We’re midway through August, traditionally the height of the UK summer. What has this meerkat been up to?
Resisting Temptation… and Failing
On a few recent occasions, I have found myself greatly desiring to joust with one or two individuals on subjects pertaining to, among other things, science and creationism, and Donald Trump. I tried not to do so, because there is simply nothing to gain from arguing with brick walls. The deeply conservative religious folk that I tend to butt heads with have dramatically different standards of evidence to what I consider acceptable. It could be said – and I’m not being entirely tongue-in-cheek here – that evidence is a hinderance to them. With that in mind, and given that I have no desire for regular tit-for-tat hostilities, it’s usually best to deny battle completely.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t sometimes tempting. Debates can be invigorating, but maybe these particular debates would scratch the wrong kind of itch. They’d rumble on for practically forever, lack structure, and I know at least one of my sparring partners would never agree to the scrutiny of a public debate site. I recently joined one such site which rather awkwardly pits you against AI combatants and has AI judges, but it is nonetheless an interesting exercise.
Searing Heat
Precisely two weeks ago delivered yet another swelting day here in Essex. My phone advised me it was 31 C, but it might have been more. It was certainly too much, and it co-incided with the news that more than half of England was officially in draught conditions.
The idea that climate change is a hoax should have no traction, yet you can guarantee that despite the mounting evidence, there will be plenty of climate change deniers who continue to ignore the clear and obvious trends. Our weather is getting more erratic, with consequences we cannot predict. The future of the human race is at stake here. What kind of world do we want for our children, and their children?
New Ink
My 12th tattoo is all about honouring our gorgeous fuzzy wuzzy booboo, Castiel. This furry friend has been a feature of my family’s lives since 2013. He’s a good cat.
The day of the tattoo proved busy. After getting it done, my wife, daughter and I went to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day at the cinema. Circumstances led to us seeing it in 3D, which is not my normal preference, though it was quite an epic experience, and further evidence of how Marvel are recovering after a few awkward spells. The film is quite personal, which has generally been true for all of the MCU’s Spider-Man offerings. What proved slightly annoying was a father beside me with a young son. The kid didn’t really understand cinema etiquette, and kept rather loudly asking questions.
I get it, he was young (if he was more than five years old I’d be surprised), but this is where the parent needs to make it a bit clearer about the need to be quiet in a cinema.
Feeling Overloaded
In my newfound status as most experienced consultant by far at work, I am getting the lion’s share of the workload, and I will be honest, I do not like it. Yes, in theory I should be benefitting from extra sales, but I am also burdened with multiple appointments to juggle, and my colleagues are adding more to my existing load. I have no desire to take on more, especially when I feel I have more than I care for already.
Alas, this scenario is likely to be the regular one for the foreseeable future. My position and my experience make me the focal point for customer queries and designs. I really need a new job, but the jobs market continues to frustrate me. I might have to make a sideways move before I can make an upwards one.
I did see one possibility, but I am not exactly fully qualified for the role. Still, if I never try, I will never succeed, so let’s see what happens.
The Return of the Scourge
I woke up on the 2nd of August to the overwhelming need to keep sneezing! My immediate thought was hay-fever, so I doubled-up on hay-fever meds (naughty!) and hoped to ride it out.
The trouble with the meds is that they took a little while to kick in, so I had to endure feeling like I had to sneeze for a fair march of time. I don’t like sneezing, and I loathe it all the more when I can’t stop, so I really needed these meds to do their thing.
Eventually they did work, and I felt vaguely normal, albeit drowsy.
Breaking and Entering
Time for yet another surreal dream. I was with a small band of… rebels? Eco-warriors? I’m not sure, but we wanted to get into some kind of secret government facility, which might have had something to do with AI or aliens, I don’t know if the dream ever made it clear. The boring grey building was cordoned off by a large hedge, but we were able to drive around it to the entrance and get into the place without too much trouble. Our group then split up, in search of whatever secrets we were seeking. I woke up shortly after that, having not discovered whatever juicy stuff was being kept under wraps. Ah well!
Nude Hour
I wish to point out that I was most definitely not wandering around naked for an hour! What I refer to is a visit to the showroom from the police, who wanted CCTV footage from the early hours of a July morning. Apparently someone had been spotting wandering around naked. The footage was presumably required to serve as evidence of where and when. Unfortunately, between the location of our cameras, and the darkness of a very early morning, the footage wasn’t great. Someone did walk by the windows, but it was impossible to tell much about them. It was also impossible to tell if they were clothed or not. Just another normal day in my town!
