1 January 2026 (Thursday) - New Year's Day

 

 

I was so tired yesterday evening. I spent much of our Zoom meeting dozing off, and went off to bed almost at the stroke of midnight…

 

We had a rather auspicious start to the year; I woke at five o’clock to find “er indoors TM” clearing dog sick from the bed. I took the dog sick downstairs to flush away only to find the kitchen mat was soaking in the bath. One of the dogs (probably Treacle judging by the quantity) had had a little (frankly epic) accident.

Having been up for half an hour dealing with dog issues, “er indoors TM” went back to that bit of the bedding which wasn’t in the washing machine. I gave up, made toast and watched a couple of episodes of “The Young Ones” before sparking up my lap-top.

Back in the day New Year’s Eve saw a flurry of text messages wishing all the best for the New Year. This morning I had a flurry of WhatsApp messages wishing all the best. I suppose that’s a sign of the times. Who sends texts any more?

There wasn’t much happening on-line at half past six. Presumably everyone was sleeping off the excesses of last night. I’d had a rather good evening playing “Ticket to Ride” until half past ten, then nodding off during our Zoom meeting. I’d rather have stayed awake, but you can’t have everything.

 

In years gone past, the morning of New Year’s Day would feature an early start for a major get-together of the local geocaching community. Someone would put out a series of geocaches and organise for them to go live on New Year’s Day. They’d also organise for everyone to meet up and walk round this series together. I organised one such event ten years ago when we had over thirty people along, and took part in several.  

Sadly we’ve only had one of these New Year’s Day events in the last five years… it’s such a shame that so few people seem to be prepared to organise anything these days. Had there been anything planned I would have gone along. But there wasn’t so I volunteered to work.

 

It was cold and dark as I set off for work. But it was a tad easier scraping the ice off the car this morning than it had been yesterday. As I drove the pundits on the radio were having a special programming about the problems facing parents of small children. I turned that straight off and instead sang along to Ivor Biggun songs. It might be a New Year, but some things stay the same.

As I drove up the motorway I could see the most glorious sunrise in my rear view mirror, but by the time I got to somewhere where I could stop and take a photo so the colours had dulled down. 

 

I got to work and went into the canteen. I thought I might have a cheese scone for brekkie. As today was a Bank Holiday the works canteen weren't doing cheese scones. Instead I had the cooked breakfast. I had exactly the same as I had a week ago on Christmas day for over a pound cheaper. I mentioned the price difference to the woman on the till, but she wasn't overly interested; she didn't want to be working on a Bank Holiday either.

And just like a week ago, the brekkie wasn't all that good and didn't sit well either.

 

I did what I couldn’t avoid on a rather busy morning, but I was only on for the morning. I headed home, collected “er indoors TM” and the dogs and we drove down to Broomhill Sands (near Camber) and had a rather good (if rather cold) walk along the beach. A little way along the beach was a geocache which needed a little puzzle to be solved before we could find it. We found the notice board to which we had been directed, found the information we needed, did the sums, and taking care to keep the dogs away from the dead fox we soon had the geocache in hand. And got an e-souvenir too.

It was a shame that Morgan had to tiddle up the sandcastles on the way back down the beach, but there it is.

There was a very nasty crunch as I drove put of the rough car park and didn’t see a pot hole. I’m hoping no damage was done…

 

We came home for a cuppa. I spent a couple of hours alternately reading the first Harry Potter book and falling asleep until “er indoors TM” boiled up a very good dinner.

We watched the first episode of the new series of “The Traitors”. Who is a traitor, who is not? Realistically the thing has to be a popularity competition. But like with all the previous series I found myself fascinated with the hostess’s haircut and makeup. Presumably she’s been professionally done up… Someone chose that look.

 

 

2 January 2026 (Friday) - Didn't See The Deer

 

 

I had a decent night’s sleep for once. Admittedly I went to the loo at four o’clock, but got straight back to sleep. The dogs were still, no one threw up on the duvet, the bin men didn’t make any noise… let’s hope this continues.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. There were two posts in the Upstairs Downstairs Facebook group that had been reported for review and possible removal. Someone had taken exception that someone else had described a TV channel showing episodes out of sequence as “annoying”. How on Earth does that cause offence. And another person didn’t like a photo of the cast in rehearsals and had reported that as spam.

Someone had posted a photo of a pencil cell onto one of the work-related Facebook groups, and loads of people were very confidently identifying it as something else.  It bothers me that so many so-called medical professionals can be so wrong. Hopefully these people will learn from these photos?

And it would seem there was snow overnight thirty miles away in Hastings and in the Medway towns.

 

I got dressed. The first fruit of my loin had bought me some Calvin Klein undercrackers for Christmas so I thought I’d give them a go. We then got the dogs into coats and on leads and I drove them up to Kings Wood. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about civil unrest in Iran, and President Trump threatening to get involved. You’d think he’d have learned from the mistakes of history wouldn’t you? Mind you bearing in mind his track record, maybe not.

We got to the woods and walked our usual four and a bit miles. There were a lot of squirrels active today, and quite a few deer too… not that the dogs noticed the deer at all. Morgan nearly had a wren, but fortunately it got away.

We started our walk at half past eight and there was only one other car in the car park. As we walked we didn’t see anyone for the first three miles, but as we got closer to the end so we saw more and more people, and the car park was heaving when we got back to the car. Clearly everyone was making the most of the last day of the holiday.

 

We came home. I cleaned the fish tank filter to give the snails a hand. And then did dog flea treatments. Back in the day they used to run and hide from the treatments; now they just sit and take it. But clearly under protest.

“er indoors TM” boiled up a cuppa for us both, and I sent out over fifty invites to the caching meet-up that I’ve organised for a couple weeks’ time. Sadly it seems that loads of people have already organised stuff for that weekend.

I wrote up some CPD, then did several puzzles and lessons on chess dot com. Apparently it is a year since I first signed up on there, and as a special treat they unlocked all the stuff which I only get sparingly as a non-paying member.

