My secret garden

We were told to stay home, stay safe. Social distancing is key to the ordeal the world and our great countries are going through at the moment. If we didn't do this things would look dire.

I remember the day I was told to leave my workplace to begin working from home. It was March 12. It was grey, stormy and as I'd packed all my workplace stuff together into bags and stepped out of the front door to catch the bus, the hail started. The hail and rain and wind was full on and I almost couldn't see the bus as I drove up to the stop. That's my memory of the day.

Then quickly the sun came out, the wind stopped and the temperatures soared. Spring was springing. There I was, inside working. Looking out onto the horrendous trailer/construction village/place the municipality has decided to place right opposite me. Large building machinery vehicles driving past. Building shaking. My records skipping. The blue portable loos are a real treat. Joy. I digress.

I've been working on looking at the positive things during all of this. So spring was springing. I think that's where I lost track. The Danes, uncouth, the unwashed have struggled understanding not only the simple instructions but also the ramifications of not practicing social distancing and staying home. So naturally those blessed with a garden have been spending their time home clearing out the old stuff and have been running to the nearest garden center to buy new flowers, trees and whatnots to add to their lovely garden so they could sit there with their feet up enjoying a glass of wine and posting the image on Instagram. Because if you don't post it on Instagram it didn't happen, don't you know.

The problem was capturing that perfect image of the beautifully manicured lawn with the spring flowers in the background with the sun reflecting in the wine glass in the duckface selfie without wrinkles because the face has been so heavily edited that it might as well be Barbie herself. Especially when there was a pile of old wood, branches and garden whatnot in the corner that's been in the garden for 8 months already. What's a local wannabe Instagram celebrity with 30 followers to do. Obviously they just drive out to the nearest reststop and dump it there because the recycling centres were closed. Yes, that's right. It became such a problem that the municipalities had to reopen the recycling centres.

I'm one of those who buy my flowers already dead. They die rather quickly in my care anyway so why get ones hopes up. This spring it's been all about the daffodils and white tulips.

The tulips started off much taller but someone was a little bit rough while tending my garden but there, that's my garden.

Being on ones own and happily single at some point one would like to have ones garden tended to. That's life. We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose.

The health authorities in Denmark have lifted the veil a little bit here saying that it's ok with a little bit of birds and the bees and tending of the garden. Just be safe.

A riveting story of tech

I grew up with computers.

Suffice to say it all started with a very state of the art Commodore Plus4 or +4 or however it was branded. It was my brother who introduced computers into the family. I used it for games and my brother was the programmer type. Obviously I was perhaps 10 or younger at the time. Then came the Commodore Amiga 2000 and then the PCs took over. I was even an intern at an IT company for 2 years and if you needed your harddrive changed, your Windows setup changed or the graphics card, sound card etc. changed I was a good bet. 

I honestly don't know what happened. I got a job in finance and more or less without thinking about it I stopped being interested in it. I guess my job was more interesting because one day I found myself owning a MacBook and what a slippery slope that was.

If you ask my friends who didn't know me as a child or during my intern days, they'd be very surprised that I wasn't a technophobe. Sure, I have a relatively new iMac and I have an iPhone X so I do like new gadgets but when it comes to knowing how to work it they'd say I'm all thumbs.

Ok, thinking back I do know when I seriously stopped caring about how to work all things tech. It was when I bought my first (still works and is my only) flatscreen TV. It was like you needed an engineering degree and a doctorate in flatscreen TV'ing. It's a thing, I'm sure. You can study anything these days. In the end I asked a coworker at the time for the specs he'd get and walked into the Sony Center with a great big SUCKER sign on my forehead and handed the salesman the list. I said "I need that, and it needs to be pretty". I got what I asked for and it's still a lovely TV. Anyway I digress.

Since then it was all downhill. I ask for help from friends followed by this

Marilyn Monroe Not Very Bright GIF from Marilynmonroe GIFs

Then with my job I obviously knew very little about anything that went on there so I had to be able to contribute to something. I reluctantly mentioned my techie past and as coworkers now expect me to know the answers to all things Word, Excel, Windows 10, MS Teams I'm finding that I'm learning by doing. To quote the very fishlike looking fashole CELINE!: It's all coming back to me now.

That was Celine, right? Not Meatloaf? I can never remember. Is Meatloaf still around? I don't know, but I digress.