Urgh
Having been faintly irritated by one small child at the cinema, I was then irritated by a cluster of kids whilst at work. I get why sometimes parents have to bring their kids along to design appointments, especially at weekends, but is it too much to ask for annoying spawn to shut up?! To be fair, it’s a boring experience for kids. There’s nothing to do but sit there for up to two hours, so it’s not really fair on the kids to bring them along! It is a case of necessity that never really works out for the parents, kids, or the consultant.
Manic Mondays
Ok, so it wasn’t actually too bad, but still, scenarios involving back-to-back appointments and training new starters at the same time did make for a day that wasn’t as straight-forward as it could have been. I suppose it could have been a lot worse, so I will be thankful for the small wins!
Tedious Tuesdays
Over the span of what started as a rather slow Tuesday, I gradually had people start to want more and more of my time. I felt a little bit like I was being pulled in different directions, and it annoyed me. It is the cosnequence of being the most experienced person in the room, so to speak. Fitters are reaching out to me. Customers are turning to me. It’s all landing on… me!
I don’t want any of this. Alas, every possible route out is not currently ideal.
Nervous Wednesdays
Last Wednesday, my daughter had an appointment back in London. This would give us what I hoped would be the final results from her surgeries, and close the book on an unwelcome passage of our lives. As we’d be in London anyway, plans were hatched to make a day of it. Last time around we’d found a small Chinese place, near the hospital, so the aim was to go there for lunch. What was proving impossible to discover in advance is whether it would be open!
As to her appointment, it largely went well, though a failure from our local hospital to provide the London hospital meant a blood test, and the doctor also advised that my daughter will need a short course of radioactive iodine, as a final precautionary measure.
Still, the overall prognosis was considered excellemt by the doctor, so there’s a significant element of relief! Instead of the Chinese for lunch we went to an Italian place in Leicester Square, and we actually walked from place to place, owing to nice weather. What none of us bargained for was an experience outside a Japanese shop near Tottenham Court Road, which saw several roads cordened off. There’d been a stabbing, in fact more than one, and police at point sealed a load of people – including my wife, daughter and I – within the street!
In one sense, we actually got lucky. My daughter wanted to go into the shop but it didn’t open till 11.30. We wandered off to get food, but if we’d loitered, we might have been caught up in this rather terrible event as it happened.
In the wake of all of that, our next mission was to get to the London Coliseum, where we would see Now You See Me Live! on stage. The movies are filled with fun sleight of hand moments, and the stage show was no different. It featured people escaped locked boxes, various card tricks, prediction games, and at one point, a particularly death-defying stunt involving being a guy being lowered head-first, whilst handcuffed, into a water tank, which was then sealed. Without a doubt, that was the most nerve-shredding moment of the afternoon!
There’s something about magic acts that’s… well… magical. The skills involved to pull off some of these tricks are beyond my comprehension, but it makes for terrific entertainment. This was a great show. Weirdly, when they did a trick involving numbers and dates at the end, I got emotional. I don’t know why, but I teared up!
From there, we went and got our Chinese food, and ultimately came full-circle in the day’s voyage across London. We managed a lot of our day without needing the Tube too, which was quite rewarding. The food was excellent, and from there, it was a relatively easy journey home.
This is our second trip to this Chinese place, and if we find ourselves back in that neck of the woods, a third trip is a distinct possibility. The food is great, the service warm, and the portions are generous.
Warm Conversations
I had a recent chat with a good friend the other day. It was nice to touch base with them, and it got me thinking that there are other old friends I need to reconnect with, ideally in the form of an evening in a beer garden. Talking with friends is underrated, especially in terms of mental health. In the wake of a challenging 2026, for a lot of people, it’s always good to pick up the phone, or make plans to meet.
Dreams of Going Places
You know the drill. This meerkat will have some most interesting nocturnal, subconscious adventures. How about a double-header? Sure, why not. To begin, I dreamt I found a new job, working for Tesco. What made this unusual is that the supermarket site I was working at in my dream was divided into two buildings, and the staffroom in one building was nearly as big as the supermarket itself, complete with a large outdoor garden. I’m pretty sure this sort of arrangement does not exist! I don’t recall the specifics of the dream, other than that I was quite happy in my new job.
