Category: annoying people

Day 223 – I left gym

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Yep. I used to enjoy gym, but I simply don’t think it’s a safe place to be at the moment.

Actually, it hasn’t been a safe place for a while, but I still did seriously consider going back. However, one only has to look at the number of tweets sent to the Virgin Active account to see that the rules put in place to prevent virus transmission are neither being followed, nor enforced. And despite the Social Media Manager’s best efforts at repeated pacification with:

Thanks for letting us know, we’ll follow up with the club concerned

…the worried messages keep coming.

So, no thank you. My membership is cancelled.

The club putting “please wear a mask” and “please sanitise regularly” signs on and around the equipment are akin to the “no fly tipping” signs you see at secluded beauty spots: people really should already know. And if they weren’t obeying the rules before they saw the sign, they’re not going to once they’ve seen it, either.

And of course, the gym bunnies – the ones who go there to be seen, rather than to exercise – are all immune to Covid-19 (until they get it), and so they don’t need to cover up and protect themselves or anyone else. They didn’t wipe down the equipment BTV and they’re not going to do it now. Previously, it was just unpleasant – now it’s potentially risky. And with the gym staff apparently unwilling or unable to make people follow the rules, gym is a no-no for the foreseeable future.

Sad. But just not worth it.

Day 222 – I need help

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Allegedly, anyway.
[Spoiler: No, I don’t.]

Long and dull story short, we need a few more points on our medical insurance spin-off programme to earn better discounts and nicer freebies. I’ve all but reached my limit for points earned through exercise for the year, so I started looking at other ways of scoring enough to get us over the metaphorical, virtual line.

And there is was: a mental health questionnaire that I could do in 5 minutes while watching the football. And it promised almost twice as many points as a 30 minute workout with my heart pumping at 150bpm. Easy money.

And so I went for it. As I remember, there were seven parts to it and it was all multiple choice stuff – often the old ‘”I strongly disagree” to “I strongly agree” with this statement’ kind of thing. I strongly agreed with some of them and I strongly disagreed with others. Occasionally, where I felt fairly neutral about the given statement, I clicked “neutral”.

And then I finished the thing and collected my 500 points and it suggested that I speak to a mental health counsellor.

wut?

It also appeared to class me as “at risk” from my drinking habits. But my drinking habits are equivalent to a glass of wine each evening. If that puts me at risk, then the world (including me) is really in trouble.

And I truthfully answered the mental health questions in the same sort of way. Sure, I don’t think I’m 100% happy 100% of the time, but the fact is that none of us is having an easy ride this year, and if you actually are still 100% happy 100% of the time, then I think that it’s actually you that has the mental health issue.

Honestly, this questionnaire seems to be the equivalent of googling your headache and the daily mail dot com telling you that you have a brain tumour. Overkill much?

I’m well aware that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, but if you feel that my having trouble getting to sleep a week last Saturday demands that I seek immediate help from a counsellor, then you’re
a) being a bit dramatic,
b) wasting my time and (more importantly) theirs, and
c) not a Sheffield United supporter.

I will be good, I will to continue to exercise my mind and body, and really: I won’t off myself anytime soon. I’ll also try and get less stressed about the football, but having narrowly lost this week’s fantasy matchup to that “goal” by Tariq Lamptey – insult added to injury by the fact that the foul on Højbjerg was also counted as a dispossession and further that the two goals scored against Lamptey weren’t deducted from his score – I feel I’m ok to feel a bit aggrieved every now and again.

So yes, football – such a big bit of my life – is still not a good thing for me at the moment.

But I promise: I don’t need help.
I’m ok. Really.

Day 211 – No Marmite

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Infamously, “you either love it or you hate it”. Or you simply can’t buy it.

I was shopping yesterday and I couldn’t find any Marmite. Four different shops comprehensively failed to yield a single jar of popular/unpopular spread between them.
And you can’t just replace it with Bovril, can you? Some of them might be vegetarians.

These things sometimes happen. I remember that time not so long ago that the Western Cape ran out of carbon dioxide (but how?!?!) and couldn’t make Coca-Cola. But Marmite doesn’t need See Oh Too for its manufacture, so what’s gone wrong here?

Well, I think I have worked out the answer.

Remember the whole Lockdown thing* when we weren’t allowed to buy alcohol and were all rationing whatever we had left? Well, because we weren’t allowed to buy beer, breweries couldn’t sell beer and so some breweries stopped brewing beer.

And the yeast that is produced as a by-product of all the brewing of the beer is exactly the ingredient that the Marmite people need to make Marmite. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so bizarre that we’re out of Marmite in SA. No beer, no yeast, no Marmite.

And we can all blame Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

You either love her or you hate her.

 

* we must be on Day 211 or something by now… 

 

Day 207 – ABoC put in his place by internet commenter

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If you’re a regular reader here, then you know about me and religion.

I don’t do it.

I don’t do it, but I happily accept that some people do do it and that’s just fine. Really, as long as it’s not affecting my life and it’s not doing anyone any harm, then as far as I’m concerned, you can pray away to whichever deity you so desire. It’s really none of my business.

Talking of none of my business though, the top five guys in the Anglican church in the UK (presumably, they’re actually second in commands after you-know-who) decided to write a letter to the Financial Times today – about the UK Internal Market Bill.

Now, I recognise that they’re absolutely entitled to do that. So I’m not saying that they shouldn’t do it. I’m saying that I’d rather that they didn’t do it. My feeling is that they should have their views noted and then we should move on. Whatever their standing within the church, publicly criticising political and economic decisions is surely not their job.

I know I said that, in my mind, religious individuals should be allowed to do whatever they want within their own circles (notwithstanding the couple of points I made above), but this intrusion out of their lane irritated me. More so because there would be righteous outrage if the tables were turned and politicians started remarking upon and apparently trying to sway decisions made by the church.

This individual on twitter has put that very succinctly in his second sentence, I feel.

Indeed. Let the elected politicians get on with their work and you get on with yours. It’s not like you don’t have problems of your own that you really need to be working on.

Like:

and:

or:

and:

and not forgetting:

Thus, without want to ironically cross those same boundaries, might I just quote Matthew 7:3-5?

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

OK, there’s plenty of time and opportunity to remove both plank and speck, I know.

But yeah, like Matthew says, maybe start with the plank.