Ways I found to waste time today

1) Oversleeping
I had to get up at 7.30 am to put the bins out and was so exhausted by the experience that I had to have a little lie down. The next thing I knew it was… well.. rather later than 7.30 am. No, not that much later you understand.

2) Going to the DIY supercentre to buy a very small screwdriver
As regular readers will know my really quite new laptop computer is broken because I pressed the ‘on’ button in the normal fashion. I phoned up the diagnostic helpline (Diagnostics are a little bit like agnostics except that they are trying to find out what is wrong with them) and was told I needed to unhitch my battery and reset the doofer. Unfortunately the battery is recessed somewhere deep inside the bowels of the computer and so one needs a screwdriver to open the back. It is a cross-headed screwdriver which has some sort of a technical name, I forget what. Unfortunately a common or household screwdriver will not do the trick – it has instead to be a mini ‘size zero’ screwdriver. Normally one has lots of these lying around from medium to expensive Christmas crackers, but on this occasion I strangely had no such thing and so had to go out and buy one. And of course in order to get one the right size one has to buy the deluxe model – the budget screwdrivers only come in sizes one and two. If you want a size zero you pay for it let me tell you. Upon opening the back of the computer there is of course no battery to be seen. I shall be reporting this to my diagnostic advisor next time I ring him.

3) Breaking the toilet by flushing it in the normal fashion
I flushed the toilet by flushing the flusher (Yes, that is the correct technical term) in the normal fashion but instead of going to a depressed position and then returning to its former position the flusher kept going round and round in circles. I took off the lid of the cistern and saw that the whathaveyou gizmo (Once again, yes, that is what they call it in the business) had broken in two so another reason to visit the DIY supercentre. Fortunately I was able to buy both things in one trip, but when I returned I was somewhat dismayed to find that the whathaveyou gizmo I had bought was rather the wrong size. All was not lost however, as a trip to the garage revealed that although no hacksaw was in evidence a pair of garden secateurs did the job of cutting a piece off the whathaveyou gizmo in a most efficient manner. The fact that the flushing action doesn’t really do its thing as well as it did before is neither here nor there.

4) Returning my overdue library books and being unable to find anywhere to park in the vicinity of the library
My library books were overdue as I had forgotten to return then. It could happen to anyone. I had to drive to the library as I was approaching from a distance of some 12 miles or so. Normally of course I cycle into town. Unfortunately Rayleigh Council’s transport policy (or lack of it) means that pay and display parking is only 30 pence, meaning that everyone chooses to drive to the town and has no reason to walk, cycle or use public transport, all of which are minority activities. So the carparks are jammed full and the rest of the town is a continual traffic jam of people driving around completely lost looking for more carparks as the existing ones are all full up. If you sense I am bitter it is nothing to do with the fact I had to park at the station and then walk all the way up the hill to the library, pay my £3.64 fine and then walk all the way down the hill again. Nothing at all.

5) Telephoning an organisation, being passed from one department to another, and then forgetting my own telephone number meaning I had to call them back later and get passed from one department to another in a confusing manner for a second time
I’m not going to tell you this story because it makes me look like an idiot.