 

I spent much of the afternoon doing the ironing whilst watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which some pretentious old biddy who’d given everyone else the thumbs down (for the most trivial and petty reasons) had the right hump when no one liked her (relatively) dire establishment, and she had the seriously right hump when she came last.

 

Over a rather good bit of dinner we watched the second episode of “The Traitors” in which an innocent got the heave-ho, and then the second episode of “The Traitors Uncloaked” in which various celebrities pontificated on that about which they clearly hadn’t a clue. This evening’s celebrities were two people of whom I’d never heard, Jethro Palmer (from Viz magazine) and some foxy bimbo with legs that went all the way up to her bum. I have no idea who she was, but “er indoors TM” assures me she was once a contestant in a previous season.

Call me a beast if you will, but I’d like to think I would have remembered the legs, if not her.

 

 

3 January 2026 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Defrosting, Kebab

 

 

Yesterday I mentioned I’d had a decent night’s sleep. Sadly that would seem to have been a one-off. One of the most depressing things has to be laying awake listening to the sounds of everyone else snoring like I did last night.

I gave up trying to sleep, got up and made toast. As I scoffed it I had my usual peer int the Internet. It was pretty much the same as ever.

I activated my geocaching Adventure Lab. There’s been a little project recently to create a series of geocaching Adventure Labs near the M2 services in the shape of the Kent horse, all of which would go live this morning. I set my contribution live and then sent out invites to people for this month’s Munzee Clan War. A few days ago I mentioned about how every month everyone regularly achieves all their goals by day fourteen except one particular player. Every month this one eventually finishes with only hours to spare and doesn’t communicate with anyone at all during the month and everyone else gets twitchy and worried. She’s been told she’s going to play at a lower level this month… and she’s not happy about it. She’s sent me a couple of rather terse replies to the messages I’ve sent her in which she claims that she doesn’t actually get messages. Perhaps she will get on better at a lower level? I don’t want to be mean to her, but such a silly trivial matter has wound several people up.

Whilst I was Munzing I deployed a Trojan Unicorn and a Cubimal as I do.

 

As I fiddled about on-line so Steve was on the radio. Perhaps I’m biased and perhaps I don’t like change, but his various stand-ins aren’t as good.

This morning’s Guess the Lyrics competition was “Start your journey early or maybe later (get your boots on)”. No – I had no idea either. It was from the 1985 hit song "Love & Pride" by the British band King. No – I’d not heard of it either… I say I’d not heard of it. The song was very familiar; I just had no idea what it was actually called.

 

I scraped the ice off of the car, we got the leads and coats onto the dogs and went round to Repton and Dog Club. It was rather cold today, but we had over a dozen dogs along for our morning session. They all played and scoffed treats and generally had a great time.

We did come away a tad earlier than we might have done though, as Bailey was cold. She is small, her fur isn’t very thick, and she simply won’t run around to keep warm, preferring to stand about in the queues for treats.

 

As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year competition on the radio. The first London Marathon? 1981. Or was it 1982? My first thought was the right one.

We had a cuppa then cracked on with the day. Originally we’d been thinking of a walk round Rolvenden doing geocache maintenance, but it was a tad cold today, so we used the cold day. Being cold enough outside to keep the contents of the freezer frozen, we emptied and defrosted the freezer. It hadn’t been done for some time and we’d got to the point that we had been paying to keep a *lot* of ice frozen.

Typing “we defrosted the freezer” is so easy; the reality was a bit more like hard work. It didn’t take that long to stick the food into the shed, but shifting the permafrost took some doing. I had this stroke of genius to use the hot air paint stripper to melt the ice. In retrospect it was akin to Nursey’s uncle (in Blackadder) who used a scythe to cut his toenails and was surprised to find that his foot fell off. It wasn’t long before there was a nasty smell of burnt plastic. I don’t think that much damage was done; just a patch of yellow plastic at the back of the freezer.

 

After an hour or so we had a break for a cuppa and I did my Wordle. Starting with “frost” was a good move.  “Strip” got me closer; obviously the answer was “shirt”. It wasn’t. I knew that from the first attempt. Dur! It was “sitar”.

I capped the Widdlz Workshop (it’s a Munzee thing) and went back to defrosting the freezer. The dogs had started “helping” when they’d realised that there were chips frozen into the ice.

After an hour we stopped for another cuppa before cracking on at the ice-face. By this time we’d excavated pretty much all of the escaped frozen food and the dogs had lost interest.

We cooked up some frozen bread rolls we’d found for a spot of late lunch. I used the hot tray we’d used to cook the rolls by sticking it on a recalcitrant ice sheet. It would either melt the ice or melt the freezer. We scoffed the bread rolls then went back to the freezer in the hope that the tin tray had melted the last of the ice but not the freezer.

The hot tin tray did the trick. It didn’t take long to hoik out the last of the ice, clean the freezer all round, dry it out and soon we were ready for the moment of truth. Would the freezer work when we turned it on again? I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best… but nil desperandum. It worked. Well… I say “it worked”. It made noises and vibrated a bit. We left all the food in the shed and waited to see if the freezer got cold. Eventually it did and we loaded all the stuff back into it.

I was glad the freezer worked; it would be a shame to have to get a new one. We fiddled about on-line and from the freezer’s serial number it would seem that the poor thing is two weeks short of being twenty years old. Is that good for a freezer?

 

As a reward for doing the freezer we had kebab for tea which we scoffed watching the New Year episode of “Taskmaster”, and then we spent the evening playing various versions of “Ticket to Ride”  including USA, United Kingdom, India and Asia. I quite like that game – it is very different when there’s just two of us as opposed to several on our games night.

 

We had a delivery of dog food this afternoon… We’ve seen the photograph which the delivery chap took when he put it on the doorstep and hurried off without knocking. If he’d have done anything other than being incredibly stealthy he would have set the dogs off. But he didn’t, and someone else equally stealthy came along and nicked it.

