1 December 2024 (Sunday) - Sissinghurst

I made the schoolboy error of going to the loo at four o’clock this morning and came back to bed to find the space I’d left had been captured by the dogs. I managed to shove them over and secured about nine inches of bed space. But it must have been enough. I woke five hours later with backache. Waking with backache is aways a sign that I’ve been in my pit far too long.

Being a creature of habit, usually every morning I get up, have a scrape and make toast before then peering into the Internet. But for three and a half weeks every year I start my mornings differently. Instead of all that usual nonsense this morning I opened the first window of my Advent Calendar. I was rather pleased with what I got today – a little boy in a frankly dreadful Christmas jumper. I had an idea what I could do with that.

And then I went into the garden. The hole I filled in yesterday remained filled in. Last night at pre-bedtime tiddle Bailey did try a half-hearted dig at it. Was she the culprit?

I then had a scrape (with a fresh razor blade), made my toast and had a look at the Internet. This morning’s petty argument was centred about an episode of “Blackadder” which featured Chris Barrie who played “Rimmer” in “Red Dwarf”. That episode first aired in October 1987; don’t these people have anything better to squabble about?

Being the first of the month I kicked everyone out of our Munzee clan (it’s a Munzee thing), Munzed, got Wordle on the third attempt

“er indoors ^TM” and the dogs came down and I went outside to watch them. None of them did any digging.

We got ourselves organized and went for a little outing. The weather forecast claimed that the weather would be getting better so we believed it and drove out to Sissinghurst. We set about the geocaching Adventure Lab that was there. It did strike me that the locations were rather bunched together at different ends of the village, but on reflection that’s where the points of interest were. We had a good wander up and down the village though. There was a minor hiccup when our apps both refused the same correct answer twice, but both worked on the third attempt.

Whilst we were in the area we popped up to the nearby church where we spent a few minutes answering questions based on the place to get the final location of a nearby geocache. I put the GPS co-ordinates into my phone and despite it seeming to be in someone’s garden (it wasn’t) It wasn’t that long before we had the thing in hand.

We had planned to go on to another geo-puzzle but the weather forecast had lied. Rather than easing up, the rain was getting worse. So we drove up to Bloomsbury’s garden centre only to find the garden centre bit was closed, and that it was actually a rather posh restaurant.

So we headed home-wards via Ripley’s garden centre in Bethersden which would seem to be popular with people who like spending far too much money on things they can buy cheaper elsewhere. Mind you Morgan peed up the door so the visit wasn’t entirely wasted. He went on to do an encore tiddle at Bybrook Barn’s door too.

We came home for a spot of scoff and we put on a Christmas film. “Scrooged”. I’d not seen it before, and I’ve still not seen it; I fell asleep and woke just as the credits were rolling. “er indoors ^TM” made us a cuppa and put on another film. “A Christmas Karen”. Another re-make of the old “Scrooge” story, but very well done.

With film watched “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters: Australia” in which the winner was the one I felt should have got the heave-ho. But the foxy one was through to the next round. I saw that as a result, as did (I expect) the foxy one.

2 December 2024 (Monday) - Seeing The Gribbles

Having started a Christmas story about a rogue carol singer, this morning I opened the second window of my Advent Calendar and was presented with what at first sight appeared to be some sort of road working machine. That gave me something to ponder as I scoffed toast. Seeing that forty people had reacted to yesterday’s first installment of my Lego Advent Calendar adventure, the pressure was on.

There was an interesting post on one of the Ashford-related Facebook groups I follow as I scoffed toast. Interesting and encouraging. Some local idiot had posted a load of conspiracy theory bollox about additives to milk, and pretty much everyone was laughing at him. Good.

And there was quite the argument about whether one should wish people a Merry Christmas or a merry Christmas. Opinion was split on the capitalization of the word merry, and people were very defensive of their stances.

When I was young, people were walking on the Moon and had eradicated smallpox. I had such high hopes for the future…

I took the dogs out. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Gregg Wallace the TV celebrity who is in trouble for being the latest celebrity who is in trouble. Overnight he’d released a statement saying that he’d not done whatever it was that he’s been accused of. Some idiot was on the radio insisting that Mr. Wallace had made a big mistake by issuing a denial, and was adamant that he should have issued an apology regardless of whether or not he’d done anything about which he should apologize.  

I sighed.

We got to the woods and had a good walk. As we went we met a few other dogs and dog walkers and exchanged pleasantries. We saw two other groups who saw us and turned and walked off in opposite directions. And we met one rather special woman. Oh, she was special… On seeing us she and her (presumably) husband put their (rather huge) dog onto a lead and marched twenty yards off the path into a swamp. As we walked past so Morgan and Bailey went up to see their dog. I whistled to call them away and they ran back to me. But at the sound of my whistle her dog ran to me too. And being a big dog it came with enough force to pull the woman holding his lead face first into the swamp. I hurried away trying not to actually laugh out loud.

After three and a half miles we were back at the car. We came home where I washed a surprisingly little amount of mud from the dogs’ bellies, did their monthly flea treatments, and set off to Folkestone.

I collected “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” and we drove to the other side of town. We shovelled down a quick McLunch, ten had a look in the pet shop. Ostensibly going to look to the fish, we spent ages looking at the bunnies, the rats, the big mouses (Guinea pigs) and the gribbles (could have been anything!). I’d not looked at the prices of small mammals recently. A Guinea pig is now thirty quid a go and they wanted sixty quid for a rabbit.

From there we popped over the road to Homebase. The most recent fruit of my loins wanted shelves for her kitchen cupboards. Have you noticed how no one makes standard sized kitchen units? We got some shelves, took them home and cut them to the right width and depth… Or near enough…

Pausing only briefly to do a tip run I came home. There was all sorts of things I could have done at home, but instead I had a little sit down and pondered what I might say for today’s episode of my Lego Advent Calendar.

I woke up an hour later and watched another episode of “Downton Abbey”. I’ve taken to watching it in the evenings. In tonight’s episode Lady Mary was a right cowbag to the butler. Bearing in mind she once porked the Turkish attaché to death she’s in no position to take the moral high ground.

I then drove “er indoors ^TM” to the pub. Her bowling gang are having their Christmas beano tonight. I’ve got to collect her in an hour or so – here’s hoping she can get into the car under her own steam…

3 December 2024 (Tuesday) - Christmas Ale

I woke, and went straight to my Advent Calendar. A dog in a Christmas jumper with a bowl and some bones. Again I realized I should really have opened the thing a couple of months ago. What was I going to say for today’s installment.

I made toast and peered into the Internet. Apparently there’s three more episodes of “Red Dwarf” coming out next year. Is this a good thing? The show started very well all those years ago, but the last few dozen episodes weren’t that good. I’m reminded of “Fawlty Towers” where they made a point of only doing two seasons, or “Bottom” where Adrian Edmunson said no to doing a fourth season. But perhaps I’m coming at it from the wrong angle. I suppose for the actors and the writers this is guaranteed income?

I sparked up my Munzee app and after a lot of fighting with it I deployed a Widdle. Apparently you can now do a Widdle through the Munzee app.

And having got Wordle on the fifth attempt I got the dogs together and we went out.

We drove up to the woods and (in a novel break with tradition) had an uneventful walk. We met a couple of other dog walkers and each encounter passed off without episode.

As we drove home I was very conscious of a car behind me. It drove down the rather steep hill from Challock seemingly inches from my back bumper, flew past at the sharp corner at the bottom of the hill, then tail-ended the car in front of me all the way to the traffic lights where we all stopped. It then drove through a residential area far too fast before finally flying into Dobbies car park at breakneck speed.

If I could remember my password for Rate Driver Dot Com I’d have squealed it up.

I got out the Hoover and watched Bailey with a smile. As I pulled the Hoover out she watched me, but without moving and pretending to be asleep. The moment I turned it on she flew at it in full attack mode. She is a nightmare with the Hoover, and when I mow the lawn I have to be sure she is inside or she will have the lawnmower.

And then the postman came with my early Christmas pressie; a dozen bottles of Shepherd Neame Christmas ale. That’ll do very nicely.

“er indoors ^TM” set off to Folkestone for babysitting duties. I set up the ironing board and cracked on at the ironing whilst watching the last few episodes of “Brassic”. As I ironed I was struck with inspiration for what I might say about today’s installment of the Advent Calendar story.

“er indoors ^TM” returned with kebab which we washed down with a bottle of the Christmas ale whilst watching Junior Taskmaster. That was rather good. As was the Christmas ale –at seven per cent proof, you can’t complain…

4 December 2024 (Wednesday) - Big Cats

I went to the loo shortly after three o’clock and came back to find minimal (i.e. sod all) bedspace and all four of them snoring away. I tried to get back to sleep, but wresting space took some doing and it was rather noisy, so I got up and watched drivel on telly for an hour before trying the bed again.

I got a couple of hours kip.

I got up properly and opened the fourth window of my Advent Calendar… a skateboard. How does that fit in with the story so far? I made toast and whilst the voices in my head pondered skateboards I had my usual look at the Internet. It was still there. The stupid were very quick to show off their stupidity, and everyone else even quicker to laugh at them. Some half-wit had proven the spontaneous creation of matter… he’d stuck a seed into a plant pot filled with soil and a plant had grown. But there was still as much soil in the pot as there had been when he’d planted the seed. So where did the matter making up the plant come from? This fellow was serious!

I took the dogs up to the woods where we had a good four-mile walk. We met a few other walkers near the car park and all encounters passed off well, but once we were more than a quarter of a mile from the car park we didn’t see anyone else at all. We did see a deer skeleton though. And that made me wonder. That skeleton wasn’t there yesterday; we would have seen it as we walked past as it was rather obvious. So one of two things had happened. Either the deer had dropped dead after ten o’clock yesterday morning and had been stripped to bone in less than a day, or something had dragged the skeleton to where we found it..

I’m wondering… The bones looked a tad grim. It looked more than a day old. But what could have dragged it? Surely it would have been too heavy for a fox? It turns out that there have been big cat sightings reported in Kings Wood (admittedly a few years ago). I asked on the Big Cats in Kent Facebook page, and a few people commented that there *have* been sightings of big cats recently, but the leading light on there said that he didn’t work with the press any more. I can’t say I blame him; I suspect they’d just be taking the piss.

Mind you one chap did mention the Beast of Badlesmere.

We came home where the dogs had a dunk in the bath. Bailey had brown smears down her back (yuk!), and Morgan was a bit whiffy too.

With dogs scrubbed I went on a little shopping trip. First of all to Wickes where I got a waterproof electrical connector. And then on to Screwfix to get the screwdriver that Wickes didn’t have. I know that I can see B&Q from our back window, but over the years I’ve found that Wickes and Screwfix are friendly and helpful, and B&Q are utterly disinterested.

