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1 February 2024
(Thursday) - This n That
Another
bad night – if the dogs sleep at the foot of the bed we all have space. If
they want to sleep next to me (or on top of me!) we don’t. I gave up
trying to sleep. Being
the first of the month I got out a fresh razor blade. For all that one lasts
all month long, you can't beat having a scrape with a new one. I
watched an episode of “Peep Show” as I scoffed toast, then sparked up
the lap-top. The Internet seemed to be fairly quiet. I sent out the birthday video to the one
friend having a birthday today, and I saw that someone else had a birthday
today as well. Bill Mumy (Will
Robinson in the1960s show “Lost in Space”) was seventy today. During a
rather busy career he’s been a lead character in “Babylon 5”, he was
in “Star Trek”, he’s been in all sorts of things on telly as well as
being a successful musician… and everyone thinks of what he did when he was
ten years old. That must be annoying – I suppose this goes some way to
explaining why so many child stars don’t carry on in show business. If you
have effectively peaked before you have left school, you would probably want
to try something else. I
then chucked everyone out of the Munzee Clan in readiness for the new game
starting on Saturday then did more on my quality management course which is
turning out to be surprisingly interesting. Having
kept me awake for much of the night I wasn’t impressed to see the dogs
sleeping so peacefully as I got ready for work. And then I set off to find
where I’d left my car. Every day I park the car somewhere in the general
vicinity of home, and then promptly forget where that was. I
found the car just down the road... I nearly walked past it as I had a vague
idea it was halfway to the scout hut. I set off up the motorway in daylight (for
a change). As
I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing one of the head honchos at
the British Veterinary Association about the rules concerning XL Bullies that
came into force today. With
the RSPCA claiming that tens of thousands of XL bullies may not have the now
legally required paperwork (the estimated total in the UK being between
fifty and one hundred thousand) it was felt that this attempt to control
numbers of the breed is just pissing in the wind. The
RSPCA's estimate looks a tad high to me, but what do I know? Meanwhile
one of the elected ministers at the Ministry of Justice is
standing down at the next election following threats and his
constituency office having been torched. I can't help but wonder what the
police are doing about this. This is clearly a success for terrorism, isn't
it? I
got to work and did that which I couldn't avoid. If all goes to plan this
would be the last ever Thursday on which I worked. I suspect things won't go
to plan. I've heard it said that God laughs when we make plans. But as
Thursdays go, it wasn't a bad one. At
tea break my phone beeped. I had an email from Kent County Council. Last week
I wrote to them suggesting that if they close a road for road works then they
work on it until the work is done, and not leave the road works unattended
for days on end. Today they replied to say they'd got my message,
and would reply by the end of the month. I wish I had deadlines like
that... Sadly having driven into work in daylight
for a core shift it was dark when I left work. But the sunset shortly before
home time was rather pretty. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of scran which we scoffed whilst watching more “Junior Bake
Off”. I really should have an early night… |
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2 February 2024
(Friday) - Bit Tired
Despite
all the dogs being settled I was still wide awake, scoffing toast and
watching telly before six o’clock this morning. “Peep Show” was
entertaining enough, and then I sparked up my lap-top. Even
more people had asked to join the Dog Club Facebook group. This has had loads
of requests to join just recently; I wonder why; bearing in mind that for
every twenty members of the Facebook group, about one actually
shows up. I
did more of my on-line course, and failed the third
module exam. Having copied my answers I pressed the
“Try Again” button and having identified the ones I’d got wrong
managed to pass on the second attempt. I
threaded my way in and out through the bins which were randomly scattered
across the pavement where the bin men had left them as I went to find my car.
I set off to work listening to the radio as I went. It
turns out that the chap who threw acid over a young mother and her
children was a
registered sex offender who was also an asylum seeker whose
application had failed twice before finally being accepted. There was an
interview with the local MP who seemed rather concerned that the media were
describing the attacker as an asylum seeker as this would probably lead to
innocent asylum seekers getting abuse. She's probably got a point...
Here's a suggestion (which won't get taken up). Why don't the
authorities catch this chap, then hand him over to the sort of people who
would give abuse to the asylum seekers? He wouldn't attack anyone ever again,
and potential attackers would certainly be discouraged, wouldn't they? And
the Labour party were being accused of
back-tracking on their twenty-eight billion pounds green investment
plan. The poor chap being interviewed was trying to explain that until he saw
the books he couldn't really commit to spending
anything. He's probably got a point, but that's not what the masses want to
hear, is it? The trouble with our political system is that the two sides try
to outdo each other with impossible promises until the one with the most
outrageous and unachievable goals gets voted into power by those who are
gullible enough to believe them. And then the gullible get outraged when
those they've voted it are not capable of delivering on the impossible
promises they made. Is
waiting until he can see what he can afford such an unreasonable political
stance to take? It's a sensible one, but it won't win many votes. Meanwhile
the Japanese are planning to put lasers into orbit to zap
all the space junk. How long will it be before they zap the wrong thing? I
drove normally up the motorway for half of my journey this morning,
and drove at a shade over sixty miles an hour for the second half.
Finding myself behind a police car I wasn't brave enough to overtake it.
Unlike the motorbike that came past slaloming across all three lanes and
weaving in and out of the traffic whilst driving far too fast. I would have
thought that the police would have taken off in hot pursuit. They didn't. I'd
like to think that they were already busy on their way to catch murderers. I
suspect they were on the way to join the early morning gathering of police
vehicles in McDonald's car park. Work
was much the same as ever. There was no cake, which was something of a
disappointment. At tea break my phone pinged with a message. The head honchos
at Munzee HQ have changed the rules so that you can cap a Greenie every day.
That's good news for the Greenies, but effectively puts the tin lid on Qrewzees. It's
another world when you go round sticking bar codes onto lamp posts. And
I had a friend request on Facebook too. But not the sort of dubious scantily
clad object of questionable gender. This one was from some weirdo who was
openly selling bitcoins, but not to anyone in the UK. What
was that all about? For some strange reason I got home fifteen minutes
quicker than I did yesterday. “er
indoors TM” boiled up dinner then she set off out
for the evening. I settled with the dogs and watched a film on Netflix. “The Bromley Boys”
kept me amused; even if it was half an hour too
long. I shall see how much kip I can get before “er
indoors TM” comes home… |
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3 February 2024
(Saturday) - Rolvenden
It
was a shame that again my phone decided to spend the night telling me about
all sorts of trivial things to which it should have been oblivious (with
its Internet connection switched off). I wish it wouldn’t do that. I made toast and had my usual rummage about the
Internet. A couple of days ago I mentioned the celebrity angler Matt Hayes.
He’s now trying to make a comeback on the telly which he hopes to crowdfund.
He’s asking for two thousand five hundred people to each chip in twenty quid.
That’s fifty thousand quid to make a TV show. Is that how much it costs?
Seems a bit expensive to me. Am I *that* naïve to think you could
record it all on your phone and cobble the program together using
Microsoft Clipchamp? After all,
that’s what I plan to do for this year’s Geocaching International Film
Festival (must get on with that project!) And Facebook presented me with a lot of memories
from Dover beer festival. In years gone by the first weekend of February was
one of the highlights of the year – Dover beer festival. Fortunately for my
head it isn’t happening this year as the venue is being refurbished. Being
Saturday we set off to the Repton estate. As we drove I noticed the car in front looked odd. There was a
tree attached to it. I say “tree”; “sapling” would be a better
description. Somehow when parked, someone had shut one of the larger branches
of a small tree in the passenger side back door, and the driver had set off
and pulled the small tree out of the ground; clearly totally oblivious to
what he had done. As
we turned into the Repton estate so the squeaking
started; the dogs know when they are going to Dog Club. There
was a relatively low turn-out at Dog Club this morning. Odd really when you
consider that over fifty people have joined the Facebook group over the last
week. Dog Club was fun… but the dogs were in an odd mood today. There were
more quarrels than usual, and spring was definitely in
the air with quite a bit of “dog piggyback” going on. Bailey escaped
the field twice as well. We bunged up the holes in the fence through which
she’d got out; I expect there are more to be found. “er
indoors TM” set off to her
craft group. I took the dogs home; listening to Steve on the radio as I went.
I got the mystery year right – when did pound notes go and when did Kylie
Minogue first hit the UK charts? 1988. Once home we had a minor laundry session. Morgan
needed the mud washing off. Bailey needed the fox and bird poo washing off.
And I needed clean trousers having been tiddled up three times. I did a little more of my Quality Management course
and wrote it up on another
blog I write. And then turned on the telly and dozed through episodes of
“Peep Show” until “er indoors TM” came
home with lunch. We then set off to Rolvenden
for a little Munzee session. We wandered around sticking bar codes onto lamp posts, and scanning them. No matter how I try to big it up
it still sounds rubbish.. All I can say is that
Munzee really is nowhere near as lame as it sounds. As we wandered and scanned we got nine Qrewzees
between us, more Qrates than sense, and barked at
some other dogs. We came home. “er
indoors TM” sorted out some rather good dinner which
we scoffed whilst watching more “Junior Bake Off” then I fell asleep
as we watched “Traitors”; a strangely popular program in which a
couple of dozen people have to guess which four of them are actually a secret
cabal using nothing more than guesswork and pot luck. I spent much of the time staring at Claudia
Winkleman’s haircut and wondering what she was thinking of. |
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4 February 2024
(Sunday) - Rather Dull Really
Apart
from the obligatory trip to the loo in the small hours I slept for over nine
hours last night. I got up and fetched in a bumper harvest of dog
dung from the garden before the hounds got up so that Bailey wouldn’t eat
any. Five minutes later “er indoors TM” and
the hounds came downstairs, went outside, and “er indoors TM” announced
that Bailey had breakfasted on freshly laid turd. She is a foul dog. If not rolling in turd she is eating it. And she looks such a sweet little
thing too. Over brekkie I had a minor sulk that no major outing
was planned for today, then had my usual look at the Internet. A friend was
having a birthday today. I sent birthday wishes, and spent much of the day
thinking about this chap. For much of his life he was a naval officer; at one
point commanding a nuclear submarine. He’s got an OBE too. When I was much younger I seriously considered a career as a naval
officer. That could have been me. Mind you for all that I grumble about my job, having
worked a night shift at Christmas or a bank holiday it is a short(ish) drive home. A bit different if you are out
heaven-only-know-where and twenty thousand fathoms under the sea. “er
indoors TM” popped out to
meet up with mates for brekkie. I sat with the dogs. It was as well that I
did. As we sat so someone noisily loaded up their car just down the road, and
then someone else stood outside with toddlers which just shrieked for no
reason whatsoever. Both provoked woofing fits that I managed to nip in the
bud. In between these episodes the dogs snored and I cracked on with more of my
Coursera course. I can’t help but think that had where I used to work
used such quality improvement methods such as involving people and team
building rather than looking to assign blame, then things might have turned
out rather differently for me. “er
indoors TM” returned and we
took the dogs for a walk. We didn’t drive anywhere; we walked south through
the back streets past Angling Direct and through the footpath to the end of
Kingsnorth Road, then home via Stanhope, Cuckoo Lane
and Jennett Road; Munzee-ing like things possessed
as we went. We walked about two thousand more steps than an average walk
round Kings Wood and were out for over two hours. We did have one “episode”
with the app, but I’ve sought advice from far more experienced Munzers. Once home the dogs were soon snoring. “er
indoors TM” sorted out a cuppa
and hot (cold) cross buns and we watched a few more episodes of “Traitors”
which finally killed off any respect I might have had for the British
judicial system. The game show involves two dozen random people going off to
a castle in Scotland. Three or four of them form a secret group (the
traitors) and each night this secret group gets rid of one of the other
contestants. The next day everyone plays some activity or other, then they
all sit round a table and in theory use their wit, ingenuity
and wisdom to identify a traitor. However in
practice rather than using wit, ingenuity and wisdom, contestants seem to
queue up to show off how stupid they all are by making spurious unfounded
random guesses. And without exception the more wrong they are in their wild
guesswork, the more vocal they are about their being right. Bearing in mind
these people are from the same pool from which courts draw UK juries … As “er indoors TM” went
looking for something in the back bedroom (good luck with that one!) I
set about more geo-puzzles. I solved quite a few until it was dinner time. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a
rather good bit of scran (she does that). You can’t go wrong with a
steak dinner. We washed it down with a rather good bottle of plonk (which
we got as a Christmas prezzie) and as we scoffed we watched another episode of “Junior Bake
Off”. My plan is that bearing in mind I’m setting an alarm
I won’t get a decent night’s sleep, I might as well
get what sleep I can get from an early night. I wonder if I will go up and have one? |
5 February 2024 (Monday) - There Was
Cake
Surprisingly I slept rather well, but ached when I woke. I seriously
ached. What was that all about? If I'm going to be aching like that after a
couple of hours walking yesterday, it don't bode
well for the future, does it? I made brekkie and turned on the telly.