With Amazon you get a message that there’s been a delivery the second it is delivered. Yodel send the message a few hours after the point at which the parcel has already been stolen.

I wonder if we will get a refund?

 

 

4 January 2026 (Sunday) - Getting The Date Wrong

 

 

I slept like a log. I was asleep for nearly ten hours last night, finally getting out of my pit at half past nine with a headache. “er indoors TM” said she hardly slept last night. Because it was so cold I’d left the heating on… I think that was my mistake.

I made toast and peered into the Internet. A new series of geocaches had gone live near Hever Castle which was something of a result. That will be an adventure for another day. A friend was posting photos of the cricket match he was watching… in Melbourne

 

With time pushing we got ourselves organised and hurried round to Viccie Park to join in with The Big Ashford Dog Walk… only to find nothing happening. I asked a couple of passers-by if they’d seen any convocations of dog walkers. No one had, and that was for a very good reason. The Big Ashford Dog Walk is next Sunday. Oh well…

We made the most of the mistake. We were at the park anyway so we had a little walk around. Treacle was allowed off of the lead, but not the little two. We’ve had issues up there before and I wasn’t taking any chances. As we walked there were enough other dogs snarling at us; having them off the lead would just be adding to the aggro. We walked past frozen ponds with idiot children jumping on the ice. The water is only about a foot deep so it would be unlikely for them to get stuck under the ice, but it would have been funny to have watched them crash through. They didn’t though.

We walked home via the co-op field. That used to be a favourite haunt of mine; I would often take Fudge for long walks and wherever we went we would come home through the co-op field. Treacle clearly wanted to play with Morgan and Bailey as we came through so I let them off the lead. Both flew off to the edge of the field and were clearly trying to get into the nearby gardens. I wish I knew what goes through their heads… they are as good as gold in Kings Wood and at Longbeech Woods. But they can be hit and miss in Orlestone, and were a total nightmare in the co-op field.

 

We came home where I voomed round the garden gathering turds, One advantage of the current cold snap is that it is much easier to harvest frozen turds than ones “as god intended”.

We had a cuppa; I munzed and Wordled as the dogs quarrelled over dog toys. Treacle absolutely *must* have every single toy, and she gets quite nasty when the smaller two want one.

 

“er indoors TM” wanted to go to the craft shop. I didn’t; I’d get bored, so I stayed at home. I’d had an email. The nice people at McCann’s brewery have given the thumbs-up for a meet there in February, so I prepared the web page in readiness, then Munzed, Wordled, and generally slobbed about for an hour or so until I got a message. That box of dog food we had stolen yesterday had turned up. Not the dog food; just the box (with a few dentastixs in it). A friend who lives over the road found the box at the end of the drive to the rear access to the houses over the road. He was adamant it wasn’t there when he went out earlier, so whoever it was who had stolen the box yesterday had come back and dumped it there this morning. Presumably they didn’t want the possibility of having to explain why they had a box with our address on it, so they dumped it back near where they’d stolen it from?

 

“er indoors TM” came home and we took most of the Christmas decorations down. Part of me was sad; part wasn’t.  I read more “Harry Potter” on my Kindle, and we had a very good plate of stir fry for dinner. We washed it down with a very good bottle of plonk whilst watching yesterday’s episode of “The Traitors”. The outcome was a foregone conclusion as one of the contestants oh-so-obviously pissed on his chips. Silly fellow.

 

I’ve got to sort a dentist appointment tomorrow – half a tooth has just come out on a Quality Street toffee penny…

 

 

5 January 2026 (Monday) - Diet Starts (Again)

 

 

With Christmas done and dusted I stood on the scales this morning and saw I’d put on half a stone over the last few weeks. So it’s back to not scoffing far too much and calorie counting. Currently I’m a shade under fifteen stone; by the end of the year I want to be under twelve stone. Realistically that’s a tad ambitious but we shall see.

I made my usual toast and coffee (two hundred and seventy seven calories) and had a look at the internet. It was the same as it ever was. So much frankly incomprehensible posting. If people would only read what they’d written before pressing the “send” button…

There were quite a few photos of the snow in Scotland. So many people I know are moving there. I can’t see the attraction of leaving everyone you know behind and going to somewhere that is cold for most of the year.

I had an email – the geo-fed had approved the geo-meet I’ve set up for February.

 

I then nipped down the road to the dentist to see if I could get my broken tooth fixed. You might think it would be quicker to phone – sadly it has been my experience that they don’t answer phone calls. It only took ten minutes to arrange an appointment. Sadly it was for mid-morning which scuppered my plans for a prompt dog walk, but there it was.

 

I came home and pootled in a very cold garden. I melted holes in the ice of both ponds, topped up the bird feeder, and fiddled about drilling a hole in the cuttlefish bone we got over the weekend. The little snails in the fish tank need cuttlefish bone for their shells, but cuttlefish bones float. So I drilled holes in it and thought I might use those holes to attach fishing weights. It took an age to find the fishing tackle; I’ve not used it for years. And when I had got weights attached to the cuttlefish bone the thing was still rather more buoyant than I’d have liked it to be.

I weighted it down with a stone from the rockery, and hoped for the best.

 

With some time on my hands I made a start at updating my atlas of hematology. It’s nothing special compared to other atlases on-line, but with rather poor photos, it’s examples of what I have seen myself, not obscure things seen by others that I will never see. And it’s good CPD. One day I’ll get called up for CPD audit… I got the sections on malaria, basophilic stippling and beta thalassaemia updated.

I Munzed, Wordled, and went to the dentist. It wasn’t long before I was in the chair. On 17 November the dentist put in an “intermediate filling”. He’s put in another and said that he’ll review it in March and possibly think about a crown then.

