Walking in the rain & even more RANTINGS!

Our weather app has lied again!  It said it was going to rain all day so Ann said, 'Trixie, we're going to get absolutely soaked today so we might as well go trekking about for 2-3 hours this morning and then we can pretty much relax for the rest of the day'. Famous last words. We did get very wet this morning but this afternoon it actually turned out quite nice. I've just been out for another little walk and although it was very cold and windy; it wasn't raining.

Anyway this morning we trekked around town because Ann wanted to see what was happening in the city. …..................There wasn't really very much happening in the city. All the restaurants/pubs were closed so there weren't many people about. Apparently the pubs/restaurants can re-open again from Monday but they're not allowed to sell alcohol whoever heard of a pub that doesn't sell alcohol and they have to close by 6pm. Plus, humans are only allowed to meet one other household indoors but not in their home so how it can even be financially feasible for anywhere to re-open under these rules; we don't know.

There are masses of pubs/restaurants for sale/boarded up. Ann photographed some of them and put them on her FB page just because she likes to use FB & Blip as a diary of her life. It's so depressing. The hospitality industry is never going to recover from this pandemic. And apparently the number of people applying for minimum wage jobs in the city has reached an all time high.

Ann has applied for a few 'minimum wage seasonal jobs' and most of them haven't even bothered replying to her. One of them that has rejected her is NEXT. She applied for an 8 hour a week temp job in their office (4 hours on a Sat & Sun) and got a reply saying, 'We have reviewed your application and are writing to let you know that, on this occasion, we won't be moving it forward to the interview stage. This is because we have had applications that match our criteria for this role more closely.' Oh and they sent it twice, so whoever is working in the office at the moment isn't exactly doing a great job are they?!!

FFS!!! It might be nice if they actually told candidates what 'criteria' they were looking for? Ann had to do a comprehension test & numeracy test which were both so easy a 5 year old could have done them. The only reason she can think of that she didn't meet their 'criteria', (apart from her age) was, they asked how 'flexible' she was to work other shifts (ie her contract would have been for 8 hours a week but she probably would have been expected to work 100 hours a week OK slight exaggeration). Obviously I am Ann's main priority but she actually said she would be happy to work 4 hours a day, seven days a week. .................. thinking about it; the correct answer would probably have been to tick the box to say she was available from 8am – 9pm every day??!! NEXT is still advertising loads of temp roles but apparently Ann can't apply for any of them for another 6 months!  Not that she would. Reject Ann once and you don't get a second chance. Lol!

….................Oh and how many of you think an 'English Lock-down' is imminent? Just wondering what's going to happen because we have a few bookings for our house in St Ives in November. Obviously we don't want anyone from a Tier 3 area visiting but do you think everything apart from schools & universities where COVID is rampant! including the whole of the hospitality industry is going to be shut down again?

Oh well ho hum. Things can only get better.

PS – Ann went to Aldi yesterday and bought me a whole 1kg bag of carrots for 41p. Apparently, carrots are just as good as dental sticks for cleaning a dog's teeth. So see....................... there's always ways to economise!!!!!  #tryingtostaypositive