As I was about to turn to Netflix for "Peep Show" I found
myself watching some infomercial for a mattress which was being advertised
by the
same woman who last week was flogging some food blender, and
the week before was flogging something else I neither needed nor wanted. She
seems to have claimed the "5.30am on the Obscure Channel"
slot as her own. Mind you whilst it is easy to be sarcastic, in claiming it
she has achieved far more than many other wannabes have done. As I watched "Peep Show"
I sorted undercrackers and socks, and again had an odd sock at the end. Odd
socks amaze me. Where do the missing ones go? On reflection I think Morgan
eats them. I set off to work via a Tree
House up Christchurch Road (it’s a Munzee thing), then came home for
everything that I'd forgotten to collect when I'd first set off. Work pass,
lunch... the stuff I really needed. I then headed through the town centre to
get a dozen Points of Interest Munzees, and with
them sorted I headed up the motorway. My piss boiled
as I drove up the motorway. Partly because of all the lorries slowly
overtaking each other thereby forcing all the cars into the fast lane, and
partly because of the day's news. Apparently asylum seekers wanting to remain
in the UK are abandoning whatever superstitions they brought with them
and converting to Christianity in a shallow
attempt to aid their applications. It speaks volumes about the sad state of
the world that in the third decade of the twenty-first century people still
take religious twaddle seriously. There was cake at tea-time. And as I
peered into Facebook at tea-time I saw something
else that boiled my piss. As a child I went to the Boys Brigade. Looking back, that was a mistake. The Boys
Brigade was nothing more than a shallow attempt to brainwash small children
into god-bothering. Shortly after I started I took a
friend along with me. Looking back it is clear that
this friend was exactly the sort of person that the Boys Brigade preyed on.
His father had died when he was very young. When we were at primary and
secondary school together he used to latch onto all
the male teachers desperately seeking a father figure. He idolised
the chap who ran the Boys Brigade, fell for all the religious twaddle, and is
now a Baptist minister in the West Country. I follow his church on Facebook (I
really shouldn't) and this morning he was leading their "Prayers
at 10" live broadcast. I could see that this live broadcast had two
viewers (I wonder who the other one was), and there was my old mate
spouting complete gibberish, clearly loving every minute of it, and getting
paid to do so. His broadcast finished at about the same time as my tea break
ended, and then I suppose he was done for the day. Unless, of course, the
need for an emergency platitude to be blathered arose. I spent much of the rest of my day
either doing blood tests or wondering which of me and my old mate was the
daft one. I came home and geo-puzzled until “er
indoors TM” boiled up dinner. Then with her off
bowling I set about the ironing. That only took an hour. I then spent half an
hour on my quality management course and got eighty-five per cent in this
week’s quiz. I’m going to do some more geo-puzzles,
then see if I can get some kip. And in closing, Ian
Lavender died today. Famous for playing Private Pike in
"Dad's Army", he was the last surviving main cast member of
the series. Like Bill Mumy who I mentioned the other day, it would seem
he too peaked early in life. It must be so annoying to only be remembered for
what you did fifty years ago. |
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6 February 2024
(Tuesday) - Goldfinches
I
had a rather good night last night; when the dogs are still, so is everyone
else. I made brekkie, watched more “Peep Show” in
which one of the more annoying secondary characters croaked (Good!)
then had a quick look at the Internet. I saw one of my less well to do
friends was on yet another foreign holiday. I suppose it is cheaper to go
abroad than holiday in the UK these days. Four friends had a birthday today. I sent birthday
wishes to two, the third had set his Facebook settings to not allow birthday
wishes, and the last was someone I *think* I knew from astro club but
has made no effort to contact me in the last seven years. I had a sneaking suspicion that an old friend from
college had his birthday today. For two years Dave Ferrier was one of my
closest friends. Together we were known as “Dave squared” at college.
Every lunchtime we would have a minor pub session, and he showed me all round
the lesser-known parts of Brighton where the tourists don’t go. Sadly when we left Brighton Technical College (in 1983)
we rather lost touch. The last I heard (twenty years ago) was that he
was somewhere in the Epsom area. I had a quick Munz session, then set off up the
motorway. As I drove the talk on the radio was about nothing else but the
announcement that the King
has got cancer. Despite all that was known was that the King had cancer,
there was endless talk and speculation. There was a lot of reassurances
offered, but doesn’t it speak volumes that the black (ginger) sheep of
the family has
flown home to see his father? I popped in to Sainsburys to get a sandwich (as
I’d forgotten to make one this morning). As always all
of the tills were closed, but there were plenty of staff standing
round laughing at the customers struggling with the self-service tills. Work was work. Half way
through the morning one of my colleagues had a phone call. Her husband was
having a day off today and he’d had a message from his boss. This boss was
about to open the shop (a branch of a well-known chain where he is the
manager) when he heard voices from inside the shop. Rather than calling
the police he flung the doors open and charged in… to find bailiffs who had
forced entry and an electrician cutting off the leccie.
Apparently there is an unpaid leccie
bill of about twenty thousand quid. Will the shop be opening tomorrow? I spent much of the rest of the day watching the
antics of the flock of goldfinches who live in the tree outside the blood
bank’s window. And with work worked I came home… eventually. With
total mayhem at the junction where I take the motorway home, I drove five
miles the wrong way up the motorway, turned round at the next junction and
drove back past the junction which was horrendously congested for absolutely
no reason that I could see. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a
very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Junior
Bake Off” which was rather good, and then the final of “Traitors” which
wasn’t. |
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7 February 2024
(Wednesday) - The "H" Word
I
would have slept better last night if not for the torrential rain. But once
it finally stopped I nodded off shortly after two
o'clock. As I watched "Peep Show" this
morning I remembered something I spotted on the Internet yesterday.
Apparently there was a reunion
of the cast last week... a reunion at which most of the cast
didn't show up. With telly watched I got ready for work and set off.
I took a circuitous route round Ashford capping POIs (it's a Munzee thing)
before going to Sainsburys for petrol. With the Sainsbury's filling station
near work closed for rebuilding I'm going to the Sainsbury's filling station
in Ashford. I can carry on building up the Nectar points, and in all honesty it is rather amusing watching the attitude of the
old bat behind the till. Some people really shouldn't work in retail. Unlike the last couple of days
the motorway wasn't blocked up with juggernauts slowly and dangerously
overtaking each other. As I drove there was an interview with one of the head
honchos of the British Dental Association who was being rather scathing about
the government's plans to cajole dentists to move to the poorer parts of the
country where dental services are lacking. The problem is that the NHS pays
dentists for "units
of dental activity", and there's quite a bit of disagreement
about what should constitute a "unit of dental activity". Apparently dentists get paid the same amount for an NHS
patient who only needs one filling as they get paid for an NHS patient who
needs an entire gob transplant. Consequently there's
little money to be made by dentists operating in the poorer parts of the
country where the punters don't look after their teeth and are more likely to
need entire gob transplants. Dentists would rather work in more well to do
areas where the NHS patients brush their teeth and so require less effort on
the dentist's part for the same money, or where the punters can pay for
private dental care (like I do). There was then an interview with Sir Ed Davey, the
leader of the Dribbling Democraps, who was
the minister responsible for the Post Office during the time of the
Horizon computer
system scandal. To be fair to the bloke, he claimed that when post
office workers told him their concerns he went to
the officials responsible for the computer system. With hindsight it is now
apparent that these officials lied. But at the time they said that all was
well with the computer system. Who was Sir Ed supposed to believe? IT experts
or people blaming the IT system? He was getting quite a load of stick on the
radio this morning. On the one hand as the minister
he was responsible for the failings of the IT system. On the other hand he cannot possibly be responsible for the functioning
of the IT system; that's why the government employed the experts. Implicit in
an expert being employed is the assumption that they won't tell lies. I got to work and did my bit. At tea break I had my
usual root around the internet; albeit a little later than usual. There was
consternation on one of the "Dad's Army" related Facebook
pages. Apparently you aren't allowed to mention
Hitler over there. Bearing in mind when that show was set and who they were
fighting against, I would have thought that was a name which would have come
up with some regularity, but apparently not. Apparently
the mention of the name sets off Facebook's automated censoring software and
gets anyone mentioning it banned for a week. And I saw some friends were moving house today.
