Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

I volunteered to go with Ash's class for his first school trip since they were a bit short of people to watch the kids. It was fine. Few of the kids were ignoring the teachers / assistants (female) when they were being told to do something (or more often not to do something). Anyway, when I used dad voice the kids would instantly stop and do as they were told. This let to me being offered a job working with kids by the end of the day. 

Also been offered a job at Kristi's work. I wouldn't start until the summer holidays are over, but they need people to come in and work at peak times. I'd be able to pick and choose when I want to or don't want to work, so on my 4 days off I could make some extra money. Tempting thought.

[Alex]

Woke up this morning to find as I predicted, we'd had a change of government. Our moderate right wing administration which had allowed itself to become ruled by a fear of the extreme right wing has fallen and a moderate left wing (increasingly centrist though) party has now won, with the kind of landslide that hasn't been seen since the height of Tony Blair's popularity. The SNP in Scotland after a series of scandals has lost big, and seen the country return to voting Labour. It will be interesting to see how that plays out, if they have permanently regained their stronghold on the north or if it is just a temporary return to prominance.

What did suprise me is that our region (which thanks to having a military base in it has generally returned a tory MP) changed to an SNP gain. Douglas Ross who was a rising star for the tories has lost his seat (quite heavily and is now resigining as head of the Scottish tories (to be fair, there aren't really a lot of them. The tories haven't been popular up here since Thatcher got into power).

The former PM Liz Truss (whose premiership lasted a shorter length of time than a head of lettuce) has lost her seat. I wonder who she'll blame that on? The woman is incapable of accepting that she messed up and that her unpaid for tax cuts caused the economy to crash.

Despite the change of government I can't imagine things will change too much. Between the still lingering aftemath of the banks crash, Covid and the Truss's disasterous reign I don't think there is a huge amount of wiggle room in the economy to mess public finances around. The extra money the armed forces badly need to prepare for the future is unlikely to materialise.

There were some gains for far right figures like Nigel Farage, but his party only has 4 seats out of 650 so he can hardly claim to be a big part of UK politics. Lets hope this isn't a base they can build on. Jacob Reese-Mogg lost his seat (although he'll hardly be in the poor house) and Sunak has resigned the leadership of the tories. Good riddance to bad rubbish there.

[Rev. Powell]

The UK is following the opposite path of the rest of Europe, which is lurching right. But you may just be ahead of the curve.

[Alex]

The government went through 3 or 4 different leaders since the last election. They have ranged from being disastrous to at best, just being there. None of them really had a grip on the levers of power. Anything short of a landslide defeat for them would have shocked me. Our (now ex) PM whose personal wealth I believe is somewhere in the 100's of millions claimed that he understood peoples struggles because as a child he didn't have Sky TV. Showing how out of touch he was with the average person's reality was the final nail in the coffin. I'd have been happier if people like Priti Patel and Nigel Farage had lost their constituencies, but I'll take what I can get. I might not like the party that won last night, but I do consider them preferable to the alternative.

Politically, the UK tends to swing widely between moderate left and right every 10 to 15 years. I think the right was in power for the last 14 years (certainly somewhere around that), so it was due for the pendulum to swing back.

[Rev. Powell]

Your moderate right looks like our moderate left here, though.

EDIT: Of course, I think the terms "left" and "right" are pretty much meaningless. Here we have only two parties, so by default whatever one promotes at the moment is "right" and whatever the other one believes at this time is "left."

[Alex]

Funnily enough much of Europe would say the same about the UKs left and right. Thatcher really did move the centre ground of UK politics to the right.

[Alex]

It looks like France has also swung to the left.

[Rev. Powell]

It looks like France has also swung to the left.

I don't follow French politics closely, but that seems like a bizarre result.

I wish the US had a parliamentary system.

[Alex]

I haven't been following it either (to be honest it was a surprise when I heard the french election results as I didn't even know they were having one). The right had been heavily tipped to win it seems but a combination of their support not being as strong as they thought and a united left swung things against them. Most of Europe was facing a widescale swing to the right, but the right wings general incompetance in dealing with covid has caused an early swing back to the left decades earlier than would otherwise be expected. I cannot say if this will be a long or short term thing.

Because several people have left recently work is currently a bit short of manpower and is discussing calling in standbys more often. Potentially this could cut my four days off down to one, depending on how training days fall etc. At that point I'd be looking at leaving myself. The big advantage in this job is the family time I get. Take that out of the equation and the cost is no longer worth the benefits. They can find other people to care enough about the country, NATO and all that jazz.

Went out with Tony for a couple of drinks on his birthday. We only had four, so hardly enough to get drunk on but we did have a pleasant buzz on. At least that's how I was. Conversation at some point got around to why didn't I get into politics, run things with common sense. I laughed and said that the last thing anyone would want is to have be in power. I was asked what things I would do that were so terrible? After I gave them a list of the things I would do, I was told that everything I suggested sounded great.

