Thursday

I am thinking of going to Liverpool at the weekend, especially as I have tickets on the train to Crewe again for Saturday. I've only been to Liverpool once and that was about 5 years ago and I seem to remember the Maritime Museum is rather good and of course, no visit to Merseyside is complete without a trip on the ferry across the Mersey! Yeah, that sounds rather good. Might even treat myself to First Class on the way back as its a bargain of about £10 or £15 on Virgin at weekends. Admittedly you don't get much for that - normally as much tea, coffee or water as you can drink and an unlimited supply of biscuits but First Class on a Pendolino is immensely nicer than Standard. Plenty more leg room, space to spread out and its quieter too. Mmmm sounds like a nice way to spend Saturday.

My weekends at the moment are about the only thing that is keeping me sane. Work is interminably boring because I really don't feel stretched or challenged in my current job. Really I am doing nothing more than an admin clerk's role and I am capable of much more than that. Not only do I find it boring, nearly everything I deal with is a complaint or almost always inexplicably urgent. So the tedium is measured by the hassle everything is to deal with, not because its complicated but because so many mistakes have been made on the case before I even get to handle it. At first it bothered me, I was getting really fed up and depressed about it. Now, I really couldn't care. Today for example, I got into work about 9.10, left at 5, had an hour for lunch and made no effort to do anything more than I wanted to do. I just feel disengaged and demotivated and nobody appears to notice. Indeed I made the comment today that it would be perfectly possible to slip away from the office for a couple of hours and no one would notice that I'd gone.

There is always the promise that things will get better and maybe they will but whether that will be soon enough remains to be seen. For now, I am practically on auto-pilot, just getting through each day as it comes, counting the days to the next weekend.

I sent out one of my soap box ranting e-mails yesterday evening. I am sure the friends on my distribution list must tire of seeing another one of these plop into their inbox. In fact I am quite certain that if I am not careful, I'll soon end up on a spam filter with my messages condemned to the trash can of cyberspace. I was having a rant about the lack of objectivity I consider there to be in news reporting today and my annoyance with the way everything is dumbed-down and spoon-fed to the audience. I find it patronising and more worryingly I do begin to believe that most people don't care. They are happy to accept unquestioningly whatever half-baked truths and hyperbole is dished up in the paper or on the news. A prime example of this was today's headline on the front page of The Sun - 'Reasons 2p Cheerful' - which seems to have completely missed the point that the Budget was tax neutral. It also fails to mention that the 10p starting rate of tax was abolished meaning that those that will benefit most are middle-income earners, whilst the poor are worse off. Strange idea that a party that is supposed to be socialist, is penalising the poor! And it worries me that all people will remember is the headlines.

My box set of The West Wing arrived a couple of days ago and I must say it is a lovely set, surprisingly compact. One of the disappointments is that the booklets, which were included with the individual series box sets are dispensed with. Each series is presented on six discs in slimline cases with the episode details on the covers. In addition to all seven seasons, there is a two disc presentation of extras, which I have started watching. These are quite interesting and give some background to the development of the series. All in all a worthwhile investment I feel and with 112 hours of top quality TV to watch, its going to keep me busy for a while!