 

I came home, got the leads and coats onto the dogs and took them to Kings Wood. We were rather later than usual, and there were quite a few normal people swarming about. And three quarters of the way round so the dogs ran amok. They all ran off and wouldn’t come back when called. I eventually found them going frantic at the base of a tree. They’d cleared all the leaves from within about a foot around the tree, and there were a couple of holes at the bottom. Rats or rabbits? Either way the dogs had to be put on leads and physically dragged away.

Stomping about trying to capture hounds added a little to our walk. But how much was arguable. As well as a difference of half a mile between my watch and my phone, the Map My Walk app claimed I’d burned off five hundred and seventy-six calories; MyFitnessPal said eight hundred and seventy-two. Which do I trust?

 

Once home I did some more CPD and fell asleep. I woke two hours later. “er indoors TM” boiled up cheeseburgers and then went bowling. I put on a film. And after an hour I turned it off.

Many years ago I watched the film “28 Days Later” which was rather good. On 8 September 2008 I watched the sequel “28 Weeks Later” about which I said “I’d been so looking forward to this film. And it was rubbish. That’s two hours of my life down the pan. I hear there’s going to be a third film in this series. I shan’t be bothering with it”. Well, this evening I started watching that film. “28 Years Later”. It was utter tripe in that if you are part of a community which is secure and defended against a world filled with insane lethal murdering killer zombies, do you either stay put in safety, or go pick a fight with the insane lethal murdering killer zombies?

 

I hope this cold spell ends soon…

 

 

6 January 2026 (Tuesday) - The Cold Snap Continues

 

 

I slept well again, which was a result. I made toast and had a wry smile as I peered into Facebook. One of the many things that people argue about in the pond-related pages is whether or not to turn off the filter pumps over the winter. Personally I always do. Others maintain that keeping the water moving means that it won’t freeze. This morning there were several posts from people whose ponds had frozen over and so water returning to the pond from the filters was pouring across the ice and over the garden. Eventually the weight of the unsupported ice made it collapse at which point it was pretty obvious that leaving the pumps running had emptied their ponds. And as is typical human nature there were loads more people who would never admit to a mistake who were rather aggressively claiming their ponds were still totally unfrozen,

And there was a lot of squabbling about the cheap imported flags that were hung at half-mast from all the lamp posts last year. Those that haven’t blown away are all looking rather tattered and sorry. It was suggested that they be taken down and replaced with better quality ones, but the suggestion soon descended into division and hatred… which was quite possibly what putting them all up was about in the first place.

 

I Munzed, and got ready for our outing. The dogs didn’t seem too keen to go out this morning, but once we got our coats on they soon perked up. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about productivity in the NHS. I did a course on Quality Management a while ago which made me very sceptical about any attempts to measure productivity. What do you actually measure? Any attempt to do any job faster just results in a rushed job.

We got to the woods where my car’s thermometer told me that the temperature was minus four degrees. There’s been a lot of busybody-ing about on the Facebook dog pages recently about it being too cold for dogs. I took the line that Bailey tells me when she is cold (she certainly does at Dog Club) and if she told me, I could stuff her inside my fleece (like I have done at Dog Club). We went for our walk. Compared to yesterday’s debacle it went rather well. We saw the deer, we chased squirrels, Bailey ate half a blackbird. And in over four miles we only saw one other person.

We got back to the car after four and a bit miles. How much of a “bit” depended on whether you believed my watch or my phone as again the two differed by nearly half a mile. When you think that the journey is of the order of four to five miles, that’s about a ten per cent difference. But MyFitnessPal and Map My Walk only differed by thirty when I asked them how many calories the walk had burned up.

 

I wrote up some CPD, then (as the snow started) I pretty much wasted the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which everyone was pretty much of the same level and the winner basically bought first place by putting on a far better breakfast than she usually does to impress the others.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up some home-made pizza which we scoffed whilst watching the second part of the New Year “Taskmaster”.

As we watched so my phone beeped with a message from my Nectar App. Apparently no one bought more tennis balls from the Aylesford branch of Sainsburys than I did last year…

 

The weather forecast is for rain overnight – hopefully that will wash away the snow.

 

 

7 January 2026 (Wednesday) - Still Cold

 

 

It was very cold last night when I went to bed. I had a decent night’s sleep once I’d warmed up, but that took a while.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. It was still there. There were loads of posts about how people had been having issues in the ice overnight and this morning… which was odd bearing in mind that according to all the weather forecasting sites the temperature had been above freezing since yesterday afternoon. Mind you there’s a yellow weather warning for snow… despite there being no snow featuring on any forecast for the next few days.

I had a message from a geo-pal. Her and her husband won’t be along to the meet-ups I’m planning as they spend the winter driving round southern Europe in their motorhome. I would like a motorhome… but I suspect it would be a whole load of arse-ache as well.

 

I got the dogs into their coats and onto their leads and we went for our walk. Once I’d scraped the ice from the car’s windscreen we had no ice issues. Having been meaning to do so for some time I finally counted the amount of traffic lights we go through on the way to the woods. There are nineteen sets on the way there and seventeen sets on the way home. We got delayed at seven on the way there.

We got to the woods where I was amazed. There must have been a heavy snow there yesterday afternoon as there were sheets of melting ice everywhere this morning. Bearing in mind the mud had melted we mostly stuck to the firmer paths which meant we missed pretty much all of the areas where we were most likely to see deer, and consequently we didn’t see any. We didn’t see any squirrels or normal people either. And despite it being a good six degrees warmer than it had been yesterday, it felt a lot colder.

After three and a quarter miles (or three and three quarters depending on what device you consulted) we were back at the car and had burned off either three hundred and eighty-four or four hundred and six calories depending on which app you believed.

 

We came home and were only delayed at four of the seventeen sets of traffic lights. The dogs didn’t need a bath, but their coats were wet from the ice so they got hung up to dry. I made us a cuppa.

I spent a little while doing CPD, but somehow uploading updates to my atlas seems to scramble the pictures.