And then I popped into Tesco as I had orders from “er indoors ^TM” to get some milk. As I walked in I saw that they were doing bottles of Baileys at less than half price to ClubCard holders. And there were one or two other bargains to be had if you brandished your ClubCard. Cheese, biscuits, doughnuts, port… When I came to pay the bill was fifty-seven quid. But when I waved my ClubCard that dropped to forty quid. In the past I’ve been rather disparaging about Tesco ClubCard. But now I’m a believer.

And I’m convinced that I saw Brad Boimler in the queue for the checkout.

I came home where we scoffed some of the doughnuts for lunch, then I got busy in the garden. A couple of years ago the electrical cable from the kitchen to the garden water features melted on a particularly hot day, and then got chewed by rats. I repaired it at the time, but over the last couple of months the supposedly waterproof join has taken to falling apart in the rain. So today I took it all apart, ran the cable through a hose pipe to (hopefully) make it rat- and weather-proof and connected it all back up again. Ideally I’d not have a join and have one cable going all the way, but since we had the kitchen done we can’t easily (at all!) get a cable through the air brick and to the plug.

At the moment all is working. Here’s hoping it stays working.

As I fiddled about outside the voices in my head came up with today’s Advent story.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good curry which we washed down with a bottle of plonk whilst watching more “Junior Taskmaster”. And with dinner scoffed I cracked open the cheese and crackers I’d bought in Tesco earlier. The dogs like the crackers, and I have the cheese.

Blue Brie… not too shabby at all.

5 December 2024 (Thursday) - Rained All Day

I got up and opened the fifth window of my Advent Calendar…and started wondering about it. And then I had a little look in the garden. The electrical fix I’d performed yesterday was working fine despite the heavy overnight rain we’d had. I saw that as a result.

I made toast and sparked up my lap-top. The anti-virus immediately gave me a little lecture about package scams. Apparently over a third of the UK population have had these text messages claiming there is some issue with whatever it is that you have ordered on-line and either ask for money, or give you a link on which to click; this link immediately downloading malicious software to your device. One of the first things the anti-virus suggested this morning was stopping and thinking if you actually ordered anything on-line. It claimed that the people most likely to fall for this scam were those who hadn’t ordered anything in the first place.

And there was quite the argument about the USS Yorktown in the film Star Trek IV… it was a shame that those getting rather angry had the name of the fictional spaceship wrong. It wasn’t Yorktown, it was Saratoga.

With “er indoors ^TM” off out to a craft club extravaganza I took the dogs up to the woods. The weather forecast said that the drizzle would hold off for the morning… it eventually eased up a little.

We had a good walk. As we walked we saw two other groups in the distance who on seeing us popped their dogs onto leads and hurried off in different directions to avoid us. Are we that bad? Mind you we met a third lot at the end of our walk when walking up the hill to the car park. They saw me and the girls and immediately put their dogs on leads and all but sprinted up the hill to get away from us. They hadn’t expected Morgan to do his usual thing of running up the hill through the woods then running down the hill to find us. This lot of people were so intent on watching us and getting away from us they screamed out loud when Morgan ran through the middle of them as he flew down the hill.

We came home for a warm shower. For some reason Bailey screamed when being washed. I have no idea why.

I did the dishwasher-ing, then as the dogs snored I settled down for a lazy day in front of the telly. Season two of “Silo” had been released on Apple TV… it was a shame that the Apple TV app on the SkyQ said there was no internet connection. But (strangely) there was enough internet for Netflix. I started re-watching “The Empress”. There’s a new season out. Apparently I liked the first season. I have no memory of it, but according to my diary I watched it two years ago when I said it was “quite entertaining for all that (like with “House of the Dragon”) nothing much seems to be happening”.  At the same time I mentioned another TV show – “Better Than Us” – which I also don’t remember.

“The Empress” was rather good.

I uploaded today’s episode of this year’s Christmas story. The plot has taken an unexpected twist. Mind you I say “plot” – there isn’t one. I’m making it up as I go along, and am living in terror as to what I will find every morning.

And then “er indoors ^TM” returned home. We loaded the dogs into the car and set off to Battle. Gordon was staging a geo-meet outside the Abbey and there were supposed to be lights and carol singers and events and activities. Sadly the weather was against us, but having arrived early and having had a crafty pint in the Abbey hotel, we had a good little catch-up with friends despite the rain.

We came home via the chip shop down the road. Two portions of cod and chips and a couple of pickled onions – twenty-five quid. Am I mean in thinking that’s expensive?

6 December 2024 (Friday) - Rather Dull

Finding myself wide awake far too early I got up, opened the Advent Calendar, made toast, and watched an episode of “The Empress” in which she “got them out” and did the dirty deed with the Emperor. Perhaps I’m just getting more puritanical in my old age, but more and more I’m of the opinion that having the leading lady in any TV show or film getting them out and doing the dirty deed is just laziness on the part of the scriptwriters who are saved from having to come up with five more minutes of dialogue.

I then sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. It was still there. It told me that the chap who used to run our Boys Brigade company had a birthday today. It would also have been my parents’ old dog’s birthday today, and I have a sneaking suspicion that it would also have been my grandmother’s birthday too.

Not much had happened on-line overnight really. There was a rather bitter argument about the last episode of the third season of Blake’s Seven (which aired in 1980). I didn’t get involved, but I’ll make the observation that those who argue about episodes of Blake’s Seven from over forty years ago are generally far more conversant with the actual episodes than those who argue about episodes of Star Trek from the same period.

I went to work via the co-op to get a sandwich. Like the last time I tried in the morning the place was closed. But today it was closed and in darkness, but with quite a queue outside. I didn't hang about and went to Sainsbury's near work instead. As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting their usual nonsense.

There was talk about Nick Clegg today. Remember him? Fifteen years ago he was leader of the Liberal Democrats and threw away pretty much everything the party stood for so as to get a national referendum for government by a system of proportional representation that everyone knew was doomed to failure. After five years of just saying "yes Dave" to everything the Prime Minister at the time wanted eventually, like all politicians, the electorate gave him the heave-ho.

And seemingly like all politicians he landed on his feet, and is now the deputy head honcho at Meta - the company which owns Facebook and Instagram. Apparently Sir Nick (he's a "sir" now - all right for some isn't it?) is concerned that Elon Musk has too much of an influence in American politics.

I expect Mr. Musk probably has, but I would cynically ask if Sir Nick would be quite so vocal if Mr. Musk didn't own Sir Nick's main competitor?

Work was the same as ever, but I was on the early shift and so got out early. It was already getting dark as I drove out of the car park, and was completely dark when I got home.

Having had inspiration I posted up today’s Advent story,

We had a good bit of scoff whilst watching more “Junior Taskmaster”. I’m feeling worn out… When I’m not working all is fine. When I am working I’m wide awake at three o’clock…

Today was one of those dull days.

7 December 2024 (Saturday) - Late Shift

I wasn’t awake quite as early as yesterday, but I was still awake earlier than I might have liked. I got up, opened today’s window on the Advent Calendar, and watched another episode of “The Empress” in which our heroine again got them out and did the dirty deed. This time it was an al-fresco portion which saved the scriptwriters a few minutes of effort.

Facebook was dull, but I had an email today. Two weeks ago I emailed three local councilors to whinge about the local traffic wardens who were ticketing cars parked on yellow lines around road works in a temporarily closed street whilst ignoring parking mayhem at the shops near home. I finally got a reply saying that the traffic wardens don’t have any discretion in issuing tickets. I’ve told her that if that is the case why to they go for the easy targets but not ticket the ones causing the obstructions.

I sent out birthday wishes too. A Facebook friend is thirty today. Thirty – I remember when she was ten when at Teston kite festival. If asked I would have said she was probably in her late teens. Where do the years go?

I munzed, I wordled and we set off to Dog Club. Attendance was noticeably down on last week, but despite the rain and the high winds we still had fourteen dogs along. It was a shame that Morgan got a bit over-excited. Two minutes muzzle time soon calmed him, and after that he was good. Whenever things kicked off he would make a point of backing off and being on the sidelines.

As we drove home we listened to Steve on the radio. Having completely drawn a blank on the guess the lyrics competition I eventually got the mystery year competition. Was it 1968? Was it 1973? Chuck Berry’s ding-a-ling was 1972. Steve also gave the Dog Club a plug on the radio, which was good. I wonder if we will get any new members through it?

Once home “er indoors ^TM” gave the dogs a warming shower whilst I popped up the road to see if Mukki had any pastries. I came home with almond croissants which went well with a cuppa.

As I scoffed and guzzled I counted up the Dog Club money. Every two weeks I count up the money in the pot, pocket it and transfer that amount (plus our subs) into the bank account of the people whose field we use. Today I transferred over fifty quid.

What with not getting in till late this evening I posted up today’s Advent Calendar story, then set off to work.

I set off to work a tad earlier than I might. Steve was on the radio telling of local road closures because of the high winds so I didn't want to take any chances. I don't like driving in heavy rain and the wind was gusting at over fifty miles per hour. I listened to Steve read out the wrong train times (from the previous hour), and then the reception got a tad iffy so I turned to Ivor Biggun songs and sang along to those for the rest of my journey.

I got to work with enough time to go to the works canteen.

People often joke about hospital food; in my experience the stuff ain't bad. Tandoori cod, chips, apple pie and custard all for less than six quid.

Work was much the same as ever on a Saturday afternoon. Arguably a tad busy just for little old me on my own. As I worked I had a message - “er indoors ^TM” had destroyed the shower. I'm not sure what she expected me to do from twenty five miles away. I suggested a plumber. Ten minutes later she sent the news that she'd fixed it herself. She's quite handy with the plumbing; she fixed the chodbin a while ago what I'd all but given up on it.

After an hour or so I had messages about Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” who was having a little sleepover with us. Having spent the afternoon scoffing crisps and various snacks she wasn't hungry and wouldn’t eat her dinner. “er indoors ^TM” wasn't best pleased. I was told that my dinner would be that which littlun hadn't eaten; I distinctly formed the impression that littlun's misdemeanours were somehow my fault. Not that she can do any wrong.

I came home to mayhem…

8 December 2024 (Sunday) - Fun With Littlun

With “er indoors ^TM”  in the attic room with Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” last night, all the dogs went up there too and I had a peaceful night’s sleep. I did wake to find little Bailey curled up next to me though. Apparently she got onto the bed on her own. That’s a first; she’s never managed it before.

I woke at the time I was originally supposed to be starting work. I’d swapped today’s shift for yesterday’s so’s I could have some time with littlun. I got up and had a quick shave before she got up. As I scraped I had flashbacks of cub camp when I used to shave silly-early so as to have a scrape in peace before the horrors arose.

