and walk across the road and get run over.  This was not an unreasonable concern, but somehow we're not allowed to fire up the lights and the sirens and drive under emergency vehicle conditions for wandering waterfowl!  Maddie, who was duty officer, managed a straight face and called the member of the public who reported it, thanked them and explained that it was really something for the City Ranger to attend to and gave the number.  I'm pretty sure there's no course SES offers for dealing with duck related emergencies!

 

Ducks: not normally a source of public emergenciesImage from here

 

Today was another day where I kept my shoulder to the wheel pretty effectively, although I headed out at lunch to deliver to the opp shop some things that were considered surplus to requirements while cleaning out the unit (old ring binders, things like that).  The old boy had asked me to come back to the farm while there was still daylight so we could load the stock-crate onto the truck.  I was back here by 6pm, but oddly neither he nor mum were here.  They didn't get back till a bit after seven.  Troublingly, mum had had a spike in her blood pressure and so he'd taken her into town to see the doctor.  It seems she'd been worrying about a few things and then she saw the measurements go up and it all kind of fed on itself.  I've stressed that if she's here alone and feels funny, the ambulance service is there for a reason, and I think she gets that.  Not so sure about the old boy though.  He volunteered to cook dinner tonight.  Notwithstanding circulatory alarm bells, dinner consisted of fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, fried bacon and fried steak-pieces.  I really really need to cook more for the parental units!

 

 

 

Not much more to add.  Tomorrow is the last part of the rescue boat course, and Sunday, God willing, I'll have a good long skype with the girls and maybe get a run in.  Hoping it all works out!

 

More soon.  Hope you're all doing well.