Going from Brighton down to somewhere in Somerset. I've seen precious little
of Dave and Tracie over the last few years; I wonder when we will next meet
up? This is the trouble with living where I do - everyone else is so far
away. This morning the motorway wasn't blocked up with
juggernauts slowly and dangerously overtaking each other. As I drove home
this evening it was. I got home and spent a little while fiddling with
the leccie to the shed. Somehow in the overnight
storm it had all got unplugged and blown a fuse. It is sorted now, which is a
minor result. I then spent a little while revamping the county geo-meet for
March. I’d volunteered to organize it and had hoped for a picnic in Kings
Wood following a litter gathering session. But the rules state that we would
need the landowner’s permission, and (sadly) Forestry England have
been less than co-operative over these last few weeks and months. It really
was as though they didn’t want an army of volunteers clearing away litter. Organizing another venue took five minutes. We’re
going to the pub. |
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8 February 2024 (Thursday) - Rostered Day Off
I
had a rude awakening in the small hours as Treacle got tangled up in the hose
of my CPAP machine. Despite the noise of the rain on the window I eventually
nodded off again and woke to see it was eight o’clock. I rolled over for a
few more minutes kip and woke at half past seven. How did that work? I made toast and had a look at the Internet. I sent
out birthday wishes to a couple of friends, and then my piss
rather boiled as I read an advert. My Facebook feed is often getting adverts
from the MP for Milton Keynes. I have no idea why, but it is clear the chap
has a very low opinion of the electorate. He really would seem to want to
have us believe that pretty much everything good in the world (birthdays,
summer picnics, little puppy dogs) is a direct result of Conservative
policies. But everything bad in the world (debt, toothache
and car crashes) is directly attributable to the Labour
party. Sadly he’s probably got the right idea in
that a lot of people will believe him. I remember my old mum once believing
everything some politician or other said because she really thought that they
weren’t allowed to tell lies. Despite the rain I took the dogs out. As we drove
the pundits on the radio were talking about shoplifting which
is rife in parts of Britain. Organised
gangs are targeting shops, no one wants a job as a security guard as it
involves being threatened by the thieves, and the police are claiming to be
too busy to get involved. The answer here is obvious. Don’t hire security
guards who are afraid of being threatened. Pay a thug (who likes a scrap)
to be a security guard. Apparently they are allowed
to use “reasonable force”. I’m sure that there’s enough who would be
up for it. We got to the woods and had a little walk.
Ironically as we walked I met a pair of people doing
some sort of a forest survey with a Forestry England van nearby. I got
chatting with them and explained that I’d been trying to organize a litter
pick in the woods but had given up as their admin staff operated too slowly.
In my line of work I’m used to dealing with stuff
which needs to be done right away. “Any time today” really is taking
it easy; sometimes an hour later is too late in my world. The Forestry people
were very nice, but they (very politely) pointed out that things are
very different for them, and hinted that a year
between my initial enquiry and getting formal permission might be more
realistic. I’m glad I decided to have the meet-up in a pub. And as we drove home so my phone beeped to say that
the meet had been accepted by the geo-feds. If you are at a loose end in a
few weeks’ time… We came home. The dogs had a hot shower and their
brekkie and went to sleep. I got myself a bit of lunch and watched a film on
Netflix. “Submarine”
was described as a “comedy-romance”… but it wasn’t described as
that by me. I would describe it as “a bit crap”. With film watched bearing in mind that I’d had the
thumbs-up from the geo-feds for my Plan B for the March geo-meet I started
sorting out one or two of the details of that Plan B. That passed what might
otherwise have been a rather dull afternoon. The rain which had soaked us
this morning didn’t let up all day long. I’ve set up seven new geocaches, one of which would
seem to have already had the thumbs down from the geo-feds. I shall argue,
but you win some, you lose some… “er
indoors TM” came home and boiled up sausages and chips which we scoffed whilst
watching another episode of “Junior Bake Off”. We are
getting to the end of that series now; the kids in it seem to fall into two
groups. There are those who just sail through somewhere in the middle, and
there are those who are very good one week and very bad the next. One week
they are star baker, the next week out on their arse. It’s still raining. |
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9 February 2024
(Friday) - Young Ladies
Some
nights “er indoors TM” and the dogs come to
bed making enough noise to wake the dead. Other nights they are as quiet as
mice. I woke to the sound of rain at four o'clock to find them all fast
asleep, and as the rain subsided so they all started snoring. I got up and watched a bit of telly. I found myself
engrossed in some infomercial about some gadget which vacuum-seals food. The
grinning idiot advertising the thing made it sound rather good, but he was
rather reluctant to say how much it cost. They so often are, and when they
finally tell you the price it only takes a few seconds to find the same thing
far cheaper on Amazon. I watched an episode of "Peep Show"
in which him out of "Ghosts" tried to pork Dobby. Not the
Dobby out of Harry Potter; another one. To be fair to him out of "Ghosts",
if my back was up to it I might try to pork Dobby
too. Not the Dobby out of Harry Potter, that is. With telly watched I sparked up the Internet on my phone.
I had a friend request from someone claiming to be called "Goddess Tudde".
Like so many of these supposedly women of dubious morals this one was wipe-clean, but was missing a glove. And (in all honesty)
didn't come anywhere close to Dobby on the porking
stakes (either the one on Peep Show or the one in Harry Potter) I also saw a friend had commented about the Bash
Street Kids (out of the Beano). "Fatty"
and "Spotty" are now "Freddie" and
"Scotty". Seriously?! Why not leave them alone? And why not
call a kid "Fatty"? I was called that for years when at
school. There was rarely any offence or bullying in being called that name,
and on the very few occasions when there was, the one causing offence or
trying to bully was shown the error of their ways. With a slap. I can
remember one such wannabe bully going to show my mum the black eye I gave
him. I set off through the rain on a little Munzee
mission. As I Munzed I had an errand to run. I had to
post a letter. I went to the post office in the town centre; are there any
post boxes any closer to home these days? I couldn't think of any. And then it was up the motorway to work listening to
the pundits on the radio asking if President Biden is
too old for the job of being President. He's eighty-one.
Amazingly no one made the observation that his rival
in the upcoming election (that idiot Donald Trump) is only four years
younger. Bearing in mind that a term of office is for five years, if Mr Biden is too old, then so is Mr
Trump. Personally I'm looking to retire and I'm over twenty years younger than Mr Biden. I got to work and cracked on with that which I
couldn't avoid. At tea break my phone beeped with the news that an old mate's
mum had died. But looking back Rene Small wasn't just my mate's mum. She was
a dinner lady at school, she was one of the leaders when I'd been a kid in
the Boys Brigade. She was a friend at church (before I saw the darkness).
She was a fixture at the occasional meet-ups from
the old days. She was one of those people in your life who are always
there... until they aren't. Then a colleague on maternity leave came in with her
new baby... and I realised that Rene had to go to
make room for the littlun (I suppose). And mundane reality came calling as I had the news
that despite my arguing, the geo-feds don't like fish ladders, and another young
lady of presumably dubious morals sent me a message asking me to
in-box her. I didn't. With work done I got home just as “er
indoors TM” was arriving home with “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” who had come
up for a little sleepover. We had pizza and pasta, trifle, party rings and
iced gems, and some of the kidney that was the dogs’ treat. When “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”
and “My Boy TM” were small they were in bed and asleep
by seven o’clock. It is fast approaching half past ten and littlun is showing
no signs of flagging. I am… having a toddler about the place is hard work… |
|
10 February 2024
(Saturday) - It Rained
With “er indoors TM”,
“Darcie Waa Waa TM” and
the dogs up in the attic room last night I thought I might get a better
night’s sleep. Had they all stayed up there I might well have done. But they
were up and down like things possessed. Or that is “er indoors TM” and
the dogs were. I didn’t hear a peep out of “Darcie Waa Waa TM” all
night. Once up I made toast, and peered at the
Internet. “Sylvanus” had
sent me a friend request on Facebook. “Sylvanus” claimed to be a
professional dominatrix mistress who loves to humiliate and “pegged for my
pleasure”. I found myself wondering that if he she or it does that
nonsense professionally, what the hourly rate might be? I went and woke the girls and the dogs. We got ourselves organised and set off to Dog Club. The rain held off for
us, but the constant rain of the last few days had taken its toll on the
field where we meet. It was muddy, to say the least. Dog Club went rather well; the dogs had a
great time, and we had three new dogs along today. One seemed rather more timid than the others; it is such a shame that when
any dog shows the slightest fear then Morgan gets very over-excited. It was
also a shame that Bailey had to roll in fox poo. Usually as we drive home I try to guess the
mystery year on Steve’s radio show, but by the time we’d loaded dogs and baby
into the car we turned on the radio just in time to hear the answer being
given out. We got home just as the forecast rain started, so we had a cuppa. Littlun announced she wanted to go and wreak havoc
in the attic bedroom, so whilst “er indoors TM” and
the dogs went with her to supervise I cracked on with my latest geo-project. Having been told that a fish ladder wasn’t a suitable topic for an
Earthcache I thought I might compare and contrast
the limestones in certain structures not a million miles from where I’m
staging March’s geo-meet. I got a first draft ready and sent it through to
the appropriate geo-fed. Hopefully this will be acceptable. I then did some more of my Coursera course until favourite
smallest granddaughter came downstairs, and all too soon it was time for her
to go home. As her grandmother loaded up the car, me and littlun stood in a
downpour singing “Rain, Rain, Go Away”. Whilst I waited for “er indoors TM” to
return I tried (and failed) to solve geo-puzzles. “er indoors TM” eventually
returned and boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we washed down with a
bottle of plonk whilst watching more “Junior Bake Off”. Treacle is being rather quarrelsome this evening. Morgan is taking no
notice, but I’m keeping Bailey with me; she tiddles in terror whenever
Treacle has an episode. And it is still raining. We could have done so much today if it hadn’t
been raining since dog club. |
|
11 February 2024
(Sunday) - Early Shift
If
I wasn't listening to snoring last night I was
listening to the rain hammering on the window. Part of me was glad we'd had
the roof done recently; part of me was wondering if we'd had the roof done
properly. I gave up trying to sleep, made some toast and
watched an episode of "Peep Show" before peering into the
Internet. On-line was rather quiet, as you might expect it to be at six
o'clock on a Sunday morning. Mind you as I set off to find my car I saw that there were lights on in not-so-nice-next-door.
She keeps odd hours; the upstairs lights are on when I come home from work in
the evening, and there's lights on very early in the mornings. Mind you I'm
up to see those lights, so who am I to be judging? I went on a little Munzee mission round town capping
POIs. I've now pretty much done all I need for this month's Munzee Clan War.
Some people in the team like to spread the requirements out over the month.
Others (like me) prefer to crack on and get it done. And with it done I set off to work up a very quiet
motorway. As I drove the pundits on the radio didn't have very much to say
for themselves. The King has made an announcement thanking
everyone for all the kind wishes concerning his cancer diagnosis. That was
good of him; I somehow couldn't imagine the late Queen doing that. And in the aftermath of the attack on a woman and
two children in Clapham earlier in the week, security camera footage followed
the attacker to the Thames where it is now thought he drowned. Since
then two
bodies have been found in the Thames; neither of which were his.
