girlofprey

So, England's in the midst of a vicious wave of the pandemic, we have potential flooding, and Joe Biden is being inaugurated today. Should be a very interesting day in the news.

Also, less than a month after finally leaving the oversight of the EU, the government are 'looking at' the employment laws we followed as part of them, including the ones that protected workers' rights. A 'select group' of business leaders have been invited to the consultation. I wonder if they've also invited any minimum wage workers? Or say, working mothers? Probably not.

America is going fucking crazy right now. It's one of those situations where it's somehow not surprising at all, but also completely unbelievable.

Half past 12 in the morning, and I'm trying to get anything on Youtube to load so I can watch the videos I usually do before I go to bed. On the one hand, everything but Youtube is loading fine, so I feel like maybe it's Youtube - experiencing a lot of traffic on this Playstation 5-eve. On the other hand, my game of the Sims (heavily reliant on the internet) froze and crashed twice tonight, so maybe it's not? Either way, I have the whirling circles of death.

I have everything to say and nothing to say. The American election happened, and it happened slowly, and mostly I just didn't understand enough about it to be relieved by anything that happened, but now I am somewhat relieved. To be honest though, I got quite a lot of relief on the morning after the election when it wasn't just a wild landslide for Trump. But it's a little sad that it was still as close as it was.

Like I say, the PS5 is out tomorrow - in America, and a few other countries, so that's probably when I'll have to swear off the internet until it comes out in this country, next Thursday. So far I am on track to pick it up, in a click-and-collect, one-in-one-out fashion, with help from one of my parents and their car. I don't know what the queueing situation will be like, but I assume my little local shop won't have hundreds of units, so not too bad. Then will come the wiping down, once we get it home. I'm not looking forward to that.

I have been getting texts from B&Q about an order I made, except I never made an order, and don't have much to do with B&Q. I tried to call them yesterday, and spent 24 minutes listening to their extremely annoying hold music with adverts embedded, and then my phone handset died. So I gave up. I checked my bank balance and no payments have gone out to B&Q, so I think it's just a mistaken phone number rather than fraud, but I still feel like I want to tell them about it, but they don't make it easy. I should just send them an email,. but who knows when those get read during a lockdown. Heck off B&Q. Your customers don't know when their orders will be delivered. Unless you are also sending emails as well as texts.

On Monday, there will be an election in a country I don't even live in that I'm incredibly nervous about, and also I have to remember to order a repeat prescription.

Life is so odd.

Hearing my dad's racism and islamophobia increase the longer I'm in lockdown with him is also unpleasant, but hey ho. Maybe it's not increasing. Maybe I'm just hearing more of it.

I love Fatal Frame. I love how female it is. Always female main baddies, and generally female main characters. I love it quite a lot considering I've only ever seen Let's Plays of the games, and played about half of one myself. I can't tell what it means, but the episode % says I'm currently at 46%. If that only relates to episodes I've unlocked, and not what I've done in each chapter, that means I'm still only halfway through it. Which means if I keep playing it I'll probably go past Halloween, which is always weird with scary stuff, but I care enough about the story now to stick with it I think. The story is maybe a bit less compelling than previous games I've seen, because people were generally trapped in those, but in this game they just keep choosing to go back to a mountain filled with murderous ghosts and curses. To try to save people, but still. Back to Hell Death Mountain is basically the theme of every chapter. But I love the characters. Except the stupid man I have to play who walks in water as though it is quicksand. But mostly I love it.

Well, it's been quite a week. I don't really know how I feel about the election results. Well, devastated obviously, but I don't know what else I would have wanted. I voted Labour in the end - turns out there was no Change UK candidate in my area, only the Brexit party playing silly bastards, so in the end I just voted tactically against for the candidate most likely to beat the Tory. I didn't want Jeremy Corbyn to win, given the anti-semitism thing and the fact winning would have probably just made him double-down on everything he was doing, a lot of which I thought was wrong. He wasn't a very good leader. But I knew if he didn't, it would mean a new Labour leader but also five more years of Tories, and five years of Boris Johnson. But now...I guess I was hoping for a hung parliament, and none of the people I was dismayed by to be completely in charge. And not this huge massacre. By very, very hardline Tories. But here we are. I have three nephews now in the social care system, and a government that is not that interested in supporting the social care system. So that's...yeah. Pretty devastating.

