Perfunctory

Perfunctory
pəˈfʌŋ(k)t(ə)ri
adjective

adjective: perfunctory

1. <(of an action) carried out without real interest, feeling, or effort.
   “he gave a perfunctory nod”

My apologies if recent posts have come over as being a little on the – er – perfunctory side. If I may plead an excuse – there is quite a lot going on at the moment! I do have a fair bit to report and much upon which to elaborate, but that may all have to wait until we actually find ourselves with some time on our hands.

Much of last week was given over to a series of fond farewells which – as you might imagine – caused no small amount heart-string tugging.  For emotional relief we indulged ourselves with a long wished-for trip to town to observe the taping of one of our favourite satirical TV shows – “Mock the Week“. The Girl has been applying for tickets for this chuckle-fest pretty much throughout the whole of the last decade – to this point with no joy whatsoever. Pleading that she was about to leave the country, however, seems to have done the trick and around a month ago a pair of priority tickets popped through the letterbox.

Mock the Week is a spoof news-based quiz show purportedly pitting against each other two teams of three comedians. The show is hosted by – and is in large part dependent for its success upon – the estimable Dara O’Brean. Whereas we never doubted that the twenty nine minutes that go to air each week are in fact culled from a considerably greater pool of material, we had not imagined for a moment that what the audience in the studio is actually presented with is more than three hours of inspired riffing on current affairs topics, a fair bit of which is completely un-broadcastable. The show is taped on a Tuesday night and broadcast the following Thursday and I for one have no idea how they manage to produce a coherent and highly entertaining program from the chaos with which the studio audience is presented.

In an abrupt change of gear, this – for those who are interested – is how the remainder of this week pans out.

• Wednesday – our movers arrive to start packing.
• Thursday – our movers finish packing and start moving! Having no bed we spend the night in an hotel.
• Friday – we (and our cleaners) clean the Berkshire apartment, and our carpet cleaner then cleans the carpets. Obvious really. Still no bed, so back to the hotel we go.
• Saturday – all done at the apartment and now just the cars to dispose of (to those who have kindly already agreed to purchase them from us), haircuts to have and odds and sods to deliver to all and sundry. Thence to another hotel – this time on the outskirts of the Airport.
• Sunday – check in… and check out! Apparently this ain’t the Hotel California and we can – after all – leave…

BC here we come!