This rather begs the question "who were they then?", doesn't
it? No one seemed particularly interested in finding out. But it is amazing how many people just drop dead
unnoticed. Many years ago when I was a lad there was
an old woman who went missing near Rye. In the search for her the nearby
rivers got netted and the bodies of two dead men were pulled out. No one ever
seemed to bother about those two either. Funnily enough that part didn't appear
on screen when her who played Hyacinth Bucket starred in a dramatisation
of the affair. My mother in law used to
run a doss house in Hastings. London councils would pay tramps to relocate to
the seaside; these people in their fifties and sixties would just turn up
with all their worldly good in a carrier bag. Every so often one just
wouldn't be there at breakfast time. No one knew where they went. Many years ago there was
the lower half of a human leg found on Dover beach. No one ever claimed it or
found from where the thing had come. I got to work and had a rather busy day. In between
doing that which I couldn't avoid I peered out of the window at a day which
was alternating between bright spells and blustery downpours. Having
effectively been held hostage by the weather yesterday I could have done
something today... most likely gone out during a bright spell and got soaked
by a blustery downpour. Mind you I found a couple of minutes to watch a
pigeon having a wash in a puddle on the flat roof outside the blood bank
window. That place isn't so much a flat roof as a bird bath,
and can be quite entertaining. I came home, and harvested
some dog dung before “er indoors TM” and the
dogs came home. As I had a cuppa
so my phone beeped, An email. My attempt to create an Earthcache has hit
another snag. The idea of a geocache is that I give the masses a geology
lesson. Having had a total thumbs-down on river erosion in Buxford meadow I’ve been looking at relatively nearby
church. The paths to that church are one sort of limestone, and the war
memorial over the road is another. But it isn’t enough to say “have a look
at the two rocks and tell me how they differ”; I’ve got to pick out
specific features… Ho hum… I shall persevere for now and make
the observation that only ninety-eight of these things have passed the
geo-feds in the UK in the last five years. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching
the semi-final of “Junior Bake Off” which I watched with a
faint feeling of “I could do that” although I know I never
will all the time I can buy cake in Sainsburys. |
|
12 February 2024 (Monday) - An Afternoon Off
I had an early night last night,
but woke at two o'clock and spent the rest of the night listening to
snoring. I gave up with sleep, got up and made toast and scoffed it whilst
watching an episode of "Peep Show". I do like that show but
one of the main characters winds me up. A sponging freeloader who goes
through life with his hand out shamelessly expecting everyone else to pay his
way for him... Having met one or two of that ilk I can't help but wonder who
the daft one is. Perhaps I should try it? Bearing in mind that major road works were due
to start today I set off for work early. And was immediately
thwarted by my car which was covered in ice. A frost hadn't been forecast
last night. After five minutes I'd scraped most of it away and was driving up
the motorway listening to the pundits on the radio. There was talk of the war in Ukraine this morning. It would seem the
Ukrainian army is running short of
volunteers. Bearing in mind how their President has been shamelessly
demanding international aid to finance his war, I can see him demanding
troops next. And there was talk from the war in Gaza where it would seem that
Israeli soldiers are torturing and humiliating their Palestinian captives and
then being stupid enough to put their war
crimes onto TikTok. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to
remember that the Israelis went into the current bout of this decades-long
war as the victims, isn't it? Closer to home it was suggested that bosses of water companies
spilling raw sewage into rivers and seas might not get performance
bonuses in their pay packet... There's a novel suggestion, eh? As I got close to work it was apparent that the major road works that
we'd all been warned about hadn't started, and I drove straight through where
there were supposed to be serious delays. Not that I'm complaining. Work was work; I didn't do much today. With annual leave to use up and
being on an early shift I was on my way home by half past eleven. Sadly there was little other than drivel on the radio so I
drove home singing along to Ivor Biggun songs. I
took a little diversion on my way to find one or two specific features of
geological interest that I could include in my Earthcache write-up. I found
something that should do the trick; but for the most part rocks are on the
dull side. I collected the dogs, and took them up to the
woods for a walk. Usually we walk round Kings Wood
fairly early in the day, and there is a reason for that. Generally
speaking, the later in the day we go, the more “normal people”
we meet. Within yards of starting our walk today we met a group of “special
people” and their carers. Some of them were
making strange howling noises which fortunately the dogs ignored. But Morgan
made the mistake of looking at one of them and this one went absolutely mental; constantly shrieking “it’s looking
at me, it’s looking at me”. One of the carers looked at me in a pointed
sort of way. I looked back, asked “seriously?” and we kept walking. I
didn’t want to hang around, bearing in mind that one of these carer-types once
attacked Pogo with a length of bramble and then reported us to the
police because his “special one” was frightened. We had a good walk round the woods; we met other dog walkers; some
chatted, others blanked us. And as we came back to the car park
so we had another “episode”. The one who had supposedly been so scared
of Morgan erlier came running out of the car park
at us making strange howling noises. When he got to within five yards of us he loudly announced “oh my God oh my God” and
ran back to the car park. He then turned, and ran at
us again making strange noises until he got close enough for the “oh my
God oh my God” to start again. And so this
continued until I got the dogs into the car boot. As I tried to give them a treat so this one was alternately sticking his head into
the car’s boot making odd noises and then running away. Bearing in mind the last time I had any dealings like this I ended up
with a load of paperwork
from the police I thought it best to just ignore what was going on,
and hope it would all soon go away. It did. As the “special one” was driven away by the carer so I saw
another dog walker coming out of the woods. “Thank f… they’ve gone”
the chap exclaimed. Apparently they’d had an episode
as well. We came home where I re-wrote the verbals
for my pending Earthcache, put the finishing touches to my plans for my
geo-meet planned for March, and dozed underneath a pile of dogs
until “er indoors TM” went bowling. I cracked on with ironing shirts until she came home twenty minutes
later having totally forgotten that this week is half-term
and they don’t do bowling at half-term. Once the washing machine finishes I’ll hang
the laundry round the radiators and have an early night. |
|
13 February 2024
(Tuesday) - An Unexpected Early Shift
In between listening to the snoring last night I had an incredibly vivid dream in which I net up
with someone with whom I used to work forty years ago. Known to all and
sundry as “Frankie Abbott” (from The Fenn Street
Gang) because of his endless telling of implausible made-up stories he
didn’t drive and walked everywhere. Walking everywhere in Hastings involves
going up a lot of hills and getting rather sweaty. “Frankie Abbott”
was sweaty and smelly. He had a particular rather distinctive odour about him, and I smelt that in my dream. I got up and made toast and watched another episode
of “Peep Show” before peering into the Internet. It was still there.
There was another memory form the old days in Hastings to be had this
morning. An old friend from primary school was having a birthday today. I
sent out the birthday video, and idly speculated on having a reunion of the
old primary school gang bearing in mind we are all having a big birthday this
year. There’s half a dozen people from my old
primary school on my Facebook list. One is now a vicar in the west country,
one is in Sweden… I won’t ever actually organize a reunion, but I can waste
time thinking about having one. The car had iced up again overnight, but this
morning it had melted somewhat to something of a thick sludge. With that
scraped I set off to work up the motorway. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking
about the state of the country's finances. More and more people are in
arrears with mortgage
payments. I'm so glad mine is all paid off. As the conversations with
various experts went on I found myself again
thinking that I really should do a Coursera course in economics as all the
talk of money on the radio leaves me baffled. I have formed the distinct
impression that our entire society functions on the principle that those with
loads of money lend it to those without, and charge them through the nose for
doing so, and all else is piddling details. It can't be that simple... can it? And there was talk of Azhar Ali. Originally the
prospective Labour candidate for the upcoming
by-election in Rochdale, the Labour party have thrown him out.
He's now standing as an independent as (legally) people get nominated,
not political parties, and nominations closed some time ago and it is too
late for anyone else to stand. He got chucked out for supposed anti-Semitic
comments that he supposedly made... Did he? Yesterday I mentioned that
Israeli troops in Gaza were filming war crimes and putting them on Tiktok seemingly without repercussion. I've since
heard that journalists who pointed this out have got in trouble for doing so
and it is now
claimed that this is propaganda by the Palestinian side. It seems to me that it is rather difficult to get to
the truth of the matter these days. Work
was work, but after a rather convoluted mishap I’d been asked to cover the
early shift at short notice, so I got out rather early. It was a shame that
it was raining, but you can’t have everything. I came home and made a cuppa
for me and “er indoors TM”. As I brewed I discovered a jar for the decaf coffee. We’ve only
had it for two years (or so I am told). It’s amazing what you miss if
you don’t pay attention. I
sparked up my lap-top. I’d had a message from the
geo-feds about my Earthcache project. There were one or two trivial things to
adjust (which I did), and then I looked at a message I had from the
council. A few weeks ago I complained about their
allowing several sets of road works to be allowed in close proximity to each
other, and then the road works being left obstructing the traffic with no one
actually doing any road works. Their response was “blah blah corporate
catchphrases” and they claimed they had done spot inspections and had
always found someone working when they looked. I suggested they looked before
11.30am and after 2.30pm. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching
the final of “Junior Bake Off”, and then more “Dogs
Behaving (Very) Badly”. I finished my Coursera course on Quality
Management and passed with a score of eighty four
per cent. And then I had a message. The geo-feds have given my
Earthcache the thumbs-up. I’m quite pleased about that. That’s two elements
of my plan for my March geo-meet sorted… five more to go. |
|
14 February 2024
(Wednesday) - Valentine's Day
As
I scoffed my toast this morning I sniggered at this morning’s petty
squabbling on Facebook. Someone or other had pointed out a discrepancy in the
fifty-year-old sci-fi show “Space 1999” in that the scenes filmed
inside the cockpit of the eagle spaceships showed that the shape of the
inside of the cockpit bore absolutely no relation whatsoever to the shape of
the outside. A trivial point – does it matter? Clearly to many it did and there
was quite a bit of consternation and a lot of hard feeling being banded about. And
on another page someone was bemoaning how difficult
it was to find the original radio broadcasts of “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy”. Others were claiming it was rather easy, but no one was
posting any links, preferring to argue instead. Some
people really will quarrel about anything. With
rain showing no sign of letting up I thought I might review old haunts. Back
in the day I used to take my little Fudge to Viccie
Park all the time. But I rather gave up on the place when Pogo
came to us for an extended holiday; he could be something of a nightmare
round the park, and being a stocky lump all the normal people thought he was
a rottweiler or some other dangerous breed (as opposed to the pug/spaniel
cross that he is). Perhaps
the rain work in our favour keeping the normal people away, but our walk went
well. There was no belly-deep mud or fox poo or (surprisingly) no
squirrels. There was quite a few new streams and ponds, but the dogs stayed
out of them. We met OrangeHead and chatted for a bit. She sang the praises of
the new café in the park, and when we went our separate ways
she was incredibly impressed with how the puppies came running to me at the
sound of my whistle. To be honest it is rather impressive to watch… when it
works. We came home and I made a cuppa
for me and “er indoors TM” and I then sat on
the sofa with dogs snuggled up and sleeping next to me whilst I fiddled on
the lap-top. Getting small geocache containers for
my March geo-meet, paying dog club money to the paddock’s owner, vaguely
thinking about another Earthcache, planning for the weekend, and doing some
CPD until it was time to go to work. Just as I was about to walk out of the door so my phone beeped. our Munzee Clan has achieved our
second target of the month and as a reward I got a crossbow, a longsword, a
western zodiac and a submarine too. There's never a
dull moment in Munzee, you know. The rain had got worse since we went to the park; I
drove through a very miserable morning to the petrol station, and then up the
motorway singing along to Ivor Biggun songs as I
went. Seeing the traffic queued down the slip road onto the motorway at
junction five I drove on to junction four and came to work from completely
the wrong direction along the M20. Why was the road so busy? I have no idea. Work was work; it usually is. But there was
shortbread at tea time. Admittedly not cake, but it
went down the same hole, and went down very nicely too. I had a message from “er indoors TM”.