As littlun wreaked havoc I quickly scoffed toast, and as I tried to stop the dogs scoffing her cereals I had a look at the Internet. It’s been a while, but I had another dubious friend request on Facebook. Today Ruby Thersa wants to be my friend. Or so she said. She didn’t say much else on her Facebook page; presumably letting her chest do the talking.

She should tell it to be quiet.

I sat down with littlun and we spent an entertaining time lining up all the toy cars then shouting “WATCH OUT” and launching them at each other (and the telly). In the background Lube-Tube was playing Cocobi children’s songs. Some weren’t quite what you might expect – have a look at this one. Should a two-year-old be watching this? I found myself wondering how many small children had shat themselves at the two minutes and fifty-three seconds point when it invites everyone to “come on and join the fart song”.

Funny old world, eh?

Once her mother had told us she had returned from the cinema we took littlun home, and I then started preparations for February’s Geo-Meet. Geo-HQ have allowed me to stage a community celebration event. Rather than having the usual sort of event in a pub somewhere (which gets expensive) we’ve secured the use of the scout hut and we are going to have an afternoon playing board games. We can take along whatever drinks and snacks we want, and for the price of the first round in a pub we can be drinking and scoffing all afternoon.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up scran which we scoffed whilst watching the semi finals of “Lego Masters: Australia”, and with scran scoffed I cracked out the port and cheese. And crackers. The dogs like crackers.

I’m worn out…

9 December 2024 (Monday) - Rainy Day

After a rather good night’s kip I opened my Lego Advent Calendar and pondered.

After I’d shaved I saw that everyone else had got up. I say “got up” – the dogs had gone from sleeping on the bed to sleeping on the sofa and dog beds.

I made toast and had my usual rummage round the Internet. It was the same as ever. Fewer and fewer people seem to be posting on social media (or if they are, I don’t see it), but one of the posts I saw made me think. There’s been an episode in America where the head honcho of a healthcare insurance scheme was recently killed. Healthcare in America is different to here in the UK. In the UK we have (for the most part) one organization which provides healthcare as is needed. That healthcare being given on the grounds of independently generated guidelines being applied to each case. In America it seems that healthcare is provided in the basis of how much money you’ve paid the insurance company, and the insurance companies are getting more and more picky about what they will pay for in order to maximise their profits. Not that they will pay out the full amount anyway. And healthcare ain’t cheap. I can remember thirty years ago my boss at the time priced up the cost of a standard treatment for anyone presenting with a particular form of blood cancer. Back then the treatment cost one hundred and ten thousand pounds. I can remember a friend spending a couple of weeks in an ITU bed and an American friend telling me that even with insurance, in the USA you’d have to sell your house to make up the money not covered by the insurance.

Healthcare ain’t cheap.

But so many Americans feel the state-provided healthcare offered by pretty much the rest of the world is fundamentally a bad thing. I wish I knew why.

I decided against going to the woods this morning. The weather was alternating between glorious sunshine ant torrential rain showers every fifteen minutes, and the dogs were asleep anyway. They seem to know when we are going out (when they get very over-excited) and when we aren’t (when they carry on sleeping).

Instead I drove up to the post office to post a couple of cards and to collect a parcel. Apparently Royal Mail had tried to deliver a parcel on Saturday; I only found out when I looked at my Amazon account and saw that it said “Held for pickup at carrier location”. The chap at the parcel office wasn’t impressed that I had no delivery slip. He didn’t actually call me a liar when I said that one hadn’t been left but wasn’t keen on typing the tracking number into his system. Particularly when on the second attempt he wondered if it might have been on the other system. It was on the second system after all. Sadly being on the second system meant that the parcel had just been chucked on a huge pile out the back of the sorting office on Saturday evening and the staff would deal with it when they has people in. Apparently this chap was working on his own.

I was told they will send me an email if and when they find it, but ironically the parcel arrived at home a couple of hours later.

I went on to Tesco where again there were dozens (if not hundreds) of people blundering around completely unaware that there were dozens (if not hundreds) of other people in the shop as well.

I’d arrived at Tesco in sunshine; I left in torrential rain. By the time I’d made us both a cuppa the sunshine was back again.

I did have plans to repair the poggered cupboard in the bedroom today, but “er indoors ^TM” said that it wasn’t a job I could do on my own. I think that was more “not allowed to” rather than “not capable of”, but that left me at something of a loose end.

I wrote up some CPD then had a little look at my bank account. Every month I’ve been giving money to the Kent Wildlife Trust. I have no idea who or what they are, and I only set up the payments on account of the impressive chest being brandished by the young lady on their fundraising stall at the County show a few years ago.

In all honesty I’d rather give a bung to the goat sanctuary.

When at a loose end I usually spend my time watching telly. I started off with episodes of “Four in a Bed”. Today’s episodes followed the standard format of three rather good bed and breakfast establishments being criticized for every piddling detail by someone who considered themselves to be a “big businessman” who in fact was running a rather piss-poor dive.

I followed this with an episode of “Downton Abbey” in which it transpired that Lady Edith’s paramour has vanished leaving her tubbed, and once “er indoors ^TM” had set off bowling I watched more of “The Empress”. She too was tubbed, but seemed more chuffed about it than Lady Edith was.

As I watched telly the torrential rain continually alternated with clear spells…

And the Normal People have arrived in my Lego Advent story…

10 December 2024 (Tuesday) - Early Shift

With an alarm set I was awake far too early this morning. Whilst the rest of the world snored I watched an episode of “The Empress” in which the archduke tried to have his wicked way with Princess wotsit of Belgium.

And then I had my usual rummage round the Internet. There is usually at least one bitter argument raging, and this morning’s was about when and why Dodos went extinct.

Do these people have nothing better to do with their time?

There wasn’t a lot else going on this morning; it was probably too early.

I had a quick Munz, opened my Advent Calendar and got ready for the one day I’m working this week.

I set off to work on a very dark and rainy morning. As I drove I listened to the pundits on the radio spouting their drivel. More wars were kicking off in the Middle East, the government seems to have run out of steam... and New Zealand is looking to ban greyhound racing which would leave the UK as one of only four countries in the world where it is still legal.

I stopped off at Tesco in Pembury to get a sandwich. As always the manned tills were closed, and a gaggle of surly disinterested staff lurked around the self-service area alternately getting in the way of and sneering at those serving themselves. If I knew of a supermarket that doesn’t have self-service tills, is open before seven o’clock in the morning and isn’t a major diversion from my journey to work they’d have my money.

Work was much the same as it ever is. But starting early meant that I finished early. Having got to work in the dark I left just as the sun was setting. Sadly working in Pembury meant I didn’t get home as early as I might have done, but there it is. I’m only working one day this week so I can’t complain.

I came home to an empty house; “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs were babysitting Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. They came home half way through “Downton Abbey” in which Lady Mary was accused of being aloof. An allegation the Turkish attaché would have refuted had he survived the vigorous porking Lady Mary did at him.

The plan was to have fish and chips for dinner, but having scoffed all the chips the other day we resorted to our usual fallback position of KFC.

We scoffed it whilst watching last year’s Christmas Bake-Off and whilst listening to dogs snoring.

I might join them soon – the four o’clock start has taken its toll.

11 December 2024 (Wednesday) - A Walk, Tesco...

I wasn’t feeling on top form last night, and I slept through for ten hours. I woke with a bit of a sore throat and a mild headache. I suspect I’ve picked up the bug that “er indoors ^TM” has been suffering with this week. She says she caught it from Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” but I won’t hear a word said against my favourite lady.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. Today quite a few people were posting that they were feeling rather sad on the run-up to Christmas having lost loved ones. I wish there was something I could say to help these people…

With brekkie scoffed I took the dogs up to the woods. You could see we’d had serious winds recently – there wasn’t a single leaf left on any of the deciduous trees, and quite a lot of branches of evergreens were down as well. As we walked we met a few other people near the car park. One chap couldn’t hurry away quick enough as he said there was a spotty dog following him of which he was clearly terrified. We didn’t see any spotty dogs.

But as always once away from the car park area we only saw one person in three and a half miles. A jogger who made me laugh. She stopped and chatted and asked (with a smile) if I felt like her in that she’d been running for miles, not seen anyone else for ages, and on seeing me immediately felt resentful wondering who that bald bloke was to think he could walk in her personal woods. I agreed entirely. We too walk for miles and see so few other people that it might as well be our own woods.

As we walked I kept a close eye on Bailey. She shivers at Dog Club, and in the afternoons when the heating isn’t on. But she didn’t shiver at all when we were walking. Strange…

We came home where I washed mud from bellies and paws, and fox poo from backs. Well, from one back. Bailey.

After a cuppa I popped to Tesco for a bit of shopping. Tesco was hard work. Unlike the Tesco in Pembury yesterday, people were looking where they were going today. But I struggled; if only they could lay the store out in the same order as “er indoors ^TM” had written my shopping list.

But I did have fun with one rather posh looking woman. As I reached for a jar of cheapo jam she was picking up a jar of jam costing six times the price. “Rich Lady?!” I commented, and after a little chat about how I’m a poor pensioner I shamed her into buying a jar of the cheap stuff.

I hope she likes it. I do.

I then spent an hour or so going through rotas. I think management might have short-changed me on hours. Mind you when I say “think” I probably mean “hope”. After an hour I sent an email which will probably have some poor secretary spending a day to show that their sums are right and mine are wrong.

I wrote up today’s Advent story, wrote up some CPD, and by the time I’d had a shower the afternoon was gone.

After I’d watched today’s episode of Downton Abbey (in which Mr. Bates did for Mr. Green) “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of scoff which we washed down with a bottle of pinot grigio. I was going to say “sadly a grim bottle of pinot grigio”, but I’ve never had any other type of pinot grigio.

12 December 2024 (Thursday) - Dog Cam, Pot Noodle, Ironing, Telly

I’ve still got this cold that I’ve had for a day or so. It seems worse in the mornings and I felt particularly grim today. I got up and once I’d had a scrape I made toast and rolled my eyes as I peered into the Internet.  There’s never any arguments as bitter as those on the Facebook pages about garden ponds.

One ongoing squabble makes me laugh. There’s two sides to this one.

One group of people feel that tap water and rain water are urine straight from Satan’s willie and they would rather fill their ponds with concentrated sulphuric acid rather than with rain or tap water. These people spend all their lives treating their ponds with plants and filtering them to get the levels of various chemicals just to exactly the level that manufacturers of test kits feel they should be. And once they’ve got everything to just the level that the kit says it should be, they then then regularly empty out between a quarter to a half of the pond water every month and fill it with the tap water or rain water about which they are so derogatory. And they then fart around trying to get the levels of chemicals back to where they were.

The other group of people just let the pond get on with it, and occasionally top the pond up from the hose when it needs it.