I wonder if they have any concept just how much blood and death you'd have to wade through to make that vision come true? How many people would be left at the wayside unable to keep up with the changes. Hah! Even with the best intentions you don't fix society without dragging it through hell first. Even then any new system is going to have all the old problems in different ways. It is a subject that have come up several times with various seperate groups of people. Quite why they think I'd be good as a politician I do not quite know. I am convinced that no one can get to the top in that field without having all their principals so thourghly compromised and corrupted as to be ineffective.

Anyway, after I got home it was something of a surprise when Tony's wife texted Kristi to ask her how much we'd had to drink. Tony had went home, needed to go to sleep and threw up on the way to his bed. Didn't think either one of us had enough to drink to end up in a bad way.

Over the past couple of weeks Tony has been chatting with me a lot about his future. Him and his wife have decided to move back down south as soon as they can get a posting (which will be about 18 months). I guess I've somewhat wasted my time investing in a friendship there, but hey ho. Fairly sure he is going to regret his decision to go back down south and be unhappy, but that is their choice.

*sigh* When you randomly look over at todays workmate (not Tony) and he is looking at porn on his phone. Well, there are only a few more weeks to go until he leaves. He has hallmark type movies playing on the tv. I've got my laptop on and am listening to music via my earbuds. Insulates me pretty well from the world around me.

Just the way I like it. The world is just so... uncool right now. People always are, but they really are doing a better than average job right now.

Looks like a nice day outside. A bit of a break from the rain we've had this summer. Pity I am only able to see it via a couple of cameras. Here is me stuck with porn guy, a rifle and 60 fast friends (no idea why we need so many, but that is what we have).

The SWO popped in to drop off his building keys yesterday. I greeted him in a friendly enough manner and he replied "Uh huh" in the same way that I say to Kristi when she says something I don't agree with or don't believe. I was fully expecting to hear that something was wrong with my uniform, or something but he didn't say anything else. We have a couple of civvies working in the front office. In theory this means we no longer have to issue passes and keys, neither of which is really our job but we've been doing it. The guy is an ex military police WO. Not sure what the woman was before. She has pinky/purple hair and wears dungarees with rainbow stripes all over them. I'm not sure what her name is yet, but I've nicknamed her lesbian truck driver in the meantime. Funny. When we are there we have to be immaculate in our uniforms to present a professional image to anyone arriving on base. Guess something like that doesn't matter for civil servants? Mind you I suspect they are on the lowest pay band for the CS. Pay peanuts get monkeys.

Or should that be elephants?

Thinking about taking Ash out on Saturday. Go somewhere different. Might try him back up at the mini-railway in Inverness. We've learned not to take Ash somewhere new as a surprise and that he needs to be prepped for going new places. It really is something we should have figured out a lot earlier. He used to cry when he was in his buggy if we took a different route from what he was used to.

With the manpower situation at work, they are talking dealing with the shortage of manpower by calling us in more on standby. I've said if you keep calling me in then you will have a shortage of manpower because I'll simply quit and get a new job. Kristi has ignored all the houses I've suggested buying or said she doesn't like them since I left the airforce. I very bluntly told her that she now either had to come up with a house that would be acceptable for her, stop just automatically turn down all my suggestions or that I will go ahead and buy a house without her and she can take whatever I come up with. Hopefully she will finally take getting our own place more seriously. She was seriously panicking during my resettlement period that we'd end up homeless (even though there was no chance of me letting that happen, I do have to come out of the military at some point). I've said I'd like to be out by age 55.

[Alex]

For some reason when I am up at the strat fac, I have problems with my laptop mouse. Scrolling down has become a nightmare. With the changes to the website I've changed my settings so that new posts appear at the top rather than having to scroll down to the bottom of the page as much. It is fine anywhere else, but just in there something seems to be causing interference. It's also why I redid my list of movies (since all I do up there is spend 12 hours watching films) watched this year. As the most recent post it will now appear at the top for me and mean I need to do less scrolling down (although sadly it hasn't eliminated it entirely).

Since I am on nights right now, I went to bed yesterday when I got home. Kristi took Ash down to the beach for a day out while I slept. I'd not long got up when I got a phone call from her saying that Ash had went missing in the sand dunes and she couldn't find him. I called a taxi driver who lives in the next street over and got him to run me down to the beach. Just as I got down to the harbour she phoned me to tell me she'd found him several dunes further down. He'd ran up to the top of one of them and by the time Kristi had climbed up, he was out of sight. We knew he wouldn't go down to the ocean or into the river. Anyway, when she found him he was standing crying at the top of one of the dunes. I figure he just ran off having fun until he realised he couldn't see mummy anywhere. Gave him a chat about this is why we tell you not to run out of sight and so on, but didn't give him into trouble. I figured he'd had a rough enough day. Besides he got into a lot of trouble from me for answering back and not doing as he was told. He spent the day with me with me making it very clear he was in trouble. After a few hours he came over to me to ask if we were still friends.

Last shift tonight. I'll be covering the front desk. I'll be running a second Call of Cthulhu game at Kelpie Games tomorrow so it will be a case of get home, get sleep then go out again, run that game then run home to do the regular Friday night game. Going to be fun and no doubt I'll get rules mixed up between sets.