So I mentioned that I own an iMac. I also own an old Apple Cinema LED extra screen I got for my old MacBook. So you can imagine as I work from home these days my home office desk is crowded as I also have my work HP laptop and as HDMI doesn't play well with an 8 year old Apple Cinema screen I had an old HP monitor packed in there for good measure. I was so frustrated that I had that Apple Cinema that I also couldn't hook up with my iMac because the cords were all funny looking compared to the holes in the back of my iMac.

There you go, the techsavy 'Petra was very techie as he googled and googled and ended up asking the great unwashed of Twitter for help. I was feeling a little down by that point. It's a techie Covid-19 world and I'm just living in it. Someone was nice enough to even send a link to a £12 cable which looked like it was wrong. They insisted and alluded that they were "in the know". So obviously as a desperate tech has-been I clicked on that buy button and the next day the cable arrived. Excellent service I may add.

It was the wrong cable.

I told him, well I didn't. Instead I looked at the description on the torn package and went to the website again (because wow, excellent service) and found a cable thing that was the opposite of what I'd received. I bought it and the next day the cable was in my mailbox. AMAZING SERVICE!

It was the right cable!

The cable was plugged into the back of the iMac and connected to the Apple Cinema and WHOOOPPP! it worked. I'm using it now.

Naturally I went on to think of a cable that would plug the Apple Cinema into my work HP laptop. It's not possible. Apparently. At least not without some outdated gizmo gadget that is allegedly lousy. That's not something 'Petra likes to hear. My desk is crowded, the HP monitor is slow on the update and the graphics pretty bad.

Then last night I was in bed being hot and bothered about this very issue. I don't have the Covid-19 symptoms. Not yet anyway. Until at around 1 am I had to get up and look at the cable to see if it could be plugged into the laptop. It could. It works. So now my desk is a little less crowded.

Obviously on a high at 1am I couldn't sleep so I was a little tired this morning and during the meeting where me and my techsavy self was shining like a pure white diamond I couldn't remember if it was Monday or Tuesday.

Oh, how we laughed. 

That's office humour for you. Hah! As I hung up after the meeting I still wasn't sure if it was Monday or Tuesday or Pancake day.

Perhaps I should have made myself an espresso martini and taken to the sofa. Instead it was laundry and a Nespresso café latté.

So there you go, how have you been? 

There's a glitch in the matrix

You know the feeling of blissfully positioned on your sofa wrapped in duvets, eating cake and drinking your fourth latte of the day at 11am thinking you should probably get dressed and go tidy up your kitchen and the next second you're watching something rather on Netflix and having completely forgotten what you were going to do?

I do. It's like someone upstairs is playing The Humans (read The Sims) and keeps cancelling my actions. I did that when I played The Sims and they started doing things on their own. I was a complete control freak. Anyway I digress.

I've always been aware that whenever I step out of the door I would be guided or if you're in the know, nudged to do what corporations, the government - don't worry, this isn't a weirdo conspiracy theory post - and authorities want us to do or act. Take for example the supermarket where groceries are strategically placed and you're gently if not so subtly nudged or shoved through the store so you put as many of the things you didn't need and the supermarket makes the most money selling into your basket.

The airport is another excellent example of how we are gently nudged by strategically placed signs and props. They aren't necessarily placed where it would make the most sense but that's because humans are a funny species. Free will is both disrupting and annoying. Just remember the last time you went to the airport to go somewhere and you encountered one of those who just walks around and queues like they are in their own little world - which certainly isn't on this earth - and waits until the last possible moment to remove their iPads and laptops, their hand luggage, didn't prepare their bags of liquids, remove belts and shoes and can't seem to find one of their kids.

The ones that most certainly took the red pill when offered. I digress. Again.

I'm blissfully aware and accept the nudging. It works fine for me. Mr. Anderson isn't chasing me yet and even if he did, I do like a man in a well-tailored suit. Tom Ford has done miracles for Daniel Craig in Spectre and Skyfall. Do check him, erm. IT out.

I also kind of accept - albeit it being a little bit spooky - being chased around the great Internet by ads of the fabulous shoes I've been checking out a few times. The price may not change but my level of willpower may and thanks to this slightly aggressive advertising has made sure I've got a couple of fabulous pairs of shoes in my collection. Still, I pretended to have swallowed the blue pill for breakfast. What is it they say, ignorance is bliss?

Then it started. The there was a flicker in the corner of my eye. It's happened before. There was that time when the Disney movie Frozen came out. It was everywhere. I didn't watch it. It was mentioned on the news. It went on streaming services. Friends talked about it. Friends with kids talked about it. Everyone raved about it. I avoided it like the plague. I kind of wanted to see what the fuss was about when the sequel came out and people were still going on about it. I did not watch it. Luckily it went away.