Neither side seems to realise that both have pristine ponds.

They were all kicking off again this morning with the chemicals brigade claiming that rain water contains very high levels of chlorine. The fact that it doesn’t was neither here nor there to anyone.

I took the dogs up to the woods for our walk. As always, once away from the car park we hardly saw anyone. But we did find ourselves following some very normal people at one point. A mile from the nearest road and still they had their dogs on leads. Seriously?

I felt the woods were quiet today though. Quiet as in silent. Usually we hear birds chirping and squawking, and squirrels rustling in trees. And if we’re lucky there’s deer crashing about. But today was silence. You really could have heard a pin drop. What was that all about?

As we came back to the car park so we met a labrador. Mabel. Mabel’s mummy was rather taken with Bailey and Morgan, and shared dog treats with them. That was a result.

We came home for a bath. Tummies were grubby and again Bailey had disgraced herself by rolling in something foul. And with bath bathed so my phone had a flurry of alert messages. Somehow or other the Dog Cam I set up a while ago had decided to tell me every time it detected motion. And post-bath zoomies made for a lot of motion.

I eventually got the thing to stop bothering me, but it took some doing.

With it quiet I popped over the road for some lunch. They have some interesting stuff in the shop over the road. I got some Chinese hot chicken flavoured pot noodle thing. It was rather tasty, but had my lips and mouth burning for about half an hour after I’d finished scoffing.

With dinner scoffed I cracked on with the ironing. As I scoffed and ironed I watched more episodes of “The Empress” in which there was consternation when it transpired that the archduke had gone down with a case of manky knobrot. Princess wotsit of Belgium really wasn’t impressed, what with the archduke having plighted his troth and everything.

“er indoors ^TM” came home and boiled up pizza and chips which we scoffed whilst watching Celebrity Bake off. During the show Lucy Beaumont declared that you can eat a lot more if you take your bra off.

Can you?

13 December 2024 (Friday) - Another Lazy Day

I woke to the sound of “er indoors ^TM”’s alarm. “er indoors ^TM” didn’t though so I prodded her a few times to no avail. Eventually I realized I was prodding Bailey.

I got up and opened the next window of today’s Advent Calendar, if only to give the voices in my head something to ponder whilst I scoffed brekkie.

As I set about my toast there was quite the argument on one of the Facebook travel pages that I follow when some woman was furious that he M25 motorway was open today. Apparently some pedestrian got killed on the motorway yesterday, and this idiot woman felt the motorway should be closed today as a sign of respect.

Someone else posted to another group about what a boring fellow her neighbour was as he had taken up calligraphy (posh handwriting) and for want of anything better to copy, was copying out the Bible. Someone was banging on about how they did that at school and he’d copied out psalm 119 which turned out to be the favourite psalm of quite a few people commenting on that Facebook post. For those of my loyal readers who aren’t among the righteous, psalm 119 sings the praises of being a do-gooder. I was tempted to ask where these people stood on psalm 137 which states “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” (look it up!) but thought better of doing so. Most so-called Christians get rather upset when you show them that they haven’t actually read their bibles.

I got the dogs into the car and we set off to the woods. As we drove Desert Island Discs was on the radio. Today’s castaway was Ebony Rainford-Brent. No – I’d never heard of her either. It turns out that she was the first black woman to play for the England women’s cricket team. She seemed a rather interesting person. I quite like listening to Desert Island Discs as I’m a very nosey person and there’s quite a bit about people’s lives on the show. It’s just a shame that nearly all of those interviewed either pretend to like one of three types of music; pretentious classical rubbish, operatic howling, or frankly dire dirges.

We got to the woods and had a good walk. Yesterday I mentioned how quiet the place was. It wasn’t quite so quiet today. As we walked we met another group of dog walkers who were very quick to tell me that the brown spaniel in their group wasn’t their dog at all. Clearly they hoped that dog was with me. The dog seemed to be quite happy walking with them though. Half a mile on, just at the point where we occasionally see deer I could hear a whistling and some shouting. That brown spaniel’s daddy wasn’t happy. And was even less happy when I told him the dog was half a mile away and going in the wrong direction.

Needless to say that what with all the racket he was making we didn’t see any deer today. Not even the dead one – the carcass had gone. Had the ranger cleared it away?

As we got close to the car park so we walked up to the car with a professional dog walker. And as we got to the car so Mabel’s mummy drove up. I opened my car’s boot and announced “Boot Dogs”. Both Morgan and Treacle jumped in the boot to the amazement of the onlookers. I get rather smug when they do as they are told. I told them that Bailey is too small to jump as I loaded her in.

We came home to have tummies washed. For once no one had rolled in muck, and it wasn’t long before all three dogs were snoring. I wrote up some CPD, then pondered today’s Advent story before spending the afternoon watching episodes of “Four in a Bed”. This afternoon a particularly porky young lady and her even chubbier father delighted in finding petty fault with all the other establishments in the competition, and then pulled out in a strop when it became clear that for all their faults everywhere else was streets ahead of what they were offering.

“er indoors ^TM” set off to see her dad (what with it being his birthday). I didn’t go. More and more Treacle is proving too noisy to be left unsupervised. Instead I had a shower and settled myself in front of the telly for another telly-thon. I started off with Downton Abbey in which the footman James was caught in flagrante with Lady Anstruther (and they were doing the dirty deed too).  And then we had the cliffhanger of the second season of “The Empress” in which the Emperor went off to battle in the Second Italian War of Independence. Hardly a cliffhanger though as Wikipedia tells us the chap was still alive fifty years later.

In between telly I dishwashered and laundried. I didn’t spend the entire afternoon and evening watching telly.  

Just most of it. Being semi-retired was all very well in the summer when I had stuff to do in the garden. It is becoming rather dull right now.

14 December 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Family Party

I woke at half past four and lay awake unable to nod off… and suddenly the alarm was going off. That rarely happens. I opened the next window of my Advent Calendar, then made toast and had my usual brekkie ritual.

This morning there were several arguments on Facebook about episodes of Star Trek that aired thirty years ago, and a religious argument about flying fish on the National Geographic page. There was very little that I’d actually signed up to see though. These days most of the dog-related groups are filled with photos of dogs which have recently died. No one posts pictures of their dogs doing anything; they just wait until it is too late. And Facebook rarely (if ever) shows me anything about walking in the countryside, fishing, Sparks, ELO or any work related stuff. Not even any ladies of dubious morals any more. Mind you these days I seem to get endless suggestions that I might like to join groups about Calvin and Hobbes.

I wouldn’t.

I munzed. Some of the local munzees had been cursed overnight (it’s a Munzee thing) and got Wordle on the fourth attempt.

We then set off to Dog Club where we had a rather good time; if somewhat cold and muddy. Dogs charged about in the mud, treats were scoffed. I love it. And one of our number gave us a little pressie with a lovely message in the card thanking us for giving up our Saturday mornings to run it. I must admit I don’t feel I give up anything – I love Dog Club.

We came home for a cuppa, and I posted today’s instalment of the Advent Story to the world. I’m not sure where this story is going, but then I never know where the thing is going. I’m sure the voices in my head know what’s happening.

I changed out of muddy trousers, donned my gay apparel and set off to Hastings… via Folkestone to collect “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. Littlun’s gay apparel was her skeleton dress.

We had a rather good afternoon at the family Christmas party. Loads of food and drink, party games (I particularly enjoyed “pass the parcel”) and Santa visited too. The smaller ones had great fun with the dogs. The only down side to the day was that on looking back there must have been over fifty people along and I was certainly in the top five oldest.

I slept most of the way home. Today was a rather good day.

15 December 2024 (Sunday) - Lydd

I woke with a minor headache. I blame the fifth pint of Harvey’s best. And then I found myself pondering a mystery. When we went to Battle the other evening I was busting for a tiddle all the way home after one pint. After five pints yesterday we drove from Hastings to home via Folkestone and I was fine. What was that all about?

I got up and opened today’s window of the Advent Calendar. I got a rabbit today. That gave me something to ponder as I scoffed toast and rummaged round the Internet.

I had a friend request on Facebook this morning seemingly from an old mucker from way back. However my old mate had posted on his real Facebook page that someone was using his name in a fake account, and asked people to report the fake. I reported it. Within seconds I had a message from the Facebook feds saying this forgery went against their community standards and they were going to remove the fake profile... A minute later I had another message saying they decided it didn't go against their community standards and they weren’t going to remove it...

And science has found something odd going on in space. Apparently the universe isn’t doing what science says it should be doing. This is actually amazing and of monumental importance. This is akin to finding that the world isn’t flat. But sadly the masses are more interested in Taylor Swift, Strictly Come Dancing, tits and bingo.

We took the dogs out for a little walk. We went to Lydd where there’s a new geocaching adventure lab series and quite a few Munzees too. The dogs behaved (mostly); there were no normal people swarming. A good outing.

On the way there and back we picked up some of the puzzle geocaches I spent ages struggling to solve over the last few months. The puzzle is that you are told the distance and bearing that a geocache is from the point at which a given photograph was taken. All you have to do is find exactly where the photograph was taken. The obvious way to find out was to do a virtual drive around the Romney Marsh using Google Street View, but sadly much of the footage of the Romney Marsh on Google Street View is from over ten years ago, but I got there in the end.

Like all puzzles they were easy when you knew the answer.

We came home and had an argument with the Alexa. We wanted some festive Christmas music. The Alexa wanted to play dire dirges. Telling it “Alexa – play Christmas music that isn’t entirely crap” didn’t help. We tried all sorts of commands and still it wanted to play frankly dreadful rubbish.

In the end the Alexa not so much won the fight as I gave up with it.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up bacon sarnies. I then slobbed on the sofa scoffing them and reading my Kindle app until the voices in my head came up with today’s instalment of the Advent story. And then we met with a minor disaster. We are probably going to have to turn off the water tomorrow. I can distinctly remember a conversation with the chap who did the new kitchen when we talked of how he would build the cupboards so’s we could get to the stopcock. Sadly he didn’t.

And then the doorbell rang. Some delivery chap was on the doorstep. He thrust a package into my hand and then jabbered about credit cards. The package was warm. Someone somewhere had ordered a takeout to be delivered. Occasionally we get stuff delivered for Beaver Lane (as opposed to “Road”) so I asked him did he want Beaver Lane or Beaver Road. “Yes” he replied with a dopey smile. It soon became apparent that the chap’s spoken English was as good as my spoken Urdu. With no address on the parcel there wasn’t much else I could do but loudly announce “wrong house”, put the package back in his hands and close the door on him.

“er indoors ^TM” sorted some rather good enchiladas which we washed down with a bottle of Jacktone merlot. At £3.99 a bottle from Aldi you really can’t complain.