Once she'd finished work she took the dogs out. As
it was dark they all wore their light-up collars (the
dogs that is, not “er indoors TM”). The idea of the
light-up collars is that you can see the dogs and don't lose them. All three
dogs came home, but Bailey's collar didn't. If you see a very small light-up
collar on your travels... |
|
15 February 2024
(Thursday) - Rostered Day Off
I
slept rather well last night, which was something of a result. I got up
when “er indoors TM”’s alarm went off hoping to
get into the kitchen first. I did, I made toast and then had my usual look at
the Internet wondering if I’d missed much. I hadn’t really. Much of my Facebook feed this morning was adverts
for members of parliament in the Milton Keynes area. They seem to be flooding
my Facebook feed at the moment; I see these same
adverts all the time. They all follow the same format promising to reduce the
taxes that their government has put up over the years, and advocating voting
Conservative because they are supposedly less crap
than Labour. I would have thought that when the
Conservative party paid good money to advertise their candidates from the
Milton Keynes area they would have had Facebook only
send these adverts to people in the Milton Keynes area. And not to me over a
hundred miles away. I would also have thought that they would have turned off
the commenting on these posts so that endless disgruntled locals couldn’t
raise very valid examples of these MPs’ failings. In trying to advertise
their MPs, the Conservative party has given a platform to their most ardent
critics, and shown they are rather profligate with money. Not that the opposition is any better… I was then asked to take part in a survey for people
living in Welsh Communities… And this morning’s petty squabble was whether the
movie or video game of “Tron” came first. Thirty seconds on Google
would have given the answer, but who wants an answer when you can have an
argument? I got the leads on to the dogs… eventually. Morgan
has taken to running away whenever we try to put his lead on. I have no idea
why; he seems to have a good time when we are out. We went up to Kings Wood where we met a load of
forestry workers having elevensies. The dogs looked
hungry and all got given some of one of the worker’s
steak slice. And having been given steak slice they went and made nuisances
of themselves with the next load of forestry workers we met. We did a rather longer walk than usual; we went
right across the woods to the North Downs Way where I managed to find a
couple of geological features that I thought might make a good Earthcache. An
Earthcache is a rather simple geology exercise for Hunters of Tupperware with
both a little lesson and an example. I pointed out that flint and chalk form
together, and that you see the two together off of
the paths, but you only see flint on the paths as the chalk is soft and gets
stomped underfoot. As I hunted for examples of geological process
Treacle waded in a swamp, Bailey rolled in fox poo, and Morgan climbed
through the tiniest of holes in a fence to get where he wasn’t supposed to
be. With geology geology-ed we went on for a much longer
walk than usual; covering over five miles. We came
home for a rather serious session in the bath; all three dogs were filthy. I made a cuppa for “er
indoors TM” and myself, then wrote up the web page
for the Earthcache project. That only took two hours. As I nipped to the loo
in between writing up Morgan snaffled my tomato soup. “er indoors TM” watched him… and
took some photos. No day off work is complete without doing the
ironing. As I ironed I watched a film on Netflix. “Europa Report” was
an entertaining enough sci-fi film, but covered
ground that had been done far better in other films and books decades
previously. I then dozed in front of the telly until “er
indoors TM” went off out with her work mates. I
turned to Netflix again. “30 Minutes or Less”
was a comedy… or so it says on Wikipedia. It wasn’t so much “funny ha-ha”
as “funny oo-er”. As I watched the film I
scoffed a bag of mixed nuts I found in the cupboard. They didn’t taste quite
right. I wonder if that is something to do with its having gone past its “best
before” date (last November). |
|
16 February 2024
(Friday) - There Was Cake
I
had a rather decent night's sleep... up until four o'clock when one of the
dogs made a concerted effort to shove me out of the bed. I shoved back as
best I could, but didn't really get back to sleep
after that. I made toast and watched the last episode of "Peep
Show". It was a good episode; a good show really, but like so many
TV shows went on for two or three more series than it needed to. There was definitely vibes of flogging a dead horse toward the
end. I had a quick look at the Internet; nothing of note
had happened so taking care not to disturb “er indoors TM” and
the dogs I got ready for work. I walked out the front door just as the bin
man was bringing our recycling bin back from the bin lorry. On seeing me he
made a point of putting the bin back tidily... unlike the dozens of others
he'd just strewn down the street. As I smiled at him and went off to find my car he grabbed two more bins and nearly (but not quite)
bounced them off of parked cars as he took them to be emptied. As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were
talking about the two by-elections that had happened overnight. Both were
relatively safe Conservative seats, but many ex-Conservative voters had voted for other
parties this time. More of these ex-tory voters voted for Labour than for any other party and so Labour didn't so much win the elections as the
Conservatives lost them. Rather worryingly the Reform (right wing and
nasty) party came in third place in both elections. And that idiot Donald Trump was mentioned... He's
suggested that the Russians might like to invade NATO countries who aren't paying their
dues to NATO. Did you know that only about half the members of NATO pay
up what
they should? Perhaps he's being a tad harsh, but Mr Trump might have put the wind up the cheapskates. I went to work via Sainsburys where I got a load of
cakes for tea time what with me having a birthday
next week. I'm always quick to scoff a cake when there's some going so I don't mind getting one or two myself when it's my
turn. As I scoffed some of the cake at tea
time so my phone beeped. The EarthCache I'd
spent most of yesterday preparing had
gone live. Late last night I'd had the thumbs-down on it. I'd
made a mistake with one of the waypoints (the one showing where the chalk
was), it had been pointed out that I could be a bit more descriptive of
what chalk and flint looked like, and my spelling of "Earthcache"
was wrong. It should be "EarthCache". There are those who think this might be a tad picky;
personally I think this is a good thing. So often
any old rubbish is accepted in geocache descriptions; raising the standard
isn't necessarily a bad thing. My edits did the trick and it had gone live...
and just under an hour and a half later I had a message to say it had been
found for the first time. In theory today was my last day of full time working
and I worked all day long… Mind you over ten years ago I blogged about my
last ever night shift and that turned out to be wishful thinking. |
|
17 February 2024 (Saturday) - Asleep In
Front of the Telly
With
an alarm set for seven o’clock I woke at quarter to three. I lay awake trying
to get back to sleep, but only intermittently dozed for a few minutes. I gave up and got up at six o’clock, made toast and
had a little look at the Internet. Three Facebook friends were having a
birthday today. I sent out birthday wishes, then saw I’d been defriended on
Facebook. The drag queen who entertained us at Matt and Glenn’s stag party a
couple of years ago doesn’t want to be my chum anymore. I suppose he (she?)
was a vague acquaintance at best and now that he (she?) has moved to
Blackpool the connection is that much more vague.
But being a very nosey person, I used to like following his (her?)
adventures. I had a little rummage through my emails. The power
company sent me a very misleading email claiming that I was two hundred quid
in credit with them. They’ve done this before. They take my monthly payments
and stick them into a separate account, and then every so often use that
money to actually pay the bill. In the past when
they’ve told me I’m in credit, what they mean is that the separate account is
in credit. So when I asked for a refund they happily
gave me the refund… then asked for it all back to actually pay the bill. I then geo-puzzled until I decided that “er
indoors TM” and the dogs had been in their pits long
enough at which point I had the duvets off of them
and stuck the covers in the washing machine. Being Saturday we loaded
the dogs into the car and drove off through the drizzle to Repton. As we
drove Steve was doing the Guess the Lyrics competition. “Nothing last
forever, of that I'm sure”. No? “Same Old Scene” by Roxy
Music. I knew the year and the album too… We got to the Dog Club field where I opened up and it wasn’t long before mayhem ensued. Dogs
charged about and we caught up with friends old and new. It was good to catch
up with Sue and Chris – I’ve not seen them for some months. They had the
latest addition to their dog collection. They found little Lilly running on
the A28. She was all skin and bone, and for all that she has got a chip,
there is not data on it. The law about chipping dogs is stupid; dogs have to have a chip, but the chip doesn’t have to be
registered. Just as our time was up at Dog Club so the drizzle
got worse. We drove home listening to the Mystery Year competition – I got it
right; 1977. We came home and as “er indoors TM” scrubbed
mud from the dogs I hung out the first load of washing, but the second load
in, and popped to the corner shop to get pastries. I geo-puzzled
unsuccessfully for a bit until the washing machine stopped. “er
indoors TM” went off out
with her mates crafting and I ironed shirts whilst watching telly. First of
all the “On the Buses” film which was rather fun, and then “Dune” which
I described on Facebook as “a load of tripe” and I stand by that.
The film was an hour too long and was the sort of film you have
to look up on Wikipedia afterwards to find out what it was all about.
As the tripe film played, every half-hour I moved the bedding about on the
radiators so it would dry out. “er
indoors TM” came home and we
put the bedding back. She then laid an egg (big time!) because the
bedding now has a blue tinge it never had before. Bearing in mind you don’t
see it as it goes under a bedspread I can’t see the problem, but she wasn’t
happy. I suggested that it matched the blue paint on the bedroom walls, but
that was akin to a red rag to a bull. Or a once-white duvet cover to “er
indoors TM”. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a rather good curry which we devoured whilst watching more “Taskmaster:
New Zealand”, and I then fell asleep in front of the telly. I’ve spent
quite a bit of time sleeping in front of the telly today. Perhaps if I slept when I am supposed to be asleep? |
|
18 February 2024
(Sunday) - Edenbridge
I slept like at night for nearly ten hours. I
wonder if the blue-stained duvet covers had anything to do with it? I woke to
the sound of Treacle sucking the duvet. She does that. I hope the blue stain
doesn’t do her any harm. I made toast and had my usual look at the
Internet. It was still there. There was some NHS-bashing going on in one of
the Hastings Facebook groups I follow. Everyone is so quick to find fault
with the NHS. It ain’t perfect but the public
attitude to the NHS winds me up. One minute the masses are standing on the
doorstep clapping like demented sealions, the next minute saying what a load
of crap it is. I delivered my standard rant and
checked my emails. A ”tag” had been hidden in
Benenden… and found eight minutes before I saw the email. A “tag” is
part of the Snag The Tag game…
Someone buys a tag, hides it and publishes the location on the website. People then charge out
to get it and the first one to find it keeps it. And then that’s it. Game
over until the next “tag” goes out. I’ve been told many times that I
don’t need to hide a tag myself; just going out and finding them is perfectly
acceptable. But I would feel the need to contribute to the game, and bearing
in mind these tags were close on twenty quid each the last time I looked, I
think I shall just carry on watching. “er indoors TM” sorted bacon rolls, then I programmed “Hannah” for the
day and we set off to Edenbridge. Pausing only briefly for a letterbox hybrid
just off the M26 we followed “er indoors TM”’s car’s sat nav to some obscure country land near Chiddngstone where it decided to lead us in circles. At
this point we used my phone to take us on to Edenbridge. We parked up and had a little walk up and down the village looking for
specific geocaches for a little challenge we set ourselves today. Geocaches
come in various types and we’d thought we might see how many different types
we might find today. Having got a letterbox hybrid on the way we found an
Earthcache, Adventure Lab and a puzzle at the nearby church. We then took a
little walk down the road where (once we escaped from the normal people)
we found a traditional and a multi, then went on to the pub where the monthly
geo-meet was taking place. Back in the day there would be thirty or forty
people at the monthly meet-ups. But since COVID the meet-ups are a shadow of what they once were. But today
was like it used to be with dozens of people along. It was good to catch up
with old friends and meet new friends. I
took a few photos – but only a few today. As the afternoon drew to an end our phones
all beeped with the same message – a new virtual geocache not two hundred
yards away. We all hurried off together and all claimed joint First to Find.
