Well, I think I’m getting better at this staying up before nights m’larkey. I read some of my exciting Minor Injuries book (although I’m still reading about how Nurse Practitioners need to tread a fine line between nursing and not-being-doctors) – it’s kind of scary actually. Suddenly my ‘you should’ve gone to the GP’ lecture would be redundant – were I trained enough to be an NP. I’m not, though, so you can still expect that if you come to the ED with your 6 month old ache because ‘I was just passing and thought I should get it checked out’.
Yuh hu.
Anyhow, so I’ve just finished reading Trek (by Paul Stewart) – apparently it’s a slightly inaccurate rendition of an attempt to cross the Sahara in the trusty Morris Minor – I admit, while I’d’ve probably been intrigued by it, it’d’ve probably not made it on to my big-ol’-list-of-things-I-want had it not have featured a moggie. At any rate, in reality it is only the small car nature of the Moggie which really features, it could have been any 1950s small family saloon; the book itself is really about the people and the challenge.
It’s interesting, in a way, too, because it features the Empire, that which has disappeared from view and to me (and possibly most people my age) is something so distant and unrelated to the modern world that it’s hard to imagine. It’s funny to think that I have been on this Earth longer than the ‘British Empire’ ceased to exist before I was born.
The very idea of a British Empire seems faintly absurd, we’re tiny, after all – and while I joke about countries which ‘used to be ours’ and the concept that ‘we used to own that’ – as I kind of marker for many strange things in the world, I somehow forget that the joke is based in a really quite disturbing reality. That as a nation Britain did some really terrible subjugating of other countries. What is also interesting, however, is reading the flip-side of the history. The presentation of which makes Britain seem like less of a terrible empire builder, at least, in some ways.
Anyhow, the book doesn’t need an interest in Minors to make it interesting; it does require a suspension of disbelief. I am going for ‘fictionalised around real events’, either that or Peter’s diary was way more detailed than the direct exerpts suggest. Nikki did say to not look too deeply, and I’m not.
In other news, I’m continuing to watch ‘The Wire’, season 2 of which is proving interesting too; it’s silly of me to choose to watch it, I’ve got rather a lot of work to do, and tomorrow – prior to work – needs to be a paperwork day. I have also realised, somewhat unfortunately, that Trek, being newly purchased (but second hand, I promise!) doesn’t really fit into our overburdened bookshelves. Capacious they are not. Carefully organised they are, at least since we took ’em down and put ’em back.
And in other, other news, okcupid continues to send me ‘friend matches’ and one, possibly two, of them look like interesting and not vastly non-local people (London, unsurprisingly). I have mailed one, as part of a whole raft of ‘being nice to people and making friends’ ideas.
But now, since it’s past 3 in the morning I’m going to fall into bed. Wish me luck on the ‘morrow, for I return to the place of work where I can look forward to 12 hours of hard slog…