As we scoffed we watched the semi-final of “Lego Masters: Australia”. It was rather good…

16 December 2024 (Monday) - New Door, Plumbing Issues

Last night we watched the Royal Variety Performance on telly. Leaving aside just how crap the show was (it was crap with a capital turd), I found myself fascinated with the woman presenting it. Although she denies having had plastic surgery done, her head looked about thirty years younger than the body to which it was attached. With a pure smooth unsullied face and a neck with more wrinkles than a wrinkled thing she really did look as though someone had pulled her head off of a teenager and stuck it on that teenager’s gran’s body. I commented on Facebook about it last night, and this morning it seemed I wasn’t alone if wondering what was going on there.

And talking of Facebook there was a very impressive squabble this morning about illegal building techniques in Lego models. Grown adults were getting *really* angry, upset and annoyed. Apparently you aren’t allowed to join thin bricks to standard bricks by shoving an edge of the thin brick between the studs of the thicker one. You'd think they'd have better things to worry about, but I suppose for them the long winter evenings must just fly by...

The plan for today was to have the living room door and bath taps replaced. The taps have been dripping for quite some time now, and the living room door needed to be replaced with a thick fire-resistant one when we had the loft conversion done twenty years ago, but we never got round to it. I must admit to a degree of scepticism about the door. It’s all very well having a fire resistant door, but the walls either side of it are of the same construction as the door that was coming out. However as I’ve said before there’s no point looking for sense in the law, is there?

The chap was due to start at half past nine… He arrived shortly after eight o’clock.

He spent an age measuring the old living room door then went off to cut the new one to shape. I had a plan that I might take the dogs out so as not to get in his way, so we went out shortly after nine o’clock. Bearing in mind that the bath might not be accessible on our return we didn’t go to the woods. Instead we walked one of the walks I used to walk with Fudge many years ago. Through the park out to the Godinton estate (where we failed to find two geocaches), then down to Great Chart and home past the Environment Centre and South Ashford. About six miles… I thought we would have stayed out of the nice builder’s way. We got home at half past eleven only to find he hadn’t started.

I made us both a cuppa and wrote up some CPD until the builders arrived with the new door at half past twelve.

After a lot of bashing and thumping the door was in place by two o’clock. And then we had quite the performance. Turning off all the water was hard work. We found several taps which turned off this and that, but nothing that seemed to turn off the hot water. The builder chap was reluctant to drain the entire system so he’s coming back tomorrow with a bit of kit which will freeze it all, and he says he will do the taps then.

Realistically all the plumbing needs stripping out and starting again. The builder chap suggested we got shot of our boiler and replaced it with a combi. I nodded sagely at this; pretending I knew what he was talking about. Once he’d gone I looked up what a combi was. Apparently a combi is some device which does both the central heating and the hot water at the same time. It would sit where the current boiler is and would do away with the need for the water tank and immersion heater.

According to the Internet a boiler is good for ten to fifteen years. Bearing in mind our current boiler is fourteen years old (we got it on 8 September 2010) perhaps getting a combi might be something for the new year? Sadly at the time of getting the boiler I wrote “if I bung ten quid aside each month, when its time comes the cost of replacement shouldn’t be anywhere near the shock I had this time”. Had I bunged ten quid aside each month like I said I should, I would now have one thousand seven hundred quid which is about the cost of a combi boiler, and all I’d have to find would be the cost of paying someone to install it.

Sadly I didn’t bung anything aside for a new boiler.

With the builder gone I sorted us a cuppa and also sorted out today’s Advent story. I had this vague idea when I started this year’s story (only two weeks ago) about a carol-singing robot, but today we’ve got the Easter Bunny taking over Christmas. I can only assume that the voices in my head know where this story is going: I certainly don’t.

“er indoors ^TM” then went bowling as she does on a Monday. I settled down with the dogs and sparked up the telly. I started off with “Dad’s Army”. I’ve seen those episodes so many times that I know them pretty much off by heart, but they are rather good nonetheless. I followed this with an episode of “Downton Abbey” in which Lady Mary was off on a dirty weekend, then slept through another episode of “The Silo”. I can’t remember what happened in the first season. I shall have to start again frorn the beginning with that one. And then an episode of “You Rang M’Lord” in which Henry had forgotten to put methylated spirit in the hotplate.

Perhaps that’s where my plumbing has gone wrong?

17 December 2024 (Tuesday) - New Taps, Ice Cream

There was talk yesterday of someone in the family moving house. And also of a combi boiler. This morning as I scoffed my toast my Facebook feed was filled with adverts for heating systems and removal companies. We are definitely being watched, aren’t we?

There was also a really nasty argument on one of the local Facebook pages. People were finding fault with the local council, and a local Green activist (who I once knew reasonably well) was doing her party no favours in the way she was carrying on.

Local politics is probably a thankless task, but in my experience the last MP (who I would never have voted for) actually replied to emails on their first sending, and replied promptly too.

Our current MP replied to me on my fourth attempt.

Independent and Green councillors still haven’t replied to emails sent a month or more ago.

The trouble with politics is that people choose a political party in much the same random way they would choose a football team and then stick with that party through thick and thin cheering everything they do and belittling everything any other party does regardless of what any of their policies are, and of what actually is going on.

I had an email telling me of a new puzzle geocache. I solved the puzzle in a couple of minutes and saw the thing was on the way to Pembury. I also saw from the answer-checker that a fellow hunter of Tupperware had already solved the puzzle an hour previously. I suspected that he was already flying off west-wards, and didn’t bother charging off out myself. I was right not to have done so – he’d logged First to Find before I finished my toast.

“er indoors ^TM” went off to the office at quarter to nine, and the builders arrived minutes afterwards At half past ten they finally got the old tap off and announced they needed some part or other and set off to wherever you get plumbing parts from. I sat with the dogs desperately hoping they would come back. They were only gone forty minutes, but I did worry. It has to be said that the new taps went in much easier than the old ones came out, and once all was done and dusted they spent a few minutes talking about the cowboy who’d fitted the bath. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that when (thirty years ago) we wanted a new bathroom my old Dad wouldn’t hear of us spending out on a professional and he did it for us. The builders showed me several place where it was obvious he’d bodged it. But we now have a non-dripping tap, which is a result.

With the builders finished and off to wherever it is that builders go, I settled in front of the tell and watched a couple of episodes of “Victoria” on Netflix. I can remember liking that series, so I thought I’d give it another go.

“er indoors ^TM” returned from the office, and I set off to Folkestone. I was on babysitting duty, so I took favourite smallest granddaughter to the park. Having been chattering all the way to the park about going on the red slide, she had one go on it before losing interest.

We then wandered round the back streets looking at people’s Christmas decorations. Back in the day every house was blinged up at this time of year; it doesn’t seem to happen quite so much these days. We walked on to the town centre where we stopped in Will Brown’s Ice cream parlour. Littlun made great fuss of wanting pink ice cream; she had three mouthfuls before announcing that she wanted to go home.

With littlun deposited back with her mother I came home and tried out the new taps in the bath as I had a shower. They worked. Part of me had spent much of the day wondering if they would ever work again.

And then I watched another episode of “Downton Abbey” in which having lambasted Lady Mary for her dirty weekend in Liverpool, Grannie turned out to be in no position to claim the moral high ground having porked Prince Kuragin in years gone by.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up omelettes for dinner. I’m thinking of an early night – I’ve not really done much today, but I’m worn out.

18 December 2024 (Wednesday) - Early Shift

As is so often the case, with an alarm set I was awake far too early. At half past four I was watching another episode of “Victoria” and wondering. Just how accurate was this TV show? I’m rather vague about history. Like the episodes of “The Empress” I was watching last week I was wondering just how much had been made up for the telly. I found myself thinking back to dull afternoons in room K at the Hastings Academy for Budding Geniuses where our history teacher showed us how to kill a subject stone dead. The history teacher’s idea of teaching was to give us a text book and over the course of a year have us copy it out in the hope that we might remember something.

I certainly didn’t.

I then had my usual root about on-line. Not much was happening so I set off to work on a very dark and rainy morning. As I drove I listened to the pundits on the radio spouting their drivel as I do. Apparently the storms last week did damage to the port at Hollyhead which is now closed for at least a month. This is causing major issues for the transport industry. Apparently. Exactly what those issues are is anyone's guess though. Out of the three experts wheeled on to discuss the matter, only one spoke passable English. The other two were speaking in accents so thick I couldn't make out a word they were saying.

There was also a lot of talk about the WASPI women. When the government brought in changes to pension provision some years ago a lot of people felt the government failed to provide adequate notice about the changes to pension provision.  They probably didn't. It turns out here was a two-year delay in sending out letters to those affected.

Ironically the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall apologised for the balls-up, but said there was no compensation forthcoming even though she'd previously implied she would sort it all out.

I suspect Ms. Kendall has found that being in charge is much more difficult than standing on the sidelines throwing rocks at those in charge.

Work was work. But being on an early shift I got out early. I didn’t get home early though. It took three quarters of an hour to get to the motorway. Having spent most of the year rebuilding the Coldharbour roundabout, after a couple of weeks whoever it is that does the roads had coned half of it off… then gone home leaving chaos. And then having got through that I then had to face “Operation Brock”; ten miles of motorway cordoned off for absolutely no reason whatsoever with absolutely no vehicles using it.

As I watched today’s instalment of Downton Abbey “er indoors ^TM” went off to Aldi. I did volunteer, but being worse than useless there was no telling what I might have brought home. Being worse than useless has its advantages – you don’t get sent shopping.

We scoffed pizzas whilst watching “Mary Does Christmas” not out of any desire to watch Mary Berry, but because I’d had the heads-up that an old friend would be appearing in the show. If you are going to watch it, fast forward to about five minutes from the end. The Town Crier – I went to school with him fifty years ago.

19 December 2024 (Thursday) - Walk, Ironing...

Yesterday I won third prize in the works Christmas raffle, and I posted a photo of the box of choccies I won on Facebook. By this morning over fifty people had pressed the “like” button. However only sixteen people had reacted to yesterday’s instalment of my Christmas story. I found that rather odd…

There wasn’t a lot else happening on Facebook this morning which was probably for the best. I did have an email form the credit karma people. Last month my credit rating went down by eleven points. Today it has gone up by eleven points. I’ve done nothing different this month to what I did last month – what’s that all about?

With the rain having stopped I took the dogs up to the woods. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the scandal facing the sport of rugby. Apparently the rugby football union is losing money hand over fist, they’ve just announced operating losses of nearly thirty-eight million quid, they’ve laid off forty employees in the latest load of redundancies, and they are paying their head honcho over five times what the Prime Minister gets.

And there was talk about water bills. Apparently my personal water bill is set to go through the roof as after years of giving all their money to shareholders, water companies have finally realised they are supposed to be providing fresh water and taking away used water.