One of the post room guys from work - a fairly nasty so-and-so, deaf, and who scowls or doesn't even acknowledge us when ever we try to ask him something - didn't turn up to work on Friday morning, then showed up at 11am drunk, shouting "the country's saved!". And had to be sent home. Yesterday, I was on the bus, and I overheard a little old lady talking to a man near her, saying something was good, and it would be even better next month when we were out of the EU, then talking about how her daughter had had to move because of abuse she received, but her daughter was a 'traitor', 'she was a traitor', 'she betrayed me'. It's very odd living in Yorkshire.

And I know Corbyn was weird, and that was probably a lot of the reason Labour voters didn't vote for him this time. But I also remember that people didn't vote for Gordon Brown when he was running, or David Milliband. And I remember that Gordon Brown's campaign went quite downhill after he wasn't too polite about the woman asking him "what are you going to do about these Poles?". And it makes me worry a little bit what it will take to get people to vote for Labour again, if anything.

But for now we just have to deal with the Tories. And Boris Johnson. And the fact the UK voted for Boris Johnson like the US voted for Trump. But at least he wasn't up against Hillary Clinton, I guess.

Anyway. Last week was rough for other reasons. We really didn't know what was happening with my YN's birthday until the night before, and I didn't get to see him because the foster mum could only come in between the times I was working for. And some stuff has been happening with my MN, although I'm hoping that's calmed down now. So yeah, I got to Thursday evening, was suddenly paralysed by fear that I'd somehow voted wrong for a while, and then realised on Friday I was completely wiped out. Had basically used my energy to get that point. And I'm still tired now. Also I checked my bank balance on Friday and found I had less money than I thought I did, which makes some of the Christmas stuff I wanted to do slightly less possible. Or I'll have to be more careful about it, at least, and careful isn't really what I want to be doing right now. But, I do have some time off. I've booked Tuesday to Friday off at work this week, so I only have to go in tomorrow, and then I have the Friday after Boxing Day off. So it's only one day of work this week, then only two next week. And I've done all my Christmas shopping, pretty much. And I get paid the Friday after Boxing Day, so if there's anything I want to do or get I can do some of it more easily after then. So yeah. I think I will be resting a lot. But I will be able to relax, at least a little. So I'm very much looking forward to that.

Thanks Tories.

Last Thursday at my counselling session, I got talking about how I'd been really tired lately - with the heat, and the stuff we were talking about, and coming off my medication probably - and how I just wanted a holiday. So that day at work, I decided to have a go, and asked my boss if there was any chance I could have Monday (yesterday) off. He said it would be difficult, given that it was Friday the next day, but to leave it with him and he'd see what he could do. He didn't come and speak to me about it again, and he was really busy up till the end of the week, so I decided I didn't want to bother him about it, I'd just assume that if he'd arranged it he would have told me, and he didn't tell me.

I came in yesterday, and I see the morning receptionists now with my earlier hours, so I saw the woman on from the morning. And she said "I thought you weren't in today - I'm supposed to be in all day". And my boss had arranged the day off for me and had just forgotten to tell me. So I went in and said this to him, that he'd never actually mentioned he'd arranged cover for a day off, and at that point the day off wasn't much good to me because I'd already gotten up and ready for work and come in. And now everyone's running around trying to figure out how to give me next Monday off, because they feel bad that I didn't get the holiday I'd actually arranged. But apparently next Monday my boss is off, the morning receptionist who normally does that day is off, and a bunch of other people are off meaning we're spread a bit thin. It's very nice of them, and I've told them not to worry about it if it's really impossible. But I don't really know what's happening next week now. Also my boss said he'd arranged cover for me about ten minutes after I asked him on Thursday, at which point he could have just emailed me quickly. But he didn't.

The news at the moment is equal parts terrifying and hilarious, but at least people are angry about it I guess.

And hello chaos, obviously.

This year is like the type you'd write about on the blurb of a crime or spy thriller. "The summer when a heatwave swept through Britain and England looked like they might win the World Cup, while back on British soil people were dying of Russian poison, and the government fell apart while trying to work out an exit from one of their longest standing alliances". Like you couldn't make it up. It's ridiculous.