An unusual Hogmanay

No cheerful supper with good old friends, no fireworks, no first-footing, no glasses of fizz out in the street or exchanges of greetings with neighbours.  It rather sums up a kind of hermitic year, doesn’t it?  But we are alive, we have each other and the central heating hasn’t packed up (FLWs).  

2021 promises to be better, provided we make it until our turn for the jab comes round.  In one sense.  In another, of course, we have to look forward to the political and economic fallout from the misguided, jingoistic, falsehood-fuelled vote to leave the EU, and to the - frankly - well-deserved isolation that will result.

I’m not sure what to expect from the outcome of the US elections.  If anything, the senatorials in Georgia are more important, since they will determine how deliverable the President-elect’s programme will be.  The outgoing N°45 will continue to make mischief however he can, of course, so it’s all far from over.  Let’s just hope N°46 makes a better fist of it.

So it’s a good moment to celebrate little local successes.  I had a letter from a certain telephone company a week or so ago, pointing out that our mobile phone contracts had come to an end.  A spot of research showed that we could get a deal at less than a third of what we have been paying for the last two years.  On contacting said telephone company, I found that we could improve even on that.  We had taken one biggish monthly data contract and one smaller one, reasoning that when the smaller one ran out, we could use the other, eg so as to tether iPads to the mobile network while we were travelling.  We now have the same allowance on each phone, for £10/mth instead of £39.  The helpful fellow I spoke to then said ‘let’s have a look at your broadband.’  Cutting a long story short, we now have a much cheaper broadband, line rental and calls package, and expect a monthly bill almost exactly half of the old figure.  If you don’t ask, you don’t get.  (But I admit that I didn’t have the brass neck to ask for a pensioner discount.)  We also have a tv box, as the lever to a lower tariff.  It is quite useless, since we’d have to spend £90 on adaptors to couple it up to the router, and pay vast sums each month to subscribe to any interesting channels.  But as the fellow said, we can always use the box as a paperweight or doorstop.

While scribbling the above, an email flashed up, announcing the death of a fellow retired beak. A native of Fife, hence practically a neighbour, he had been rather frail for some years, so perhaps more susceptible to the Covid-19 that carried him off yesterday, at only 73.  I remember observing him while I was preparing to offer to serve in the job, and being impressed by his warmth and courtesy towards defendants who had neither pled nor been found guilty, though he could confidently change register when sentencing!  Sad day.