 

I again spent the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” which compared two houses that let out rooms, a pub and a country hotel. And as always those that ran the poorest establishment were the most critical of the lot.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the new season of “Junior Bake Off” in which some incredibly small children made some incredibly good cakes. And then tonight’s episode of “The Traitors” in which the identity of the mystery traitor was revealed. I’d guessed who it was… from the amount of screen time the various contestants had been given it could only have been one of two possibles.

 

Oh – and our Munzee clan achieved the first of our monthly targets today on the first day that we could possibly have done so.

 

 

8 January 2026 (Thursday) - Still Cold...

 

 

The Internet was dull as I peered into it this morning. It usually is. However I am currently finding myself bombarded with adverts for Ashford Kyokushinkai Karate on Facebook. I wonder if they are in any way connected with the Kyokushinkai Karate classes that I used to go to at the North School about thirty years ago. I quite liked them, but I was never very good at it. Together with a load of work colleagues I joined when they had a major recruitment drive, but I always had the vague feeling that the organiser just wanted a load of enthusiastic newbies for the more established members to win against when sparring. My most vivid memory of the club was being taught to defend myself against a kick in the nakkers. The bloke with the black belt was going to do the kick, and the bloke with the brown belt would demonstrate the defence… or that was the plan. The black belt bloke was talking and talking and talking, and the brown belt bloke was picking his nose and staring into space. I thought he was just acting cool. He wasn’t. He wasn’t paying attention, so when the black belt bloke actually got round to doing the kick, it landed square in the plums. I will always remember wondering that if you could get a brown belt and still get kicked in the pods then was it all worth it?

I didn’t go back.

 

Despite the drizzle I got the dogs into their coats and onto their leads and we went up to the woods. Despite the temperature having been above freezing for some time, there was a *lot* of ice at the woods. But not many people though.

As we walked I found myself watching Morgan. He runs like Sid used to in that his rear end would seem to be faster than his front end, and so he as he runs he goes diagonally as his back end starts to overtake his front. There’s a video of his running here.

As we came to the end of the walk we could hear a *lot* of shouting going on. Mabel had either gone missing or was in trouble. Presumably Mabel is a dog? Mind you it was at this point that I saw that Treacle was carrying a dead squirrel. I hope that wasn’t Mabel.

We got back to the car and again found my watch and my phone being half a mile apart on how far they thought we’d walked.

 

We came home. As we drove there was some utter tosh on the radio about some Mexican film-maker. I turned it off and sang along to Ivor Biggun sings instead.

I washed muddy paws and put frankly filthy dog coats into the washing machine, then made us both a cuppa before Munzing and Wordling. Did you know that Wordle accepts “shart” as a valid word? One lives and learns.

I wrote up some CPD, and with the rain getting heavier I settled on the sofa and watched episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which the proprietor of a rather grim Blackpool guest house took on three rather nice establishments. She had the thumbs-down from all the other competitors, got rather petty and nasty with everyone else, but still finished in second place.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up another good bit of scoff. We watched the second episode of “Junior Bake Off” which was rather entertaining; if only to watch the children being utterly bemused by Harry Hill. And then the latest episode of “The Traitors” which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger as two of the main protagonists looked set to punch each other’s lights out.

 

Having been rostered off for over a week, I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow…

 

 

9 January 2026 (Friday) - Quitter's Day

 

 

Having slept for the last few nights, last night was something of a disaster. The hot water bottle helped me get to sleep, but staying asleep was an entirely different matter. Perhaps if Bailey hadn’t spent quite so much of the night stomping over me? She might be small, but she had fidget like a thing possessed.

I gave up trying to sleep at half past four, got up, made toast and watched an episode of “The Young Ones”. For all that I like the show, it was rather rooted in its time, and jokes about Rumbelows and catch phrases from adverts from the early eighties don’t really mean much any more.

The internet was rather quiet at five o’clock this morning, and so trying not to wake anyone, I got ready for work.

 

It was cold and dark as I set off, but not as cold as it has been recently. It was wet though, and as I headed west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens so the heavy rain gave way to heavy sleet.

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Storm Goretti. What a stupid name for bad weather. Back in the day we just had rain or snow. Nowadays it all gets a name. For all that we'd had a lot of rain locally it would seem we got off lightly compared to the rest of the country.  Mind you we'd had a *lot* of rain overnight, and the dark morning meant that I didn't see that the road was flooded until I was axle deep in the water. Twice. That made me sit up and take notice.

And there was talk about council tax.  For all that Reform UK got into power in the county council on the promise of economies, they are putting up my council tax by four per cent.  On the one hand it's probably no more than any other party has done in the past. On the other hand, they were very clear that they said that they were the party of economies. I can't pretend to be a fan of Reform UK or the Brexit Party or UKIP or whatever the Nigel Farage fan club is called this week, but they were supposed to be a breath of fresh air to British politics...  but having promised the Moon on a stick they are sadly fast turning out to be the same old piss but just in a different shaped bottle.

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for them.  Losing councillors hand over fist in internal bickering can't be helping them very much. The trouble that Reform UK has is that (like the Brexit party and UKIP before them) they are very clear on what they don't stand for but are at best rather vague about what they do stand for. You'd think that their own councillors would know what they are about, wouldn't you? Let's be honest, this is *exactly* what went wrong with Brexit, isn't it? We knew what we didn't want. We had no idea what we did want though.

 

I stopped off at Tesco to get some lunch. And while I was at it I got some bottles of beer. The Timmy Taylor that I got for Christmas was rather good so I got some more. Or tried to. I picked up a tray of eight bottles, but the self-service till wouldn't recognize the bar code. The assistant lounging nearby glanced at me, then carried on fiddling on her phone. I pressed the "call for assistance" button, and the woman continued to ignore me until her manager sent her over. She tersely announced that the bottles were to be bought individually and made to rip them out of the tray. I told her that if I was buying bottles individually I wouldn't have those ones. I wanted them in the tray for ease of carrying. 