That, together with the meet put our icon type count to eight. It is rare
that we get over three on one of our outings. We used a proper Google sat-nav to get home. Once home “er
indoors TM” sorted a rather good bit of dinner, and
I then slept for much of the rest of the evening. Three pints of porter will
do that these days… Today was rather good… must do it again. |
|
19 February 2024 (Monday)
- Week Off Day One
I
slept well last night, which was a result. Having no alarms set makes all the
difference. I made toast and peered into the Internet. Three more people had
asked to join Dog Club… or that is to join the Facebook group that goes with
Dog Club. With over a thousand members in the Facebook group maybe thirty or
forty of them ever turn up in person. But that is today’s society, isn’t it?
Everything virtual; nothing in reality. I see this
on some of the Munzee and geocaching pages. Sadly
the more vocal people on-line would pay money rather than have to actually
meet anyone else in person. I
took the dogs up to the woods and we had an excellent walk. We met other
dogs. We played nicely with those that wanted to play, and we came back when
called (instantly) when it became clear the other dogs weren’t
interested. So much better than the episodes we had in the pub yesterday.
Mind you the pub dog was the size of a cart horse and simply wouldn’t piss off. As
we walked a buzzard swooped low over the dogs. But for all they have a huge
wingspan, the bird’s body was about the size of Bailey. Hopefully this means
they don’t see her as food? We
also saw a rather nice coat hanging in a tree. Someone had dropped it over
the last few days. Perhaps I should have picked it up;
as we reached the furthest point form the car park so the rain started. It
didn’t last long and we didn’t get *that* wet
really. We came home and once mud was washed from paws and bellies I did Dog Brekkie then got pastries from the
corner shop for “er indoors TM” and me. As I
had a little look at the Internet over coffee and pastries
I saw a cousin was posting family news to Facebook. Apparently
my great grandfather had a secret second family. Born in 1888 he would have
been doing that nonsense between the wars. Was it easier to get away with
that sort of thing back then? Some friend of “er
indoors TM” had a husband who had a secret second
family. From a purely objective point of view this sort of thing fascinates
me. How
does anyone cover up the time required to be off with the other family? Especially
at family holiday time, Christmas and birthdays? And
the cost – how do you hide that level of expense from the other half? Personally I’d rather have a
bit of peace and quiet than double trouble… I
spent a little while preparing for the geo-meet I’m staging in March, then
completely failed to solve a geo-puzzle about bell ringing. And then I had a
message. “Lunay
Camilla” wanted to be my friend on Facebook. Hailing from La Paz in
Bolivia today she (I think) started working in the “pleasure
management” department of one of the major hotels in Sofia. This one
advocates “Less talk, more seduction 💋 ” I suspect that this major hotel in Sofia is
completely oblivious to the antics of its latest employee. Let’s hope so… I
had planned to start tidying up the garden this week; I pruned some of the
dead stuff flowing over the hedge from not-so-nice-next-door,
then slobbed in front of the telly watching
episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which everyone started off very chummy
but progressively got nastier with each other culminating with one of the
contestants turning up to payment day obviously drunk. “er
indoors TM” went bowling (as she does) and I sparked up Netflix
and watched the first episode of “Decline and Fall”. So far it
doesn’t seem too lame… |
|
20 February 2024
(Tuesday) - Pub Dinner
I
had a reasonable night even though the covers kept disappearing One of the
dogs kept making themselves a nest. And when I did sleep
I was plagued with nightmares about being forced to go on a church camp (to
make up the numbers) and constantly hiding from some righteous crackpot
who was using a guitar to beat sinners. I
made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do. A few weeks ago I mentioned about the TV angling celebrity Matt Hayes
who had the arse that he wasn’t famous any more. It was suggested that he
crowdfund another TV series, and he’s trying to do so… You can see the
details of the crowdfunding
campaign here. Personally I’m not going to hand
over any money. I had been planning to, but the crowdunder
is set up in the name of someone of whom I have never heard. And according to
what I can make out, most of the money will be spent on a custom-built van to
drive around in. Am I really being that cynical in thinking they could make
the TV show using the cameras on their mobile phones on their days off from a
proper job. Like
I did? I
took the dogs up to the woods. We had a good walk; the mud had dried out a
bit since yesterday. We met several other groups and all the encounters
passed off without incident. I do like our walks round the woods. We
came home where the dogs had a little wash to get the mud off their paws and
bellies. They were nowhere near as grubby as yesterday. I
made a cuppa and sparked up the lap-top. I’d had an
idea about one of the geo-puzzles I’d failed to solve yesterday. As I puzzled I had a message. “Daborah Mary” had sent me a friend
request on Facebook, and had also given a list of
her hobbies and favourite activities; some were rather mucky, some quite
unhygienic and some anatomically not possible what with my back. However she is into “findom”.
Apparently this is a relationship in which one gives
the other all their money. I’ll
quite happily accept any dosh she cares to give me. After
a couple of hours herculean brain straining I
solved the geo-puzzle… It will
now join the ever growing list of puzzles I’ve
solved but haven’t got to getting the associated cache. I
then took Treacle to the vet for her annual once-over and jabs. The vet (who
looked young enough to be one of Lacey’s mates) agreed with me that she
is a tad overweight. We are going to run some of our walks in Kings Wood from
now on. I
spent an hour or so pooting in the garden pulling the ivy off
of the fence, then dozed in front of the telly until it was time to go
out. A dozen of us met up in Singleton Barn for a joint 110th birthday
bash as Matt is almost but not quite ten years younger than me… I
remember our joint 74th… |
|
21 February 2024
(Wednesday) - Happy Birthday To Me (!)
After
a good night’s sleep I woke and lay looking at the
clock feeling faintly miserable. Ever since I’ve had a phone of my own (since
1987) my mum phoned me every birthday at twenty past seven. Not quarter
past or half past, but exactly at twenty past. Of course she hasn’t for the last three years… I
got up and opened a bumper haul of cards and pressies, then spent a couple of
minutes updating the main blog page. The timer to semi-retirement has been
replaced with one counting down to full retirement. Seven years… I wonder how
those years will pan out? The first seven years at
my current place of work went better than I could have ever expected. We then spent far too long unblocking the Hoover.
After “er indoors TM” waved the thing all
over the place it soon became apparent that it wasn’t actually
sucking anything up. It was only after I had the thing in pieces that
I discovered she hadn’t unplugged it… when it leapt into action and all but
self-destructed without any of its retaining screws and bolts in
place. But
I got it all back together again; it was much the same principle as a Lego
set really. With
torrential rain putting paid to any plans for the day we drove to McDonalds
car park for a McTasty (which sadly wasn’t) and then went on to Dobbies. Our plans were to look at stuff for the garden;
the dogs’ plans were somewhat different. Fortunately
their staff assured us they were used to dogs taking a dump. We
came home and watched a
film we’d recorded at Christmas then I slept until “My Boy TM”
and Cheryl came round for dinner. We
had a rather good kebab. Can’t beat a kebab and chips… Today was a rather
good birthday; if a bit quiet. I’ll
end today with a little reflection.… I’m now sixty. After this week’s holiday
I go back to work as a part-timer being semi-retired. I
can remember thinking that being ten was old… But in all honesty
I feel much the same now as I have done pretty much all of my life. The me
inside hasn’t aged. I’m still trying to do the best that I can under
less-than-ideal circumstances in a world that I didn’t design. I’m still the
same as I ever was – a desperately immature child waiting for maturity that
if it hasn’t arrived by now probably never will. The
only real difference between today’s taking on semi-retirement and my first
day at primary school is that slowly but surely my body is beginning to wear
out. The hair has gone. If I sit still for too long
I seize up. Our longer walks round Kings Woods are perhaps a tad too long
these days; I’m good for five miles, but eight is pushing it. I use the
stairs to get from the promenade to the beach when at the seaside; I don’t
dare jump down any more. My left knee could do with
being replaced. If I have to get onto my hands and
knees to pick something up from the floor, getting up takes effort. When I
look in the mirror, my grandfather is looking back at me. But
I’d like to think that I’m good for a few more years yet. |
|
22 February 2024
(Thursday) - Rain, Dozing In between the McDonalds and the kebab yesterday I
had far too much salt. I was laying in bed feeling
particularly grim when “er indoors TM” and
the dogs came up at one o’clock. The dogs all got rather excited. I made the
schoolboy error of nipping to the loo, and spent the
rest of the night with six inches of bed. Over brekkie as I peered into the Internet
I saw that yesterday I’d had birthday wishes from one hundred and twenty-five
Facebook friends which was something of a result. I also had a message from
Facebook. A couple of days ago I’d been presented with a rather innocuous
advert which when you clicked on it gave you a full-screen view of some
lady-bits. I reported the ad, but Facebook replied “We didn't remove the
ad. To keep our review process as fair as possible, we use the same
Advertising Standards to review reports. We've
taken a look and found that this ad doesn't go
against our Advertising Standards”. According to their Advertising
Standards “Ads must not contain adult content. This includes
nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions, or
activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative” but a
full-on fanny is acceptable? Go figure. We
got ourselves and the dogs together for a very quick geo-session (despite
the rain). There were a couple of geo-puzzles I’d spent ages trying to
solve, and it now turns out that the chap who’d set the puzzles and hidden
the caches has announced “I’m no longer supporting geocaching as a cache
owner as I refuse to support an organisation with double standards and
dishonest practices” and is in the process of fetching in all the caches
he’s put out. Having spent ages finding the locations of two which aren’t
that far from home I wanted to at least get those ones. There’s quite a lot
of others I spent ages solving that are now archived. Having messaged quite a few people, it seems that no one
knows what the sulk is about, but I doubt the sulk will stop him going out
finding the things. We
drove out to… where these caches were hidden, and the rain held off long
enough for us to find them. Then we drove through the rain down to Folkestone
to see “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” and “Darcie Waa Waa TM”. They were both well. We sang along to various videos
before nipping to the KFC for lunch. The plan for today was to have a little
walk along the prom, but the rain soon put paid to that. We scoffed KFC and
sang songs until it was time to go home. It would have been good to have
stayed longer, but “er indoors TM” had to go
to the opticians. We came home. “er
indoors TM” went to the opticians and I dozed in
front of the telly until she came home when she boiled up fajitas which we
scoffed whilst watching “Taskmaster: New Zealand” and I fell asleep
again. I do that a lot. |
|
23 February 2024 (Friday) - Bit Dull
When
we came home yesterday afternoon I had a letter from
the hospital about a pre-assessment appointment at a rather inconvenient
time. I spent an hour on the phone to them yesterday trying to get through
before the line went dead when they turned it off at four o’clock. This morning I got straight through when I phoned over brekkie.
I re-scheduled and then scoffed toast, fed the dogs, and took them on an
outing. As
we drove we listened to “Desert Island Discs”.
Today’s castaway was the vulcanologist Clive
Oppenheimer who is the same age as I am, and would seem to have a
frankly dreadful taste in music. Much like everyone on that radio show.
