Well, there you go, I jinxed it. Ever since I said Spring had arrived a week ago with crisp sunny days we have had drizzle all day every day, interspersed with thunder, lightning and heavy rain. Every time I look out of the window I appear to be looking down on multi-coloured mushrooms with legs scuttling about.
Photo by Ilya Mondrik on Unsplash
Sunday morning but not a peaceful one - my flat overlooks a ring road about 50 yards away and there is a convoy of lorries passing by blasting their horns in a political protest. I don´t know whether it is for or against the government but the racket is the same. They have been driving up and down for a while now.
We have elections coming up in a week or so and I think there is going to be trouble. The current incumbent, who is quite far behind in the polls, is already implying election fraud and he and his supporters appear unwilling to accept defeat. He is a Trump admirer and seems to be following the same playbook. I dislike him intensely.
As a foreigner I obviously don´t vote and try to avoid politics as much as possible. I was a teenager here when we had a dictatorship, I remember it well. The main opponent appears to me to be the lesser of two evils, I only hope the transition is a peaceful one.
Spring is sprung
The grass is riz
I don´t know where
Dem boidies is
Some say de boid is on the wing
But that´s absoid
Because de wing is on de boid
I can still hear him chuckling as he came to the end.
Photo by Aamyr on Unsplash
Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash
Yesterday I posted my letter to the pension bods so now it is a question of 'wait and see'. I didn´t register the letter as the postage is four times as much to do so and the delivery time is supposed to be the same. I would love to know how long it takes to get there.
I have just set my alarm for Monday morning, for six o´clock so that I can hopefully follow the funeral of the Queen. We are four hours behind here. I am sad about the death of Her Majesty and have tried to accompany things as much as possible. I have vague memories of going to a Coronation party as a five-year-old, probably at the British Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, and being given a Coronation mug.
On Facebook some time ago I saw a post saying that you should not mock people who mispronounce words as this means they probably learned the words through reading, an admirable habit. I found this observation interesting while smugly thinking it would never apply to me...except that listening to my audio books has made me realise there are a number of words I mispronounce. I am and have always been an avid reader so I suppose my wider vocabulary must have come from books, although I was brought up by English parents in an English-speaking home. It is quite odd to hear a familiar word pronounced in a different way. I wonder if being bi-lingual has anything to do with it.
The Department of Work and Pensions have decided that I am no longer alive and have not paid my pension for two months - this despite the fact that I returned their Life Certificate form by registered post at the beginning of August.
Oh well, here starts the hassle of proving they´re wrong and that I haven´t popped my clogs yet. The form was properly filled in, signed and countersigned by a witness of professional standing in the community. The only instruction I didn´t follow was to return it in the buff envelope provided, I used a proper airmail envelope otherwise it would have gone by surface mail (sea!) and God knows when it would have arrived.
I fail to understand why, in this day and age, they are relying on the postal service for this type of contact. Nowadays documents can be scanned and sent by e-mail instantly, or photographed and sent by cell phone, also instantly. I can´t be the only pensioner living abroad in a country with a poor postal service, it is time the Pensions Department moved with the times.
I am writing to them to hopefully sort this problem out but in the meantime I shall continue to moan. Watch this space!