Next came a dream where I was travelling around London with my wife and daughter, and this time, my parents were with us, and so were my grandparents. I may now only see my nan and grandad in my dreams, but it is always a warm moment. As we ventured around London, I lost my rucksack, as it fell from my hands and landed by the tracks as the train – which was now mysteriously an open-top train – rattled along. I was annoyed, because I’d have to sort out new bank cards, house keys etc.
At the next station, my grandad was talking about finding a loo, but I think it had more to do with an injury? My dad and I were then talking outside about how my grandad wanted to shield my nan from stress and worry. It was shortly afterwards that I woke up.
The Scammer Resurgence
I regularly post about my books on social media. If I didn’t, I’d get no exposure! Sometimes these efforts go off without issue, and sometimes I attract attention from unscrupulous scammers.
First up, I was contacted by ‘Lauren Layne’. Now, there is an author by the name of Lauren Layne. She is a best-selling author with more than 40 books to her name, in the field of romance. Someone pretending to be her was offering up a writer’s lift on Twitter, and no sooner had I shared details of my book, she was sliding into my DMs to ask me questions.
The second pertender was going by the name of Donna Tartt. Once again, there is a real author by the name of Donna Tartt. She does not appear to have a website or even a social media presence. She is also very successful.
Against my better judgement, I decided to humour the conversations with these two pretenders, awaiting an opportunity to make it clear I was not fooled from the start. In short, I was stringing them along, awaiting their inevitable sales pitch.
More Travelling Dreams
This time around, the dream featured me doing something I would take considerable steps to avoid. I was going on a ferry crossing, and I can assure you that I would not consciously choose this. I have have almost always puked on ferry rides. I hate them, and will always pick the Channel Tunnel ahead of a ferry crossing.
Do I enjoy flying? Yes and no. There’s something vaguely unsettling about being on a plane. That said, I would always pick flying over ferries too. The lurching and the rolling and the horrible motion of the waves makes me queasy very quickly.
I was apprehensive of the ferry trip in the dream too. Let it be known that I will always take whatever steps are necessary to avoid a ferry! Such are my strong thoughts on this subject that I’ve even gone and done a Meerkat Prompt about it!
The Stellar Ballet
I don’t usually wait until the evening to post the Meerkat Muse, but given the rarest of rare opportunities to witness a magnificent solar alignment, I wanted to wait so I could share my pictures with you. Solar eclipses are wonderful sights, and it is a cosmic marvel that the sun and the Moon line up so well.
Alas, between the quality of the camera, the sheer brightness of the sun, and my rubbish photography, the pictures I took weren’t great, but I’ll share them anyway.
Yah… it was a bit anti-climatic, though it did get noticably darker. If we’d managed to get the actual glasses, then who knows, the whole experience might have been different. Ah well.
A Change of Style
You might have noticed that I’ve gone for a new theme! I figured it was time to give Meerkat Musings a little makeover. Hopefully the new style is clear and easy enough to navigate!
Work Woes
Tuesday brought a number of reasons to feel faintly irritable. Firstly, one of my colleagues called in sick. To be fair, this wasn’t actually that big of a deal to me. Stuff happens, and I have called in sick before. The irritating part of the day would come later.
Firstly, I had a customer to deal with who had been weighing up a bath or a shower in their space, but their measurements left a lot to be desired, so interpreting them and having some sort of plan vaguely ready for our appointment was challenging, to say the least. It’s great when customers bring in measurements, because it spares the chore of a home visit, but when they don’t give me all the info I need, it winds up being a headache anyway.
Secondly, there was the arrival of yet another display stand. At this point, we might as well be a display stand showroom. The store is filled with display stands, eating into our limited floorspace. You’d think that eventually, common sense would prevail and someone would think ‘oh, that showroom is small, we won’t send yet more displays their way’, but let’s face it, common sense is not the forte of people working in a head office far removed – literally and figuratively – from daily showroom life.
In some parts of the world there is such a thing as national service, where able-bodied people of a certain age are expected to complete military training. I have jokingly suggested that there should be a ‘retail service’, that would require everyone to spend a few months working in a store or showroom, dealing with the public. That should be extended to head offices too; everyone at head office should spend a month doing the job of a showroom worker, to gain a thorough appreciation of what we have to do. Maybe then, we wouldn’t get quite so much crap to deal with.
So we draw to an end another Muse. I wish you all well, and I look forward to providing you with another Muse in a couple of weeks!
Be First to Comment