Periodically I make a list of what
tracks I’d play if I was the castaway. We
got to Kings Wood and had our walk. Bearing in mind all the rain of the last
few days we took a relatively longer walk today following the gravelled
track. As we walked we met so many other groups of
people. All with dogs on leads over a mile into the woods. And all the dogs
had yellow leads and yellow harnesses. Bearing in mind the “Yellow Dog scheme”, I put my
dogs onto their leads at every encounter. And every time the other person
cried out “my dog is very friendly”. I told all of
these people about the idea of Yellow Dogs; a yellow lead, collar or harness
means the dog may be nervous, in training, recovering from an injury or
illness or operations, being rehabilitated or simply prefers to keep their
distance from people and other dogs. And consequently
it means that other dogs should keep their distance. Each
person replied that that they are constantly being told about the “Yellow
Dog scheme” but didn’t think it was for real. We
came home, had bellies washed, then I made a cuppa and peered into the
Internet, and did something I’ve been meaning to do for years. Some time in 2020 (I think) the button on my GPS
unit broke. Over the last few years I’ve been
bodging it along; now to make it work I have to poke a pokey-thing through
the hole to make it work, and obviously it is no longer waterproof. Having
been told many times that I can send it back to Garmin for repairs I phoned
the nice people at Garmin today only to find they don’t do repairs any more. They will allow me to trade in my current GPS
for a new one and give me a thirty per cent discount… or I could buy a new
one even cheaper from the Ordnance Survey website. In
the end I went on to eBay and bought a new button which I can glue into place
on my currently poggered one. I
settled myself in front of the telly for the afternoon and watched episodes
of “Four In A Bed”. The first B&B was
somewhere that specialised in welcoming dogs, and (needless to say)
was awash with dog hairs. The
second was run by people who’d taken umbrage at all the dog hairs at the
first place, made great show of having high standards of cleanliness, but
ironically had far more hairs and stains in their bedding than anyone else
had. Having
announced how much experience they had in the hospitality trade, the third
set made a total arse of brekkie, and the woman
running the fourth B&B told the second that (judging by her appearance)
she thought she had something wrong with her. Which was ironic bearing in
mind the one making the comment had a head which was clearly several sizes
too small for her body. In
some episodes of “Four In A Bed” they all are
good buddies; today’s episodes were brilliant; they all hated each other and
made no secret of it. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner and when
it was scoffed I shared cheese and crackers with the dogs… I had the cheese;
they had crackers. But they seemed happy with the deal. “er indoors TM” is now watching Fred Dibnah on the “Yesterday”
channel. He’s jumped from Cornwall to Tyneside in one change of scene… My Dad
used to like the chap. So far I’m not keen. |
|
24 February 2024
(Saturday) - Dog Club and the Pub
Having
the dogs still and curled up tightly made for a good night’s sleep. I got up,
made toast, and peered into the internet whilst it was still quiet. I
had another dubious
friend request on Facebook. This one had more clothes on than most, but could still have done with doing up some buttons
and covering up rather than waggling about. There
was quite a bit of talk about the Mount
Pleasant pub in Hastings on one of the Hastings-related Facebook
groups too. In my religious days I was at some event in one of the rooms in
the church opposite one Saturday evening. In another room were a load of
police (with the lights out) watching the pub like hawks. A few years
later I went in there on my stag night, a mate had eleven pence in his
pocket. He put ten pence in the fruit machine and was buying the drinks for
the rest of the night. Among
this morning’s haul of emails was one from the Credit Karma people who told
me that this week my credit rating had gone up by eleven points. I wonder
why. Am I more credit-worthy now I’m semi-retired? If so, how do they know.
I’ve not told the bank. Should I have done so? Being
Saturday we took the dogs to Repton for Dog Club. As
we drove I had a go at Steve’s “guess the lyrics”
contest on the radio, and I mistook E.L.O.’s “Turn to Stone” tor
Rainbow’s “Since You’ve Been Gone”. But I got a mention on-air for
having a go. We
had a rather good (if muddy) session at Dog Club. There were some new
dogs along, and everyone charged around like things possessed. As
we drove away I missed getting the Mystery Year
competition on the radio right by one year… We
drove up to Kings Wood where we met up with Karl and Tracey. We walked a
circuit of the woods in glorious sunshine, and once back to the cars the dogs
had a rather good dog-dinner and we got our muddy
boots off. And on the very second that we drove out of the car park so the torrential rain started. Ten minutes later the
hailstorm hit. And
it was all over in the five minutes it took to get to Badlesmere. We
got to the Red Lion. Not being at our usual table we
were off to one side with a lot less going on to provoke the dogs and we had
a very good bit of dinner. Washed down with copious amounts of ale, post and Drambuie. I
took a few photos of the day. Amazingly
I didn’t sleep all the way home. Once
home I spent a few minutes being diplomatic. Dog Club had a complaint. It would seem that one of the later groups had based
themselves up by the gate today and there had been some barking. One of the
residents wasn’t happy, but pissed on her chips by
over-stating her complaint. There was certainly no barking before ten
o’clock, and the dog club has been sound-checked
before and found to be quieter than the Eurostar which regularly goes
through. As is always the way, those with a gripe are always happy to gripe
it on-line, hiding behind the curtains waiting for everyone to go away before
saying anything. I
tactfully gave the sort of corporate reply that would be expected. Hopefully
that should placate the natives. We
spent the evening watching Takeshi’s Castle –
they’ve made a new series. |
|
25 February 2025
(Sunday) - Another Pub
I
slept until backache woke me this morning, which is usually a sign of having
had a good kip. I managed to make myself comfortable again, but Bailey
stirred, and started licking my hand in her sleep. I
got up, put a load into the washing machine, had a shave and cut a lump out
of the side of my nose. In
between dripping blood on my toast I had a look at
the Internet. It was still there. Yesterday’s squabble over the dog club
seemed to have fizzled out. I hope it has; I’m not the most tactful of people
and from what I can work out the squabble wasn’t caused by my group. And when
I say “my group” I’m still not entirely sure
how it has become “my group”. Having offered to open up for one week
when the organiser was on holiday I’m now key
holder, collector of money, admin of the Facebook page, and am meeting the
land owner (supposedly as representative of the club) in a couple of
days’ time. I
then reported yet more porn-mongers to the Facebook Feds. “Volleyball
girls UK” claimed to be an insurance company, but it is actually peddling filth. “Business Money” claimed
to be a business supplies service, but was certainly
dealing in an entirely different sort of business. “Paradox Home” and
“AWJR” claimed to be advertising agencies; one click took you to
full-on lady bits. And
this morning’s petty argument blown out of all proportion held by people who
will never actually meet was about whether or not
there should be a remake of “Logan’s Run”. Ironically those against
the re-make were all very happy about the series that followed the movie
which was essentially a re-make. I
sorted undercrackers, hung out washing, and spent half an hour in the garden.
The lawn was far too wet to be mowed, but I mowed it anyway. It had got too
long to be able to find dog turds with any
certainty, and it was so long that it wouldn’t dry anyway. As I gave the lawn
its initial scalping I thought back to the days when the nutty bloke lived
next door. He would get very angry and aggressive whenever I mowed my lawn.
According to the strange voices in his head I was always mowing my lawn at
the wrong time. It was too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry. He could never
tell me when I should mow the lawn; only that when I was mowing the lawn was
the wrong time. I
wonder whatever happened to him. With
lawn scalped I then pruned some of the dead stuff out of the pond’s bog
filter, then we got ready for the day. Knowing
the dogs would need to run off some energy we drove to Benenden where there
was a little geocaching Adventure Lab series. We spent half an hour wandering
about finding things we would never otherwise have found. From
Benenden it was a short hop to The Peacock at Goudhurst where we met my
brother, sister in law and oldest nephew and had a
very good Sunday roast. Starting off with whitebait, then full roast beef
dinner, and ending up with Crème Brulé, we (I) washed it all down with
five pints of Masterbrew and a couple of glasses of
amaretto. Not
a bad way to spend the afternoon. Once
home the dogs slept like tired things. Yesterday they were out like lights
after our full-on day. Today was much the same. For them a busy morning is a
couple of hours up the woods; they probably really do sleep for twenty hours
every day. Six hours full-on wears them out. With
dogs sleeping we settled in front of the telly whilst the washing machine did
its thing again. I’ve
had a rather good week off work – back to the grind tomorrow – part time… |
|
26 February 2024
(Monday) - Start of Semi-Retirement
I
woke in something of a panic at five to one this morning after a nightmare in
which the world was being invaded by supposedly sexy aliens... I say "supposedly"
- they looked like the sort of ones that send me dubious friend requests on
Facebook, and I was the only person who could see what was going on... in
that the weren't sexy at all and were incredibly dubious. I
didn't get back to sleep after that; I looked at the clock at least once
every fifteen minutes from then until five o'clock when I gave up trying to
sleep and got up. I
made toast and sparked up Netflix. It suggested I might like “Friday Night Dinner”.
I’ve seen odd episodes in the past, but now I shall watch them in order. With
telly watched I had a quick look at the Internet. Following a
long-standing ban
of anything rainbow coloured in Saudi Arabia, apparently rainbow
coloured kites are frowned upon in Kuwait, and kite-flyers of my acquaintance
are looking to sell quite a few of the things. Apparently just looking at
something rainbow coloured might turn you gay, or so those who give
permission for kite festivals to be held in the middle east claim. Funny
old world, eh? I
set off to work rather earlier than I might. As I drove the pundits on the
radio were talking about how the younger members of the workforce are far
more likely to be phoning
in sick than the older ones. It was claimed that on any given day
last year, five per cent of those in their early twenties were off sick. Some
expert or other was wheeled on who explained that the snowflake culture
really has created a generation who simply aren’t up to the strains of
reality. With
a little time on my hands I took a little diversion
for geocachical reasons. Having finally got the
solution to a puzzle that has had me stumped for years I
went and found the cache this morning. It is one of those that will probably
be archived in the near future, so it was as well
that I went and got it whilst I still could. I
went on to Tesco to get doughnuts for work. I’d taken cakes in to Maidstone on the Friday before last week’s holiday,
so it was only fair to take some in to Pembury today. As I queued to pay, the
woman on the till wasn’t happy. Apparently every
Monday between seven o’clock and nine o'clock she is expected to man the till
and the self-service machines because (so she claimed) all the other
till-trained staff (including the manager) refuse point-blank to start
work before nine o’clock on a Monday. She
asked everyone waiting to make a formal complaint on her behalf. Work was work; I had something of a left-shifted day
today (it’s a neutrophil thing). I came home, and “er
indoors TM” sorted a rather good dinner which we
scoffed watching an episode of “Richard
Osman’s House of Games”. I particularly like that show, but I always
find myself thinking about some of the poor contestants. Supposedly all
celebrities, some of them are in no hurry to conceal their ignorance and show
off their stupidity. You would think their agents would advise them against
going on national television just to show how thick they are, wouldn’t you? And with “er indoors TM” off
bowling I set more laundry scrubbing, then sparked up Netflix and watched an
old favourite. “Monty
Python and the Holy Grail” is a film I’ve seen so many times, but it
never fails to keep me amused… it is only a shame that the ending is rather
weak. That film will be fifty years old next year. I haven’t got to go to work tomorrow… |
|
27 February 2024
(Tuesday) - First Semi-Retired Day
A
few days ago I mentioned I’d finally got round to
doing something about my broken GPS unit. The power button was poggered. Garmin don’t do repairs any more and had offered me a discount on a new
one. After a couple of minutes I found that I could
actually get one from the Ordnance Survey website cheaper than Garmin’s
discounted price. But either option would cost hundreds of pounds. I found
replacement power buttons on eBay, and one arrived yesterday. Yesterday
evening I glued it into place and left it to set overnight. It don’t look pretty, and the button is rather stiff, but it
has saved me quite a bit of money. I
made toast and had a look at the internet. I had a message from Facebook. A
few days ago my Facebook feed gave me four adverts.