She was not happy about that.

 

I got in to work and did my bit.  As I did I was told that today was Quitter's Day. Apparently most people's New Year's Resolutions have all been abandoned by today. The only one I made was to keep going with the diet, and so far I've managed to keep it going. Having stood on the scales this morning and shifted four pounds since Monday, I shall certainly keep going for now. 

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up fish and chips which we scoffed whilst watching the third episode of “Junior Bake Off”. It’s a good show, but the age range is perhaps a bit much; the eldest contestants at fourteen years old are streets ahead of the smallest ones (which really isn’t fair).

And then we watched the latest episode of “The Traitors”. Last night I wondered if one of the contestants had pissed on her chips. She had. We followed this with “The Traitors Uncloaked”. Have you ever watched that? Give it a go if only to watch the sequence in which the most recent characters to get thrown out have a little fireside chat. Watch the fire. The editing of that bit leaves so much to be desired in that the fire stars off half-done, then is nearly burned out, then is roaring and clearly just lit. You’d think the editors would have noticed that.

The show ended by asking for applicants for the next series. I might see if they would have me.

 

 

10 January 2026 (Saturday) - Early Shift

 

 

The dogs were settled last night which was a result, but I was still wide awake at four o’clock. I got up, made toast and sparked up the telly… which wasn’t working. The screen said there was no satellite signal, but when I went into the settings it said there was a good satellite signal. I turned it off and on again to no avail, gave up, and had a look at the Internet instead.

That seemed to be working.

My piss boiled somewhat as I peered into Facebook. There had been soe event at the train station in the week and there were no end of postings from the local MP, local councillors and county councillors all of whom were loudly shouting about their efforts to get the international Eurostar services running from Ashford again. None of them seemed to want to admit that the decision to stop running international trains was made because there weren’t enough passengers. I only live a five-minute walk from the station and I only ever used it once. Some other chap had posted that he worked there when it was open; the whole place was set up expecting two thousand passengers a day, and he said that a busy day would see eight hundred passengers at most. But this is politics these days, isn’t it? Back in the day politicians would have a say in how the country was run. But Margaret Thatcher sold pretty much everything and now services operate in such a way that makes the most profit for private companies and individuals. Take the town centre for example. A major shopping precinct in town closed yesterday. Loads of people were on local social media slating the council this morning; many of whom openly admitting that they rarely (if ever) used the shops in town because it is more convenient and cheaper to have Amazon deliver things to your front door. And the politicians posture and filibuster because these days it’s not about results, it’s about being seen to be making a noise.

 

It was again cold and dark as I set off for work, but there was no rain this morning, which was a result. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how President Trump has designs on Greenland.  He says he wants it for America so that Russia or China don't get it... Seriously? I can't help but think that this is part of a plan in which he can back out of all involvement with Ukrainian peace deals; how could he side with the invaded in one country whilst invading another? And in the long term I'm sure he is looking to pull the USA out of NATO. America doesn't need NATO; it must cost them a fortune being the world's policeman. Historically America had a very isolationist approach to the rest of the world, and doing so was probably rather sensible from their point of view. I have never seen why the USA has (over my lifetime) been so keen to get stuck in with other people's wars. Whether stepping back is good for the rest of the world (it isn't!) is an entirely different question. 

This was followed by something which sounded interesting in theory, but a hike in the countryside is something that you do. You can't experience it by talking about it on the radio. I turned the radio off and sang along to Queen's greatest hits as I drove west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens. The roads were a lot quieter today on a Saturday than they had been yesterday.

 

I got to work and sulked. Usually I can swap my Saturday morning shifts so I can get to Dog Club, but I couldn't swap today, and so had to miss out. It was possibly for the best as I had a message from “er indoors TM” at five to nine to say that the Dog Club car park was closed.

I'm reliably informed that they got in eventually.

I also missed Steve on the radio. I managed to tune in through the works internet for a few minutes during the "Mystery Year" competition, but the reception was iffy at best. I blame the ancient PC I was using.

 

Work was work. I did my bit, and came home. I voomed round with the hoover, and it wasn’t long before “My Boy TM” and ”Auntie Chel TM” came round. Lacey came too; I’ve not seen her for ages. We had a rather good evening on the Infinity Table, the last of the Christmas sweeties, some bottles of Timmy Taylor and scoffing KFC too. For all that I’m keeping up with the diet, I’m allowing myself a day off now and then…

 

 

11 January 2026 (Sunday) - The Big Ashford Dog Walk

 

 

With no alarm set and the dogs sleeping, I slept for over nine hours last night. I got up, made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. It was much the same as ever. People were quarrelling about politics with everyone pushing their brand and rubbishing everyone else’s; everyone seemingly favouring the most entertaining regardless of any policies. And people were quarrelling about religion seemingly favouring the one they’ve always followed even though they didn’t really know anything about that religion. I look at the Internet every morning to see what my friends have been up to, not to see the same old bitter diatribes which have been posted time and again by people I have never met and will never meet.

I sent out birthday wishes to my pal who was having a birthday today. I’ve not seen him in years, but that’s what social media is for; being sociable.

 

I Munzed, and got ready for the morning. Last Sunday we went to the park where we were a week early for the The Big Ashford Dog Walk. We joined in with it today. It was… I won’t say it was rubbish. It was the first one, and so wasn’t going to be perfect. But you’d think that the organisers (the RSPCA) would have had experience in organising public events, wouldn’t you. We arrived, bought what they were selling, and milled around with the throng that had assembled. After a while I realised that instructions were being given out; the chap giving the instructions was looking at the floor and mumbling. I could just about make out what he was saying from five yards away. People further away didn’t know that instructions were being given out and just carried on chatting. The walk leader then (very quietly) announced that she would lead the walk, and set off. Because we and a couple of others had heard her we followed, and everyone else tagged along. She walked the shortest walk round the park that it is possible to do, and fifty yards from the end her phone rang. Someone or other told her she should have walked by the river. There was an embarrassing two minutes whilst we worked out where the river was, and then we all set off to the river.