Water, rugby… I blame Margaret Thatcher. I really do. She came to power over forty years ago with the mind-set that absolutely anything and everything could turn a profit. And this is our society now, isn’t it?

We got to the woods and had a good walk. About a third of the way round there was a minor commotion as Morgan woofed at a bush. Some joggers emerged hoiking up their drawers. They were all very nice about it; giggling that they would tiddle elsewhere, and ran off. Presumably to have that tiddle.

About three quarters of the way round my watch wobbled, and I pondered. My watch has unilaterally decided I should walk six thousand steps every day, and it tells me off if I don’t. Our standard walk round the woods comes in at about eight and a half to nine thousand steps. For some time when walking this route my watch would make the six thousand steps announcement at pretty much the same point (by one of the smaller sink holes). But over the last few weeks the announcement has been coming later in our walk. Today it was a good half mile further on, even though our total step count was a shade over eight and a half thousand steps (what it has always been). What’s that all about?

We came home and tested out the new shower attachment on its first dog bath. It worked very well. That was something of a result. I messed about doing some CPD, harvested a bumper crop of dog turds from the garden and put some washing in to scrub.

I then cracked on with the ironing whilst watching episodes of “Four in a Bed”. I like that show as usually people squabble and fall out. Sadly today’s episodes were a disappointment. Everyone loved everyone else, everyone said they would go back to everyone else’s place, and with people making overpayments, the one in last place had full payments from everyone else.

I put up today’s instalment of the Advent Calendar. Frosty the Snowman has arrived in our world. Usually Frosty arrives earlier.

“er indoors ^TM” went shopping, and I settled in front of the telly underneath a pile of dogs and watched today’s episode of “Downton Abbey”. I say “today’s episode” – it was first aired over ten years ago. Atticus Aldridge appeared today. Spoiler alert – he tries to do the dirty deed with Lady Rose…

And I did some dog photography too…

20 December 2024 (Friday) - Pink Mouse

I slept right through till half past seven this morning I woke with a bit of a cold. That was a pain in the glass,

I opened today’s window of the Advent Calendar then made toast. I scoffed it whilst having my usual root around the Internet. It was still there. This morning there were rants about genetics and socialism in which people were queueing up to proudly show off their ignorance and loudly proclaim their opinions which were factually wrong. It never fails to amaze me just how so many stupid people are so fast to show off how stupid they are.

Once I’d scraped the ice off of the car I took the dogs out. As I drove Cher was on the radio on “Desert Island Discs”. She sounded rather interesting.

We got to the woods where there were far more people than usual. Sadly we arrived at the same time as a pair we’ve met before. They are pleasant enough, but their volume setting has nothing less than “bellow”. Walking a couple of yards from each other they were shouting everything they had to say to each other. And they walked fast too; no matter what diversions we took to get away from them, they kept turning up in front of us.

Then we met some immaculately turned-out woman in the depths of the woods who got the right hump when muddy Morgan and muddy Bailey jumped up at her.

And we met the yummy mummies (and dogs) running group. We see them from time to time. They are aways friendly. Today some chap had joined in with them.

The beast. Mind you they were quite happily trotting along and he looked knackered.

Just as I got home the car’s low petrol alarm went off. So I bathed the dogs and then drove down to Tesco to refuel. After five minutes struggling with a non-functioning petrol pump the woman in the kiosk announced over the tannoy that the pump was broken, and that was why everyone else was using the other pumps. I shouted back that in that case I would take my money to Sainsburys and did so. Eventually. The roads were rather busy this morning. I had to emergency stop twice to avoid crashing into people randomly cutting me up. And when I got to Sainsburys the queues to get into the car park stretched about a hundred yards in each direction.

It was such a relief to get home.

I took myself off to bed for the afternoon where I dozed fitfully. I got up after a couple of hours and set about my lap-top’s settings. I’ve struggled to see the mouse pointer for some time. It’s now pink.

Now to get dressed, scoff dinner and kick some ass at family bingo before going off to the night shift.

21 December 2024 (Saturday) - Rather Tired

The night shift was one of the better ones really.... when compared to the sort of night shifts we have these days. Back in the day I used to take in a portable DVD player and we had a room in the hospital accommodation where we would go sleep. On an average night shift I would watch six episodes of "Star Trek", and it was unusual to get called out of bed more than twice. These days we are rather busier and with a constant workflow. I probably had blood samples from fifty patients overnight.

I was pleased to see the early shift arrive.

Ideally I wouldn't have done a Friday night, but such is life. With time pushing I went straight from work to Dog Club; it seemed daft to drive past the paddock we use, go home and immediately turn round and drive two  miles back again. When I left Maidstone this morning it had been hossing down, but the rain had slackened off to drizzle when I got to Repton.

I opened up the field, hung up poo bag and money pot, and dogs (and people) soon arrived. As did “er indoors ^TM” and our three dogs. And our little house guest - Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. Littlun was made up with all the dogs. As was I to be honest.  So many dogs had their nice Christmas coats on, and in minutes were all covered in mud. As was I.

After Dog Club “er indoors ^TM” took Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” home with her via Asda to pick up shopping. I took the dogs home for a warming shower. We’d all got rather cold and wet and muddy. As I drove home I listened to Steve on the radio and stopped off to send in a message – my answer to the Mystery Year competition. The year in which the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast and the country’s first nudie beach was opened. I remember both. I was there in 1978 when it was declared that you could walk round in the nip on Fairlight beach. It wasn’t the most accessible of places; it was a pig to get to. But me and my mates went there many times in the desperate hope of seeing a nudie lady without any clothes on. All we ever saw was fat old men in the altogether.

With dogs washed and shopping brought home we put the kettle on, and it wasn’t long before “My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” arrived. Yesterday before I'd left for work we had the family bingo and I won the hamper. This morning the hamper was delivered. Loads of sweeties and biccies.

“er indoors ^TM” and littlun went off to visit great grandparents. I decided that it was too late to go to bed, so I settled in front of the telly with the dogs and woke four hours later with neckache. And panic. I hadn’t opened today’s window of my Advent Calendar. Normally the voices in my head have all day to think about what we get each day. Today was something of a rush job.

“er indoors ^TM” and littlun returned and we had a rather hectic evening chucking toy cars about whilst shouting “Watch Out” and watching “Sunny Bunnies” and singing songs.

I’m worn out with it all.

And today was the solstice. I left work this morning before sunrise, and I woke up mid-afternoon after sunset. From here on in the days get longer…

22 December 2024 (Sunday) - Still Feeling Tired

“er indoors ^TM” went up to the attic room with littlun last night and Morgan and Treacle went with her. Bailey figured out there was more space with me, and so spent the night on my bed.

We both slept well.

I got up and raced Bailey round the garden harvesting all the dog turds I could find before she could eat them. When she was small she used to eat the other dogs’ turds, and periodically she still does; the foul creature. I made toast and had a little look on-line and found something on Amazon which might help. Once it arrives, all three dogs will get a Peking Duck llavoured chew every day and this has vitamins and minerals and pro-biotics which is good for them, and will also make their poop taste bitter so that Bailey won’t eat it. In theory.

We’ll give it a go.

Facebook was dull this morning – the highlight was it suggesting I might like to join a group about Panasonic bread-making machines (!) and an invite to a jazz concert in Hugh Wycombe (!)

Then all the dogs came down and filled the garden with dung again.

Littlun got up and grizzled for absolutely no reason whatsoever for half an hour, then we popped over to the Eureka park for a little geo-meet. It was a tad cold, but a dozen of us met up and chatted for half an hour or so.

We came home and whilst littlun wreaked havoc I argued with the bank. Having cancelled my subscription to Fabio.com, the cheeky people have taken over twenty quid. The bank said that the department that deals with that sort of thing is closed at the weekend, but the nice lady took all the details and said she’d phone me back tomorrow. Or that’s what I thought she said. What with all the noise that littlun was making I could hardly hear a thing, and the nice lady at the bank’s spoken English was so poor I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying anyway.

Perhaps she will phone me back tomorrow? Here’s hoping.

The plan was that we would all take littlun home, but “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” phoned with plans to go shopping. I left them to it and stayed home with the dogs. I had a minor tidy-up as best I could and put some washing on whilst the Alexa played frankly dreadful dirges which it felt was “Christmas music”.

“er indoors ^TM” returned. As she boiled up dinner I cracked open a box of sweeties and watched telly. “Downton Abbey”, then the “Bullseye”  Christmas special. It was always a favourite proramme forty years ago mainly because of how dreadful it was, and tonight’s special was so bad it was brilliant.

And then the final of this year’s series of “Lego Masters: Australia” as we scoffed dinner.

Bearing in mind I’ve done pretty much nothing today, I’m feeling exhausted. I’m blaming Friday’s night shift followed by an intense session of granddaughter. I’m going to work tomorrow for a rest.

23 December 2024 (Monday) - Dog Tablets

I woke with what felt like the world’s worst hangover this morning. Even though I’ve not had a drink for ages. What was that all about?

I opened today’s window on the Advent Calendar, then made toast and watched another episode of “Victoria” in which His Serene Highness didn’t do the dirty deed on Harriet, to the obvious relief of Albert. I do like “Victoria”; it is just a shame that whoever made the show didn’t know that Parliament meets in the Houses of Parliament and not St Paul’s Cathedral.

I then had my usual rummage round the Internet. Last week I mentioned that I was considering a combi boiler. Since then my Facebook feed had featured a lot of adverts for new gas boilers. Today I had several adverts for back boilers. I had no idea they were still a thing. I thought they’d died out forty years ago. My mum and dad had one of those in their house which supplied all their hot water. It worked on a simple enough principle – there was a tank of water behind a coal fire which was heated by that coal fire. Which is all very well all the time you’ve got a coal fire going, but if you haven’t got a coal fire going you’ve no hot water. Consequently no matter what time of the year or how hot it was outside, there was always a coal fire going at full whack in their living room.

I’m not playing that game again.

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio had the knives out for the Archbishop of York. Some vicar or other had been accused of having sex with a 16-year-old girl who was a pupil at a school where he was chaplain. And despite the scandal the Archbishop twice appointed this vicar to positions of responsibility in the church.

Part of me wonders if the Archbishop thought he was following his conscience - after all his religion preaches forgiveness.

Part of me wonders just how thick you have to be to get to be an Archbishop - appoint a paedo and then do so again - seriously?

The Church of England has issued a press release on the matter saying how safeguarding decisions and all appointments today are subject to very clear guidance issued by the House of Bishops, which was not in place at the time of the scandal.

I would have thought that God would have got involved and negated the need for safeguarding, but what do I know?