Clicking once on any of them gave a full-screen picture of a lady's
lady-bits. I reported them as sexually inappropriate and here's the response:
“… We've taken a look and found that this ad doesn't go against our
Advertising Standards”. Funny
old world. I
sent out birthday wishes to five people having birthdays today,
and rolled my eyes at some of the nonsense being peddled on some of
the crackpot conspiracy theory pages I follow. So many people want t believe rubbish which has long since been proved wrong.
So many others are so quick to show their ignorance. So many are just plain
stupid. And all are allowed to vote and do jury service. Yesterday
a new geocache had gone live a couple of miles from home. This morning it was
still unfound, so I got the leads onto the dogs and
we chased off for a First to Find… We didn’t get it. With a description of “The
cache is within easy reach attached to something metal” I searched the
obvious targets with no luck. Having
admitted defeat, looking at the map I saw we could either go straight back to
the car, or take a circular route through the countryside following footpaths
back to the car. So we followed the footpaths. Or
that is we followed the clearly marked paths that people had obviously been
walking. But using the maps on my phone I could see that those weren’t the
actual footpaths – those were parish boundaries. The
first field we crossed was rather squishy swampy grassland. From there the
track went up into a field of mud, then through a wood where the mud was
ankle deep. We then went across a ploughed field, and as we walked along a
fence by the side of a school so suddenly the dogs were on the other side of
the fence and heading off in totally the wrong direction. I eventually found
the hole that they’d gone through, whistled, and they came back immediately. We
came home for a serious scrub, then after a cuppa and a Belgian bun I went
down the road to the dentist. There was an idiot in the waiting room
grimacing at everyone who came out from seeing the dentist and asking why
they weren’t smiling. And then grimacing at me as though I should agree with
him. Ironically he came out from seeing the dentist
with a face like a smacked arse. The
dentist seemed happy with my gob. I came home and spent an hour pootling in
the gardens (front and back) before setting off on the afternoon’s
mission. I
went to the co-op for a sandwich where I met another idiot. As I queued so
the chap in front of me asked for forty fags. Getting no change out of thirty
quid he then announced to the world in general how he and his wife get
through a packed of fags a day each because of the
stress of having the leccie company threatening to
take them to court for their unpaid leccie bill. It
clearly never occurred to him to knock the fags on the head. I
then went round to the Repton centre for a little meeting. The people there
are happy with how things are going with the Dog Club – they’ve not had any
complaints about us, and say they’ve rarely (if ever) found any errant
dog turds… I
didn’t realise that we are only one of three dog groups that use the field. They
did say though that the Repton Centre has ongoing costs and whilst they are
far from skint, he is trying to encourage those who use the facilities to pay
more if they can. We
agreed that putting our price up to £1.50 per dog wasn’t unreasonable, and
encouraging people to pop a bit more in the pot if they can. Personally I think that’s a
bargain and will be bunging a fiver in the pot for my three each time from
now on. We
also talked about the possibility of a working party later in the year (when
it has all dried out) to give the field a deep clean and tidy up. And to
bung up some of the holes through which Bailey escapes. I
came home via Shadoxhurst for geocachical
reasons, and once home mended a broken dining chair (I didn’t break it…)
then settled myself in front of the telly and watched episodes of “Four In A Bed”. The first episode featured a trip to a
B&B run by a chap who was wearing the world’s worst wig. This was
followed by a visit to a couple of lads who were half the age of all the
other contestants and for all that I felt they were streets ahead of everyone
else, their age was held against them. The third episode was hosted by a
boss-eyed bloke who got incredibly defensive and aggressive about the same
failings that he was accusing others of. And the chap running the fourth
B&B went off sick half-way through his episode and everyone else all pissed off down the road to a café. I
put a load more washing in to scrub. “er indoors TM” boiled up dinner,
and Treacle is currently sucking on my pyjama top. I
named yesterday’s blog entry wrongly… It should really have been “start of
part time working”. Today was the start of semi-retirement. Walking the
dogs, pootling in the garden, watching telly… I can do that. Having
said that, over the next few weeks I plan to paint the garden fences, start
up the pond again, plant rockery plants round the bog filter, tidy, paint and
re-roof the shed… I’ve plenty to keep me occupied. |
|
28 February 2024
(Wednesday) - Frogs, Pangolins, Guts Ache
Last
night I made a point of making sure my phone’s connection to the internet was
switched off. And again this morning there were no
end of messages on it. How does it do that? I
peered into the Internet over brekkie to see if I’d missed much, and whether
it had been worth my phone’s effort to keep up with what was happening. It
wasn’t really. I
sent out birthday wishes to two friends on Facebook, and
thought about Vivian Barr who was in my class at school for the seven years
that I was at Red Lake Primary School. Today is her birthday. We weren’t
particularly close during that time at school, and I think I’ve seen her once
since I left that school in 1975, so why do I always remember her birthday? One
of the Facebook groups I follow (about AI generated pictures) was
embroiled in a religious squabble. After something utterly unrelated some god-botherer had tried to claim the moral high ground, and had been asked why his god needs people to do
its will. Why can’t it do stuff for itself? Sometimes I despair – large
swathes of the world (including much of America) really are still in
the dark ages. Rather
than mucky adverts, this morning my Facebook feed was filled with adverts
about the plight of pangolins. Poor little things. I’m keen to make a donation to protect them, but I found myself with
several competing charities and not knowing which one to support. I
didn’t have as much time on my hands today as I might have had, so we had a
shorter walk than usual. We went to the park. The episodes which Pogo used to
provoke don’t seem to happen with Morgan and Bailey, but we had a minor one
this morning. As we walked past the playpark bit so
some small child called to the dogs. Personally I
quite like littluns petting them; it gets both sides used to the other. But
before I could do anything, mother announced “give
them a snack” and suddenly Morgan and Bailey were scoffing heaven-knows-what.
Seeing my face, mother said that it was OK, and it was only a snack. I asked
if it was poisonous to dogs, mother announced that it was only a snack. When
I told her that chocolate, onions, grapes and
raisins are all a no-no, there was a look of horror followed by a stony
silence. The
dogs seem fine; I’m sure they are. But I do wish people wouldn’t feed random crap to random dogs. I’ve had people in the park feeding
Fudge chicken bones in the past. We
came home as the drizzle got worse. I gathered a bumper crop of dog turds
from the garden, then set off to work (as today was a work
day!) and sang along to my rather eclectic choice of music as I
went. After a few miles I realised I'd not made a sandwich, so I stopped off
at the shop in Sissinghurst to get some lunch. They do rather good pasties in
there. They do a lot of good stuff (their beer selection is second to none)
but they don't give it away. Today they were selling a particular brand of
wine that is two quid a bottle cheaper in Sainsburys. As
I queued to pay so my idiot magnet kicked in. The old duck in front of me in
the queue was jabbering on at anyone who would listen; seemingly oblivious to
the world around her. Having been prompted to pay for her shopping (several
times) she eventually handed over some money. And then just stood there
wittering on. She had to be told (several times) to take her change,
and eventually the woman behind the till decided that enough was enough, and
loudly told the old biddy to pick up her shopping and go away. It
was with a sense of relief that I drove away. I
got to work where all the Munzees in the works car
park looked rather odd when I called up the Munzee app. They all had a frog
picture. Capping a frog gave you extra points today; it's a Leap Year thing. Work
was work; I spent the day with something of a stomach ache.
Last night I finished off the stilton which I opened last week when I found
it was past its sell-by date. At the time I thought it tasted a bit odd... |
|
29 February 2024
(Thursday) - Leap Day
Last
night I disabled all the internet connections on my phone and
also the Bluetooth too. This morning it was oblivious to what had been
going on on-line. I think my watch must be telling it stuff overnight. Which
begs the question how does my watch know the
password for the wi-fi. I
made toast and had a little look at the Internet through a connection that
had my permission to be connected. It was still there. A mostly American
Facebook group I follow had posted a rather idiotic quote from Donald Trump.
As an outsider looking in at American politics, Donald Trump amazes me. I
have never seen or heard anything about the chap which doesn’t reinforce the
opinion that he comes over as a feeble-minded simpleton. But the chap is rich
and successful, has been President of the USA once, and looks set to do it
again. I must be missing something. I asked on that Facebook group, and sadly
I think I got the answer. Everyone who posts intelligently and reasonably
agreed with the idiotic character that I see in the media. However
everyone who takes no effort to cover up their ignorance when posting thought
the chap was wonderful and wouldn’t hear a word against him. Is
the character of Donald Trump a carefully choreographed act to appeal to the
masses? I’m convinced Boris Johnson did just that. I
also had a dozen more adverts about the plight of pangolins. I
had an email about a new virtual geocache at Battle Abbey. I thought about
chasing to be First to Find but thought better of it. It would involve an
hour’s drive along country lanes, and I’ve done enough of that already this
week. There was also a meet-up of geocachers to go tidying up a park in
Tunbridge Wells this morning followed by a tidy-up in Frittenden,
but again I didn’t fancy the driving. Instead we went to the woods where we had a
good walk. We chased squirrels; chasing squirrels is rather entertaining in
that usually within a second of being spotted the squirrel zooms up a tree,
but the dogs rarely notice that the squirrel has gone up. They fly off in the
direction in which the squirrel headed, zoom past the tree, and after fifty
yards run round in circles looking rather miffed that they have been
outsmarted again. We
stomped through a swamp and rolled in fox poo. We didn’t see any normal
people, but you can’t have everything. We
didn’t come straight home; if you log finds on four geocaches today you get a
souvenir for the leap day. So we took a circuitous
route home. Once
home it was into the bath for a scrub, washing went into the washing machine,
other washing went into the dishwasher. I had a once-round with the Hoover
and then it was out with the ironing board. As I ironed
I watched a film on Netflix. “Vesper” was a
total load of tripe which I found myself watching in the desperate hope that
it might perk up a bit. It
didn’t. I
would have cracked on in the garden it it hadn’t
been raining. Instead I dozed on the sofa underneath
a pile of dogs. Having plans for the evening, “er
indoors TM” set me up with some KFC and as I scoffed
that I watched another film. ID is an old favourite of mine. Nearly thirty years old, you can pick
it up on DVD for a quid from CEX. Peering into the internet, a
dog walk, housework, and watching telly. Is this the future? |