[Alex]

Well both last nights games went well, and both sessions ended up with the groups in cemetarys being overrun with by a horde of zombies. In the first one, well it meant about a quarter of Boston disappeared under a horde of vengeance-fueled zombies (that's Call of Cthulhu for you when Nyarlothotep (a god specialising in madness and suffering) decides to have fun). Even though the group died at the hands of the ghoulish horde, as far as I can tell they all had fun and want me to run more.

The second group (D&D) were walking through a cemetery when the dead started to rise in a scenario initially based on Night of the Living Dead, but ended up having more in common with Return of the Living Dead. Anyway, they fought their way across the ground to the sanctuary of a hut in the far corner only to discover that there was a vampire inside the hut (the heartfelt "Oh crap" of the cowardly gnomish wizard as he slipped inside the hut by himself first, abandoning the rest of the group will live in my memory for a long time  ).

Covid is doing its usual thing with me where I just have zero energy. If I go out for a my usual walks then I am quickly out of breath. I'm looking for

[Alex]

A couple of decades ago now I went on a fairly intensive study of world religions while I was looking for some kind of proof that a god existed. I examined each of them and compared what they claimed they believed and compared it to how their followers behaved. In the end of the day actions speak louder than words as much as people will always use the line "Oh they aren't real [insert name of belief system]" whenever their fellow adherants do something nasty. Different names of each religion, same excuses. Anyway, after I'd checked out Islam, Christianity, Buddism... hell I even gave Scientology a look at and dug into the assorted different sects, breakway factions and cults. Satanism scored surprisingly highly, mosty because it was a lot more basically honest about things. They at least walked the walk as well rather than just talking the talk. Regardless, they all fell short (satanism included).

Anyway all that is history and a slight aside. What I am wondering is how when I was doing all this studying that I managed to miss any reference to this place? https://www.officialcultofcthulhu.com/satanism-cthulianism.

Not that I'd be any more likely to follow them than I was with any of the other ones but I'd have had a good laugh at them along the way.

Last shift today. As part of us trying to get Ash used to crowds and noise we took him to see some wrestling. It was a lot more enjoyable that I expected. Ash didn't get upset and we were able to stay for the full event (which we did not expect). After one of the matches, there was a photo op with one of the champions. I asked Ash if he wanted to get in the ring and have his picture taken with him and was rather taken by surprise when he said yes. I was even more surprised when he went up, got in the ring and posed with the champion. I guess I'll need to take him to more events in the future. He's not been wanting to leave the house recently complaining that the outside has too many people. Well I can't disagree there but he needs sunlight.

[Alex]

One of the women Kristi looks after lost the ability to swallow food or liquids in addition to her various other health issues. They moved her into end of life care where from the sounds of it she was kept sedated to minimise the pain she was in until she finally died (which happened earlier on today). I did warn Kristi about not getting emotionally attached to her charges. Shame she doesn't share my ability to just stop caring about someone if I feel like it.

Anyway her family have had to watch for years as this woman has slipped away from them. I'd imagine for them she has died many times and by slow degrees and her dementia claimed more and more of her.

People really should be allowed a bit more dignity about the whole dying thing.

One of my oppos sent me a picture he'd taken last night of some strange lights over the airfield in a triangular formation. I asked him if he'd reported it and went out to investigate but he said no. Really, what the hell are we doing if we aren't providing security? He said they were hanging in a static position over the runway.

Finally got around to fixing my 3D printer. Took 5 minutes of work and it is back to printing out all the tanks I could ever want. Doing a Char 2C just now.

[Alex]

Holidays are over and Ash is back in school at P2. Hating it and not wanting to go still. I want to tell him I'd much rather let him stay home and have fun with him, but that just isn't the way it works.

Since both myself and Kristi spent most of June unwell and didn't do much with Ash for the first half of his holidays we squashed as much in as possible into the last couple of weeks. I got us tickets for a Dinosaur show (which turned out to be terrible) and took him down to see his gran for a couple of days amongst other things. On the way back up the train was packed with tourists. For some reason, I could hear three separate groups of North American accents (I learned some years ago that a lot of Canadians sound like they are from the states, so I try not to jump to conclusions about which country they are from when I hear the accent) all going over their relationship problems loudly. Felt like telling the guy sitting in the row in front of me that first he needed to sort out his s**t hairdo and greasy skin and then maybe he wouldn't be the only one who hadn't gotten off with someone on the trip. Left him to it though. Hopefully he'll figure it out on their own. I really wish train journeys were still done in those private compartments where I wouldn't have to hear everyone else. The worst is when you get a bunch of teenage girls talking about celebrity relationships.

Ash's first day back at school we spent in the cinema. I just surprised Kristi by deciding we were going to go watch Deadpool & Wolverine. We both loved it and wanted to watch it against straight after (something that hasn't happened since the first Deadpool movie). Unfortunately, we had to get home in time to pick the little man up.

Decided to print out the entire interior of the 'Nostromo'. Starting with the computer room which as a child was my favourite room in the movie for whatever reason. I used to make it out of lego. Anyway, once it is all built up, I'll have to run a game in it.

[Zapranoth]

Three words for you:  noise-cancelling headphones.