I got to work and did my bit. As I worked a few of the young mothers at work thanked me for doing my Advent story. Apparently it has become the bedtime story for their children; I wouldn't have though that the adventures of an alcoholic and a rabbit bent on global domination were really good bedtime stories for kids...  Perhaps they are. Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” is staying over Christmas. Perhaps I might try it out on her?

At lunch time the woman from the bank phoned. She took an age to go through the security questions then said she'd put me through to the credit card department. I was on hold for an hour after which we went through the same security questions again. Eventually the chap claimed he'd stopped any future payments, but says it is up to me to get my money back.

If anyone could recommend a bank; I'm looking to change...

I came home to find the dog dung stuff had arrived. Whilst “er indoors ^TM” went shopping I tried the tablets on the dogs. They all scoffed them without any problems. Whether these things will work and stop Bailey eating turds, or just give the dogs the squits remains to be seen, but it will be difficult to be sure… in the meantime the dogs between them have eaten a roll of sellotape, several yards of fishing line and an emery board.

“er indoors ^TM” returned from shopping only to announce she’d forgotten to get any gateau. She also announced that Asda opens at five o’clock tomorrow morning. That will be an adventure for me, won’t it?

24 December 2024 (Tuesday) - All A Bit Vague

The plan for this morning was to nip over to Asda to get gateau. But I went late last night instead and slept right through until “er indoors ^TM” alarm went off.

I get up, made toast and saw a new geocache had gone live at the Maidstone services. Had I been going to work today I might have had a First to Find. But I wasn’t. So I didn’t. There wasn’t much happening on-line so I took the dogs out as I do.

As we drove up (literally up – it is high there) Kings Wood we drove into the mist. Seeing the mist I had nigh hopes of seeing deer. Sadly I was disappointed; the woods were quite busy. We met all sorts of normal people including one bunch of thirty to forty mothers and toddlers who told me that going to the woods mob-handed was something of a tradition. Apparently I was unusual in saying that it looked like they were having fun; they told me that most people just glared at them.

We came home for a bath; all three had rolled in that which they shouldn’t have. And with “er indoors ^TM” off for the afternoon to see “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” I set about the monthly accounts. They aren’t bad at all. It would be nice to have far more money in there, but they have been a whole lot worse. I watched an episode of “Victoria”, then had a little sleep.

All the girls returned, and “er indoors ^TM” set off to see her sister. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and I opened the Advocaat whilst Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” slept.

That Advocaat was supposed to last till Boxing Day…

25 December 2024 (Christmas Day) - Weetabix

Just after I eventually nodded off last night I was woken by the sound of Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” crashing up the stairs loudly telling the world to be quiet as Granddad was asleep. I lay awake for an hour after which my phone loudly announced I had a message even though all its connections to the internet were switched off.  And when I eventually dozed off again so “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs quietly came to bed.

I lay awake for another hour or so then gave up and watched an episode of “Victoria” before having my usual rummage on-line. Not much was going on, so I had a quick munz, then had a go at Wordle. Having got four letters spot-on on my second attempt I then made four more wrong guesses and didn’t get it at all. SHA-E has got quite a few possibilities.

The roads were rather busier than I thought they might be as I drove to work this morning. Whenever I drive on a Christmas morning I remember driving to my Mum's house on a Christmas morning after a Christmas Eve night shift in the late 1980s. On that morning on the thirty-mile journey from Ashford to Hastings I saw a total of six other cars driving about. I'd seen more than that before I'd covered half a mile this morning.

As I drove I thought I might listen to the carol service on the radio as it might be nice and Christmassy.

It wasn't.

Rather than traditional Christmas carols and readings there were happy-clappy modern songs and operatic howling dirges interspersed by sad tales of woe. I turned the radio off and sung along to what was on my MP3 stick instead.

Work was rather busy bearing in mind it was Christmas Day.  Back in the day hospitals used to empty out all but the most dire cases for Christmas... seemingly not any more.

I had a look back through my diaries and saw that today was the seventh Christmas Day that I was working out of the last ten. On one of the others (2018) I had a full-on-till 9pm Christmas Eve session, and on another (2019) I had Boxing Day. But I did have all of Christmas off in 2016.

I’m not complaining; working at Christmas goes with working in a hospital. 

But home time soon came. The roads home were far busier than Christmas Day had any right to be. I got home and had a rather good day. Games, pressies, sweeties, beer, wine, firty year old Martini and another bottle of Advocaat… littlun demanding Weetabix rather than Christmas dinner. We watched The Grinch and Muana…

We went to bed (worn out) shortly after midnight. A rather good Christmas really…

26 December 2024 (Boxing Day) - Rather Good

I slept rather well last night, and slept for over six hours. Not too shabby really. Over toast I wrote yesterday’s diary. What with all the excitement I didn’t get chance yesterday. And I made the most of sitting on the sofa. My usual spot had been commandeered by Darcie who formally ordered me off the sofa yesterday, sat there herself and glared at me.

As I sat on the sofa I peered into the Internet. Like quite a few people I got Lego for Christmas. There were so many people this morning advocating leaving the Lego in the unopened box and selling it later for a great profit; all wishing they’d done that with their Lego. I must admit much as I don’t like the idea of doing that, the gingerbread house set that I could have bought new for about a hundred quid a few years ago is now selling for between three and four hundred pounds on eBay.

The dogs came down and I chivvied them outside. Then everyone else came down, and we had a rather good morning. Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” opened more presents amongst which were some little animal toys which me and her played with for quite some time. I would lay on the kitchen floor playing kiss chase with the lizard and the tiger, and she would announce “sharing is caring” and take them away from me.

It wasn’t long before “My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” arrived. We did more Christmas pressies; I got a rather good garden clock. Despite all still being stuffed from yesterday we had a rather good dinner of cold meats and pickles. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” boiled up a huge plate of cauliflower cheese and we again scoffed ourselves silly and then had an afternoon of games. As you do on Boxing Day.

All too soon it was time for everyone to go home. “er indoors ^TM” drove the Folkestonians home and I had a little tidy-up.

Once she returned we sparked up the telly and watched the latest “Wallace and Gromit” film. It was rather good. I can remember seeing the very first one at a friend’s house one Christmas Eve… thirty-four years ago.

We’ve found the magnetic pieces of the magnet game, but the banana from the kiss chase game and one of the Lego flowers are still missing.

This has been a rather good Christmas…

27 December 2024 (Friday) - A Birthday

Another good night, but I did make the schoolboy error of going to the loo at three o’clock and coming back to find the dogs had bagged the warm spot. An hour later “er indoors ^TM” went to the loo. No one attempted to move into her spot.

I had my usual rummage round the Internet as I scoffed toast. Facebook told me that I’ve earned a Top Fan badge for WTVideo. I wonder who or what they are. And Facebook also told me that (in a novel break with tradition) a porno advert I’d reported *did* go against their Community Standards and they’d removed it. And flushed with success at having removed gratuitous photos of “ladybits”, the Facebook Feds went on to tell me that they had also removed all the unsolicited religious spamming that I’d reported on a Facebook page about Hagar the Horrible.

This morning’s Facebook squabbling was unbelievable. Some sad acts had spotted issues with the railway signalling in the Christmas “Wallace and Gromit” and were quarrelling about how attention to detail is everything. And another chap was whinging that he was having to do a speed awareness course having been caught driving at twenty-two miles an hour in a twenty miles an hour zone where he’d been overtaken by some chap on a pedal-bike.

I munzed, I wordled… I looked outside. I had a vague plan to take the dogs out before work but it had been raining heavily overnight and what with the excitement of the last few days I think we all needed a bit of a rest.

Instead I wrote up some CPD – I haven’t done that for a while. And then I had a little fight with my laptop. Whenever I want to highlight anything in bold text I’ve always typed it out then highlighted it and pressed the CTRL and B keys. Somehow or other that had stopped working. I eventually sorted it, but it took some sorting.

And then there was a tap on the door. It was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I gave them the standard spiel about their letting children die for want of a blood transfusion. They said that wasn’t the case any more as hospitals now declare children wards of court and allow the transfusions, but they didn’t deny that blood transfusions were prohibited by the Bible. Or so they claimed. They weren’t happy when I told them that the proscription was actually against eating uncooked pig’s blood (Genesis 9:4 and Leviticus 17: 10-12).  I then asked what their clothes were made from – they were unaware that the bible says you mustn’t wear clothing made from mixed fabrics (Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11). They claimed they’d studied the Bible and hadn’t heard of those. I replied that I used to run Bible study classes (I did!) and perhaps if they studied it some more they would see it was riddled with contradictions, and all that Bible Study does is try to justify those contradictions.

They changed tack at that point and asked (with a smug smile) if I really thought the entire world came into being without a creator. I replied that I didn’t know, but if it did, I wondered what had made that creator. I then pointed out that a garden can be pretty without having magical pixies at the bottom.

They claimed they didn’t have all the answers but felt their religion gave them some sense of certainty. I told them I used to feel that way (I once did), but two minutes of honest thought shows that their religion is demonstrably wrong.

They were in such a hurry to get away they didn’t even attempt to sell me a copy of The Watchtower.

I was quite pleased with how I dealt with them. They’d obviously done their homework; I was just working off the cuff…

I got dressed and set off to work wondering if I might need to avoid a thunderbolt on the way. As I drove I found myself thinking about the Jehovah's Witnesses who used to run a stall at the park gates. There were two little old ladies with a bookstall who I used to avoid until one day when Fudge charged up to them for a fuss. They smiled at me and said not to worry. They told me that if I wanted to talk religion they were happy to, and if I didn't they were happy to just fuss my dog. We often passed them for a little fuss and to say hello.

Sadly after a while the two little old ladies were replaced with a pair of younger ladies with epic chests and legs that went all the way up to their bums. They would smile in a saucy way at the kind of sad acts that were taken in by that sort of thing, and once I'd started sniffing round them they would play the god card at me.

I always felt that was rather unfair.

I got to work where I had a surprisingly busy day. Many years ago the days between Christmas and New Year used to be very quiet. Not any more. I was glad to see the night shift turn up.

And having had a misty drive to work, there was thick fog on the way home.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up the leftover vegetables into a particularly good soup for supper. She does make a good soup.

And in closing, today is the third birthday of the pups… For all that they are small, they aren’t pups any more.

28 December 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Games Night

I woke feeling refreshed, full of energy and raring to go only to find it was only ten past one. I then dozed on and off for the rest of the night eventually giving up and getting up to watch another episode of “Victoria” in the small hours. Was Prince Albert actually illegitimate? Probably not.

I had a little look at the Internet as I do most mornings. It was much the same as ever with the truly stupid again queuing up to proudly show off their ignorance. I’ve taken to following an early retirement Facebook page which regularly has people in their early fifties posting to it. Having made no pension provision whatsoever these people are all asking what is the secret to taking an early retirement, and are all getting quite aggressive when they realise they’ve left pension provision about thirty years too late.