It turns out there was a group photo afterwards… I only found that out by seeing the photo on the Internet later.

Don’t get me wrong – it was a good event. There were probably about thirty to forty dogs along. But what it needed was organisation. The organisers needed to be visible. In hi-vis jackets or wearing RSPCA hoodies. And they needed to be loud; letting the public know what was going on. You don’t say goodbye to everyone and then decide to have a group photo when three quarters of the participants have already gone home.

There’s going to be another one over the summer apparently.

 

We came home for a cuppa. It would have been good to have done something today, but it had been cold at the park. So I settled on the sofa and spent a couple of hours marking work that trainees had done for their specialist portfolios. It’s something I can do, and something that needed doing.

I Wordled (quark – stupid word!), read Harry Potter on my Kindle, and fell asleep for much of the afternoon.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a chicken and ham pie which we scoffed whilst watching more “Junior Bake Off”. Doing so was something of a result bearing in mind the last time I’d tried the telly (yesterday morning) it wasn’t working. I wonder what that was all about.

 

“er indoors TM” set off to fetch “Daddies’ Little Angel TM” who is having a little sleepover. I’ve put the heating onto continuous as it’s a bit nippy at the moment and I’m (quite frankly) sick of being cold.

 

Oh - Erich von Däniken died yesterday. He made his money by saying (amongst other things) that aliens built the pyramids. Did they? Probably not, but who knows. I just wish I could come up with something like that – utterly unprovable either way, but controversial enough to milk loads of money out of the gullible public. 

 

 

12 January 2026 (Monday) - Dog Walk, Clinic Appointment

 

 

In the late seventies together with a couple of mates (both of whom are on my Facebook friends list) I took part in the “June Jaunt”. Teams of three set off from Upper Beeding (near Brighton) with a destination three miles away. Using maps we found our way to where we were supposed to be, did a silly task, got given another location to find a further three miles on, and so we proceeded until we got to a camp site where we spent the night, and then carried on and did the same the next day.

Or that was the plan.

What actually happened was that we wrote down the wrong map reference at the third stage, and found the checkpoint by chance two hours later than we should have done, and then after getting lost on the way to the fifth checkpoint we flagged down a passing bus which was going the right way.

On the strength of that debacle we came back home where for many years after that we would organise a similar event of our own. The “May Meander” ran for about ten years.

As I scoffed my toast this morning I saw that someone’s organising something along those lines this May. Teams will be taken to a mystery destination some thirty miles from Hastings. Teams walk for about fifteen miles along tracks and footpaths using only ordnance survey maps and compasses carrying all their kit, camp overnight, and then carry on the next morning. The finish line is somewhere on Hastings beach.

I am up for this. All I need to do is to scare up a team of like-minded idiots…If any of my loyal readers are up for it…

 

With the dogs having scoffed their brekkie I took them all up to the woods. As we drove I was again reminded of what used to happen nearly fifty years ago.

We used to walk to school.

The traffic in Kennington was queued back for over half a mile, and when we got to the bit where it became dual carriageway everyone but me was turning right to take their children to school. Children don’t seem to walk to school any more.

 

We got to the woods where it was really muddy. It was a shame that Pogo had to scream at the normal people, and also a shame that Treacle had to eat half of the dead squirrel that she found. I tried to take a photo of her, but by the time I’d got the camera app of my phone working so the last of the tail disappeared down her gullet.

 

“Daddies’ Little Angel TM” had an appointment at the Kent and Canterbury hospital so I drove her over. We got there early and went to the canteen for a cuppa. A cuppa each, a flapjack and a Bakewell tart set me back the thick end of thirteen quid. I honestly would have thought that a fiver would have been too much. That Bakewell tart was over five hundred calories and it wasn’t all that good.

We then went on to the clinic. Whilst the most recent fruit of my loin stressed, I had a little (half an hour) sleep. We were on our way with the thumbs-up in less than an hour.

 

I came home and found the geocaching TB pot and the banner had been dropped off in readiness for this weekend’s geo-meet that I’m running. I did the admin for that, put some washing in to scrub, then slobbed about on the sofa for a bit.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up pizza and we scoffed it whilst watching the last of the first heats of “Junior Bake Off”. It was rather good.

I’m thinking about an early night as I’ve got an early start tomorrow…

 

 

13 January 2026 (Tuesday) - Early Shift

 

 

Having been wide awake since two o’clock I wasn’t very happy when Treacle started whinging at three o’clock and then proceeded to stomp over everyone and everything. The assorted snoring wasn’t helping, and I gave up trying to sleep at four o’clock. I watched a couple of episodes of “The Young Ones” as I scoffed brekkie. In a novel break with tradition I scoffed a bowl of cereal for the simple reason that we’d run out of bread for toast. A bowl of muesli is a hundred and twenty more calories than the toast. One lives and learns.

 

I had a look at the Internet… someone was posting on one of the American geocaching Facebook pages asking what the phrase “as the crow flies” meant, and a lot of people were giving completely wrong answers whilst berating others for being so wrong when they were utterly wrong themselves.

And then I despaired as I read some of the other drivel that I fund on my Facebook feed. When I was a lad people had just landed on the Moon. I had such high hopes for the future, and one of my greatest disappointments has been to find out just how stupid so many people are. Something so amazingly high-tec as the internet is little more than a vehicle for vaccine-deniers and flat-earthers.

And by the time half past five arrived I was knackered and ready to go back to sleep.

