This may be all the blog there is today, because it's a working day and we have friends coming to supper tonight, and as it's only ten hours since I wrote the last entry, and since all I've done since then is eat supper (nothing special), read the beginning of a book about the role of the UK and France in Syria in the first half of the last century (depressing) and sleep (like a lamb, thanks) there's not a lot new happening in north east Essex to report on.
I have made up my packed lunch and eaten my porridge (slightly grainy, could have done with another couple of minutes on the hob) listening to Radio Three, because that's where the set was tuned to last night, and I liked the string quartet that was playing when I switched it on, so left it there. At half past six you catch the tail end of Through the Night, and it is such a civilised programme. A presenter tells you what the music is going to be, in a quiet, polite, neutral voice. Then he plays the next piece. If you didn't quite catch what he said because you were out in the hall dishing out cat food, or the kettle was boiling loudly, you can look it up there and then on the BBC website, instead of having to wait until sometime tomorrow for the website to be updated, by which time you will have forgotten about it, or what time it was.
It is so dignified and soothing. There are no calls from insomniac listeners, explaining why they aren't asleep, or how they first heard this song in 1973 on a date with the person they subsequently married, or who broke their heart, or whatever. The presenter doesn't sound desperately chummy, or prattle, or talk to me in the strange, cheery voice that some people adopt when talking to small children or old people. There is no desperate small talk with a studio guest. I wish all of Radio Three could be like that, apart from Private Passions (and Rob Cowan can do what he likes). Yes, Producer of Radio Three Breakfast, I am talking to you.
Meanwhile, in the Guardian, GPs condemn David Cameron's open-all-hours surgery plans, on the basis that at the moment 99 per cent of surgeries don't open all weekend. Er, I think that's the point the Prime Minister was making. It would be very handy for all those NHS patients who pay for the health service out of the taxes they pay on their Monday to Friday jobs and don't happen to work five minutes walk from their surgery, if they could go to see their GP without having to take half a day off work to do so. As a former commuter I know whereof I speak. And as a lowly plant centre assistant, who has just got up at six in the morning in order to go to work on a Saturday, and who will do the same tomorrow, and in a fortnight's time, if the plant centre and its staff, who are paid only just over the living wage, can keep the show on the road seven days a week for the convenience of their customers, I'm sure that GPs on six figure salaries can work out their rotas to do likewise.
I'm glad I got that off my chest. And now it's time to go and let the chickens out, and go to work.
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