Mind you there has been a minor disaster at the goat sanctuary. Having had an influx of over twenty new goats just before Christmas, they’ve had an outbreak of Orf and so have had to close to any visitors until that passes. That will leave them rather short for the next few weeks so if anyone has any spare bunce, you can send them a donation by clicking here.

I munzed, got Wordle on the fourth attempt, then we all got ready for Dog Club.

We drove round to Repton – the dogs started squealing when they realised where we were going. Being the Saturday between Christmas and New Year I wondered if we’d have much of a turn-out; I counted sixteen dogs at one point. A good time was had by all; even if some of our number were rather “frisky”.

We came home. “er indoors ^TM” went shopping; I watched more “Victoria” and then my cousin sent a message. Her father had had a stroke overnight. These things always happen at Christmas.

We watched the Christmas “Gavin and Stacey” which was rather good, and then twenty minutes of “Carry on Camping” which was frankly dreadful fifty years ago and has just got worse with time.

Chris arrived with the Infinity Table, and just as it was set up so Steve and Sarah arrived. We had a rather good games night. “Game of Life”,  “Sorry”, “Ticket to Ride” and scoff as well. Chicken doughnuts were rather good.

I do like our games nights.

Today would have been my mum’s birthday…

29 December 2024 (Sunday) - Nakkers!!!!

I turned on the bathroom heater as I shaved this morning. After a few minutes it stopped working. So once scraped I took the heater apart, dusted it out and it still didn’t work. Neither did most of the power sockets in the kitchen. We tested all the main fuses. All were fine, but still the power wasn’t working. But nil desperandum – that’s what we have home emergency insurance for.

I phoned Sainsbury’s insurance who were closed. Their emergency number said we had a policy with Sainsburys but that we weren’t covered for emergencies. They could send an electrician, but that wouldn’t be cheap.

With no alternative I gave them a hundred and fifty quid and hoped for the best. At eleven o’clock we had a text saying that an electrician would be along between ten and twelve o’clock.

I munzed and wordled and waited patiently for the electrician.

At half past twelve we had a phone call saying he was running late and should be with us by six o’clock.

We then had an idea that we wanted to keep all the stuff in the fridge and freezer cold. So we ran out a cable from a working plug socket to the freezer. There was minor consternation when it didn’t work, but actually plugging it in worked wonders.

And then…

I pulled the fridge out and unplugged it and both the dishwasher and the washing machine started making beeping noises. “er indoors ^TM”’s smelly electric candle thing started flickering too. We then spent an entertaining few minutes turning electrical things off and on and watching the reaction of other electrical things. If it was a plumbing issue I would have said there was low water pressure. There was enough leccie getting through to make things beep and make the dials flash, but not enough for them to actually do anything properly.

The electrician showed up shortly after one o’clock. The poor bloke had started his day making an hour’s journey to Bexhill only to find the customer had gone out. From there he’d gone to a customer in Tonbridge (one hour – thirty miles) before coming to us (another hour – thirty-five miles), and as he arrived his boss rang to say the customer in Bexhill had come home again and would he go back to Bexhill after seeing us (An hour and a quarter – forty miles)

The nice man fiddled about and farted about and brandished a circuit tester. After a while he announced that we’ve got loads of positive but precious little neutral, and what little we have is a fire hazard. He didn’t actually say that the bloke who did the kitchen a couple of years ago was a cowboy, but he pointed out several areas where he would have done things differently, if not better. Effectively the entire downstairs needs rewiring and a new fusebox fitting.

The nice man pulled the plug on the iffy bit and set off to Bexhill.

After a lot more farting about and a trip to the shop for extension reels we’ve spread the load and for the foreseeable future we have to decide what will be in use. Washing machine or freezer. We won’t both have lap-tops on at the same time, and from here on in I am the dishwasher.

I’d like to think that at the moment all is safe, and I’m taking the line that what with the entire universe being shut down for Christmas we can’t get anything done immediately and so we’re forced into taking our time to think about where we go from here.

Where I’m going from here in the first instance is outside a rather expensive bottle of port and a lump of blue cheese…

30 December 2024 (Tuesday) - Keep Smiling...

I didn’t sleep much last night. When I wasn’t listening to snoring I was worrying about having the house re-wired.

I eventually got up and once I’d had a shave I unplugged the fridge so I could make toast. I rang the insurance company and after twenty minutes a courtesy call came in from the people who’d come out yesterday. She wasted five minutes checking who I was (as though some random passer-by would answer my phone) and then told me all that had happened yesterday as though that was news to me. In the meantime the insurance company had answered and hung up.

I phoned them back and waited. I eventually got through to Gillilan who said that that I was covered for home emergency but was utterly disinterested in doing anything, and suggested I might phone someone else and suggested I might look on my policy to guess who that might be. She didn’t actually say “F… off you fat bald b…” but she might as well have done so just so I was in no doubt.

We went out to calm my nerves. First of all to Wye for geocachical reasons. If you log a find on a geocache in the last week of the year you get a souvenir. We got a souvenir.

From there we went up to Kings Wood where “er indoors ^TM” discovered something of archeological note. Just off of a path where I walk the dogs about three times every week is a raised circular area joining on to a raised area leading up to a hillock. I wonder what that was all about?

We came home, and once the dogs had been bathed I tried phoning the insurance people again. I got through to a Sheryl who was obviously working from a script and flatly refused to deviate from it. She gave me the number I should have called yesterday and repeatedly insisted that I phoned that number. She eventually conceded that there were several numbers on their website but felt that I should have known which one was the right one and which one was the wrong one.

So on her instruction I phoned the actual home cover people and spoke to Yvette who was very helpful. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing she agreed to send someone out and gave me the reference number I needed. She told me the electrician would come out and either fix it all or come up with a report that we needed to give to the insurer.

I spent the afternoon gripped by panic waiting for the chap to arrive.

He turned up at half past five. I told him all that the previous chap had said. He had a look and didn’t find fault with anything that the previous bloke felt was oh-so-terrible. After a bit of messing about he announced that there was a broken wire somewhere in the kitchen area and that could be fixed by running a cable up from the good cable up to the back bedroom and under the floor there to come back down again. It would take a load of farting around and upheaval, but supposedly relatively straightforward.

And the fusebox needs replacing. But to be honest I’ve known that for some time.

He said he’d send a report in to the insurance people, and left his card with us.

That’s all a lot better than the chap had claimed yesterday.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza for tea which we scoffed whilst watching the first Christmas episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. It’s a really good show which I watched with a sense of relief that I could watch telly.

Meanwhile on the Folkestone residents Facebook group it would seem that someone has found a key in Radnor Park … someone else hasn’t followed the instructions.

31 December 2024 (Tuesday) - New Year's Eve

I did my usual trick last night of having an alarm set last night and consequently waking far too early. I was watching an episode of “Victoria” at half past five, and with that watched I had a quick look at the Internet. There are quite a few people who are suspicious of technology watching what we do. Personally I’m not that fussed about being watched, but I must admit I’m becoming more and more of the opinion that the technology is watching us in more ways than we realise. I’ve not actively gone hunting for anyone to sort our leccie issue, but this morning my Facebook feed had several adverts for Checkatrade and electricians.

Taking care not to wake anyone I got ready for work and set off. I drove to the Co op to get myself a sandwich. Going for the meal deal option saved me over two quid, and using the self-service till gave me the opportunity to empty a pocketful of loose change. From there I came straight back home to pick up my staff pass card which I'd left behind.

As I drove up the motorway there was talk of the New Year Honours List. Stephen Fry is now a "Sir", and loads of other people have got gongs. I don't doubt they've done all sorts of stuff to earn their awards but there was an interview with some bloke who had been inducted into the Order of the Garter who said that a good Honours system brings the country together. I'd make the observation that any honours system honours those getting an honour and excludes the thousands who've also done good stuff but never got any recognition. Like those who run every scout group in the country for a start. But that's a rant I've done to death.

There was also a lot of talk about physical education in schools and its importance in the curriculum. Or "criklum" as everyone on Radio Four likes to call it. Those few who were sporty were banging on about what a good thing it was. As one who was just there to make up the numbers and was always last to be picked for any teams, I can't help but think that physical education in schools is something of a minefield.

I got to work; there was a new POI there (it's a Munzee thing). I cracked on with work which was surprisingly busy bearing in mind pretty much everyone seems to be gloating on Facebook about how much time off work they are having at the moment. I had far too much to do with the Kidd blood group system for my liking today, to say nothing of weak D and partial D.

I came home to find Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” in residence. She’d come up for a sleepover. We played cars and Lego castles and on seeing me brush my teeth she brushed hers too. We also found something she liked to eat – watermelon. It was a shame she fell asleep in a bowl of the stuff but there it is.

In the past on New Year’s Eve we used to go en masse to Jose and Maria, but since COVID that’s rather lapsed. Instead we’ve taken to having Zoom meet-ups on New Year’s Eve. I shall be tuning in to one in an hour or so…

And so, time to look back maybe?

It’s not been a bad old year really, has it? I had my sixtieth birthday; I am officially old. I took some of my pension and halved my working hours. And now being semi-retired, work is seriously getting in my way.

Being off work half the time has given me a lot of time to do stuff. I’ve been taking the dogs up to Kings Wood several times a week. I’ve got the garden far tidier than it has ever been (admittedly being winter it is a bit of a mess right now). The pond’s pressure filter and bog filter have got the pond clearer than it has ever been, and I’ve built a bigger bog filter and a smaller second pond too.

I’ve hosted two geocaching meet-ups.

We’ve taken to having monthly games nights on the Infinity Table. I quite like those.

We’ve had two holidays – a very good (if rather wet) week in Cambridge, and a very good (if full-on) expedition round Uzbekistan.

I’ve had COVID for the third time, and I’ve had my nose surgically re-bored for the fourth time; this time involving having had a hole drilled through my skull.

We had the roof done.

So, looking forward, what’s on the itinerary for this year? Certainly in the first instance getting the electrical issue sorted must take priority.

The front windows are being replaced in a couple of weeks’ time.

Dog Club will hopefully continue… even though all I actually do is unlock the gate and admin the Facebook group, I’m definitely seen as joint leader. I don’t mind – it is something I can do, and (so far) there’s a lot less squabbling that many other voluntary positions I’ve held have held.

I’m down to continue to be a Munzee Clan Leader – a simple enough task. 

I’m hosting a geocaching Community Celebration Event in a month or so – an afternoon of board games in the scout hut.

I’ve plans to replace all of my geocaches in Kings Wood with new ones.

We’re off to the New Forest in the early summer.

I want to get the back garden back under control and do something with the front garden.

And apparently aliens are really going to show up…

Roll on 2025…