Same happened with that Breaking Bad show which even got a spin-off show, something Saul. Netflix, the news, entertainment industry, friends and family have been trying to force this thing down my throat for way too long. They've been working on me harder than 49 year old man alone in the bar with the last woman standing at 4am for last call.

I did give in with that awful political show where they wouldn't stop talking. I can't for the life of me remember what it's called but it had Kevin Spacey in it until he was fired because he's been a very bad man. A bad man that some people think should go to jail for his alleged actions. There, you can't sue me for that. I hope. Anyway, terribly dull show. I slept like a baby through the first 3 episodes. That was 34 hours of blissful sleep. Felt like it anyway. I digress again. I should stay on point.

I found myself in a room today seeing the entire matrix disappear for a few seconds. I realised that I am being controlled. My viewing habits are not my own.  They are whatever Netflix wants me to watch and clearly they want me to watch Tiger King.

Newsflash - if you're reading this Netflix - I DON'T WANT TO WATCH TIGER KING!

So, yes send in Mr. Anderson and his suity crew. Netflix has been flogging this dead horse (Tiger) at me since it was released. Number one suggestion, featured item, recommended for you and as it is with these pandemics - everyone's an expert on those these days - they spread. Outside of Netflix my friends are talking about Tiger King. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (I know, that's lame) and it's being brought up in conversation. The entertainment industry is writing about who will be cast in the movie because apparently there will be a feature film about it too.

Tiger King is trash. It's tacky. It's stupidity incarnate. I don't need to watch any of it to know this. I don't want to watch it.

I've consciously made the decision not to watch it. Instead I spent a good hour today breaking the matrix. I scrolled through the drivel and heavily advertised stuff only to find a movie starring Glenn Close called What Happened to Monday. It was worth it.

Break the chain, take the red pill. Be that annoying person at the airport once we're let out again and do what is right. Say no to Tiger King.

Watch What Happened to Monday.

Oh, so it did turn out to be a weirdo conspiracy post after all.

Anyway, watch What Happened to Monda

The list

Life has been really weird.

There, I've said it. It's been years. Some good and some less good but that's life. Since I last really actually posted anything - which incidentally was about quite the fun little nugget about urinal cakes if you ask me - things have happened. Life has happened.

On top of the old getting that split second fleeting thought while on the sofa watching something rather (entertaining) on Netflix - WHICH IS NOW A STREAMING SERVICE AND NOT DVDS BEING SENT VIA MAIL - OH MY GOD! MIND.BLOWN. - that perhaps I should

a) blog about that or something
b) tidy and clean my apartment
c) look for a new job
d) learn how to do actual cooking

As you can tell the list is long, arduous and before I knew it something shiny on Facebook or Twitter had caught my interest and the list remained.

Then last year I got the idea to actually do something on that list. So yes, I've now done one of the things and sort of working on another if watching Masterchef on Viaplay counts as learning how to cook. At least I've actually seen someone poach an egg and in my mind I'm a master of that.

The other thing was surprisingly looking for a new job. That came about as I got so angry, bitter and miserable that I couldn't recognize myself anymore. I've always been a little angry and very bitter but in the sarcastic way. The passive aggressive way - the healthy way. I saw myself turning into my father, no sarcasm and all angry and bitter. So I asked my boss if we could find a way that I could leave my job in a financially - for me - sound way and we agreed and then I went on my merry way to find out what I wanted to do with my life.

Turns out you can do "anything". You know, the list is a lot longer than when I set out to find a job when I got out of school. I followed every road, path and even ventured into the wild forests of mindfulness retreats and while I didn't actually book anything there, I got so terrified of what I saw that I ended up applying for - and getting - a job that is kind of, almost, perhaps close to what I did at my previous job. Well, except I'm happy now. So there's that. Yay me!

In these Covid-19 (Corona) times of 2020 I'm like many others working from home. We aren't supposed to co-mingle with people outside the household or leave the house much. So that becomes a little tedious and I get a little crazier that usual which is understandable I suppose when there's just me here. The delivery guys are mostly cute though so there's that but I digress.

I've setup my homeoffice which is a work laptop, an old HP monitor I had in the basement and my work mobile which is a Samsung Galaxy A8. It's so strange and difficult to work when I am used to my iMac and trusty old iPhone X. Now there's only so much to do.

Work from home and do what the authorities tell you. Stay home. Stay safe.