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On the dog walk I realised water was getting into my welly. It’s the second welly to split in a year, from a different pair (another old one though, we got good use out of both pairs) but I was left thinking, did I throw away both boots when the last one split and was this the welly from the same foot. Because I could match up two broken pairs into one working one.
They looked close enough to work as a new pair.
But I think I threw them both away last time. What a fucking idiot.
I am keeping the good boot this time. We currently have one and a half functioning pairs between us (I cleverly married a woman with the same sized feet as me so I could wear all her shoes) so I will be shelling out about £13 due to my profligacy.
This is a bit like forgetting to do your lottery numbers on a week when your numbers come up.
Maybe two of your numbers.
I’ve got surgery next Wednesday (as long as I pass a Covid test on Sunday) so. I am going to be taking it (relatively) easy for the next couple of weeks to a month. I think there will be lots of time for blogging, though maybe not much to blog about. Hopefully.
I like to think I will get lots of reading done, but if today is anything to go by then I’ll mainly be playing games on my iPhone in the bath. And there’s only so much that I can write about that.
We only had that week on the south coast for a holiday last year, but with kids you don’t really get a holiday when you have a holiday. But a forced rest from work might be a good thing. And I might be so bored that I do some work anyway.
Hey, we’ve been through some dull times before and here we still are.
As long as my computer can be fixed, then I’ll be happy.
We’ve been rewatching the American Office (as lots of people seem to have done in lockdown) and for the first five seasons at least I still prefer to to the (also excellent) British version. It’s the use and development of the perisperhal characters that really sets it apart, sometimes with a sharp focus on a character and sometimes in a throwaway detail that just adds to their story.
We have now arrived at the post-Michael Scott episodes though and unsurprisingly perhaps the ship starts to list and things go awry and it becomes about big events and trips out of the office and you start to wonder how Dwight manages or bothers to keep his office job going with all his outside concerns. There are a few appearing and disappearing characters towards the end - Timothy Olyphant’s character looks like he might become a feature for a while, but then just disappears and the student that Will Ferrell’s character brings in, has little to do, before also disappearing. Another character is in for ages and is there just to be a temptation for Jim, who isn’t at all tempted. It’s unusual for them not to blend or build up a character even if they are just there for a plot device, but this one is basically just someone who fancies Jim.
There’s still plenty to enjoy as they take this plunge into an office without Steve Carrel, but money making aside, they might have been better to end it with his departure. But they just keep chucking new characters and old situations at it in the hope that something will stick.
Astonishingly I now find out/am reminded that there’s another series after this one.
It’s a tricky decision for an actor to come into an established series as its in its death throes. Chances are the audience aren’t going to like an interloper, but then again a year or two of well paid work and exposure. Catherine Tate is certainly game, though her character is meant to be unlikeable and her rise to becoming manager is somewhat unlikely. I think she comes away with a win, just about, but the odds were stacked against her. She couldn’t really have turned it down though.
There’s 201 episodes of this show, which is why Ricky Gervais is a millionaire, so it would be a surprise if the quality stayed consistent throughout. But I’d say late Office eps are better than late Simpsons episodes, even if I’d rather they had kept it bottled up in the office environment and limited the new characters. Or at least explained where Timothy Olyphant went.
