Dodgy names

Nathan was watching This Morning on the telly today. They came to the ghastly bit where the children from regional schools re-enact the Nativity scene and then sing a carol rather badly. At the end of this particular sequence, they always scroll up some mini-credits displaying the names of the kids who have taken part. I have seldom heard such shrieks of disapproval as Nathan read the names! "Chloë with a K?! Who ARE these parents?!" It did seem that many of the kids in that particular school had genuinely ridiculous names. Most of them were bastardisations of perfectly decent names. Mummy obviously decided that a normal name was too good for her child, she wanted something a bit different, and in the process opened her child up to a lifetime of ridicule. The sad fact is that, if you're going to spell Chloë with a K, people will judge you!

There was a shock headline in the Daily Mail yesterday which suggested a staggering 4 out of 5 nurses were foreign (whatever foreign means in a country where most people have a bit of something else in us.) I wasn't sure what the fuss was about. If 4/5ths of nurses are foreign, then thank God for immigration, else there'd be no one to look after us! Let's not forget that many of those wonderful West Indian people who came over here on the Windrush were health workers, invited here because we simply didn't have enough nurses of our own. I honestly wish people would shut up about immigration. Obviously I think it wouldn't harm to tighten the rules on people coming here. I am not sure someone coming here should instantly be able to claim British benefits, but I suspect the prannies of UKIP won't stop whinging until we've entirely closed our doors, at which point they'll start looking for someone else to blame for our country's woes. What do they want? A full-scale pogrom?

I've spent the day single-mindedly producing parts for the Brass recordings. It's utterly mind-numbing, and I'm going cross-eyed. You just have to keep ploughing forward, always assuming there's a million more parts to format. Eventually you'll suddenly realise there are no more to do, and that's when the sun comes out. I'm still on target to finish everything by the close of business tomorrow, which fills me with a great sense of relief.

It's not easy trying to work with a computer which is on a permanent go slow. I left the house this evening uploading 1.44Gb of music, which I'm told will take the computer over 3 hours to process. Boo!

We went to see Philip and Daryl last night, and ate large quantities of delicious macaroni cheese whilst talking about the death of one of their close friends. Words cannot describe how lucky I feel not to have suffered a major loss in my life. I think about people like Tina and Sam and sometimes wonder how they get out of bed in the morning. Sadly, I think I'm entering an age where losing someone dear to me is probably inevitable and it's the thing I dread most of all.