 

The motorway was rather busy at six o'clock this morning. I rolled my eyes as the pundits on the radio were interviewing one of the head honchos of the farmer's union about how government targets  for leaving certain amounts of farmland to grow naturally aren't being met. Apparently there's no agreed funding for this any more, and a farmer can either leave an area of land to go to seed, or he can plant it up and make a profit from it. It was claimed that back in the day when the UK was part of the EU there was money to be had for leaving fields fallow, but now many farmers are now far worse off. Because of Brexit and leaving the EU who were paying for leaving fields unplanted. The chap being interviewed got rather cross about the misinformation that was being published at the time of the referendum and said that no farmer would ever have voted to abolish their subsidies if they’d known where the money came from.

For all that I can sympathise with anyone whose gravy train has been derailed, I can't help but think that it's ten years too late to come up with that sentiment.

 

I popped in to Sainsburys to get some bread. If I want toast tomorrow, that was a must-have. I saw the loaves we normally have, and I also saw Sainsbury's own stuff at just over half the price. I got some of the cheap stuff; I'll find out if it is any good tomorrow. I got lunch, shaving gel, tennis balls and some stout as well, and paid for the lot using my Nectar card. Or paid for most of it. I could only pay in amounts of two pounds fifty pence on the Nectar card and so had to scrape up the odd pence.

 

I then steeled myself to tackle Hermitage Lane. There's been threats of major road works and so I'd left home particularly early this morning just in case. There were major road works, but not too much of a delay just before seven o'clock.

I went in to the early shift. The night shift was glad to see me; it had been a busy night. And today wasn't overly quiet either. And I found something you don't see very often - a case of pseudo Pelger-Huet anomaly. I took some photos, and will write it up as CPD when I get a moment. 

There were cakes at tea-time, an in a herculean effort of self-control I didn't have one. That saved three hundred calories. Had I not been over on the brekkie calorie count I might have succumbed.

 

An early start made for an early finish. The drive in had been along busy roads, but dry roads. It was hossing down as I came home, and probably half a dozen police cars (marked and unmarked) flew past dangerously as I headed homewards. I have no idea why – there was no incident on the motorway that I saw.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a rather good chili which we scoffed whilst watching more “Junior Bake Off”, and then “Romesh Ranganathan’s Parent’s Evening” in which various so-called celebrities couldn’t wait to show off their ignorance on national TV. The footballer didn’t do too badly, but the bloke in a really sexy dress and the one with the lop-sided jugs didn’t do too well.

These “celebrities” wind me up – they get ridiculous amounts of money for supposedly being famous. Even though hardly anyone has ever heard of them. I’m not so much jealous of them as I resent them. Is that wrong of me?

 

 

14 January 2026 (Wednesday) - Watching The Telly

 

 

I slept well; over eight hours asleep last night. I got up and made toast with the cheap bread. “er indoors TM” assured me she gets the pricey stuff as I don’t like the supermarket’s cheap own brand. It seemed fine to me.

I sparked up my laptop and had a look at the Internet as I do. It was my youngest nephew’s birthday today. He is twenty-two. How did that happen? There was again loads of political ranting on Facebook. The more I read social media the more I am utterly convinced that democracy is a stupid idea. The Prime Minister is hated by all because he appears to be sensible and boring and dull. The Reform UK party which is basically the Conservative party gone berserk is going from strength to strength amongst the masses for the simple reason that it is the Conservative party gone berserk. And the masses love that. They want entertainment. As I read no end of posts this morning this really was the theme.

 

With the forecast rain not having appeared I took the dogs up to the woods. It was about ten degrees colder than it had been on Monday so we wore our coats. We walked our standard longer walk toady. I had planned to walk a shorter route, but at the point where the two routes divide so there were a group of normal people going the shorter way and all were shouting at each other. Despite being close enough to touch each other, every word was shouted. We let them go their way and we went ours.

Once away from them we had a good walk, and didn’t see anyone else until we got back to the car after four and a half miles. Or five and a quarter miles depending on whether you believe my phone or my watch.

 

There’s no denying I was glad to get back to the car. A few days ago I mentioned about the London to Hastings Survival Race. A few days ago I was up for it… Or was I? Had I seen this advertised five years ago then maybe. But this morning after five miles my hips were aching and my left knee was giving me gip. And that was without carrying any heavy back-pack.

We came home for a cuppa. I put the dog’s coats into the washing machine – they’d got rather filthy. And I saw I had an email. On Monday I’d messaged the London to Hastings Survival Race people about the price of the event. They want a hundred and forty quid. Per person. If that was per team then I might have been up for it… but that’s a bit steep really. Especially when you think I’d have to get a small travel tent as well. And when you bear in mind that these dog walks are taking their toll.

Oh well… it was a nice idea.

 

I sat on the sofa, and as I ached I spent an hour marking a trainee’s portfolio work. I thought she’d done rather well, but I do feel awkward about marking their work. I’m supposed to give constructive criticism and that’s what I intend to do, but some people are more receptive to advice than others.

 

I spent the afternoon ironing whilst watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” which featured a character from Viz magazine. “Foodie B*ll*x” ran a rather grim little pub in Oxfordshire. He was oh-so-quick to find fault with everyone else, sending meals back to the kitchen, ensuring he told everyone else all about everything he ate, and making sure it was only the healthiest… whilst not actually providing a cooked breakfast in his place as he maintained that no one actually ever wanted one, and whilst puffing on his vape.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up home-made pizzas which were rather good. As we scoffed we watched more “Junior Bake Off”. Have you ever seen it? – It’s worth watching if only for the children’s reactions to Harry Hill. Every child has such a “WTF are you doing” expression on their faces every time that Harry does anything.

And then we watched this evening’s episode of “The Traitors” in which yet another contestant loudly and arrogantly demanded that her personal gut feelings was incontrovertible proof. And then acted surprised when she crashed and burned.

Last week I wondered if I might apply for the next season. Watching the physical games this evening I’m wondering if (like the London to Hastings hike) I’ve left that a few years too late…

 

There’s another episode tomorrow…

 

 

15 January 2026 (Thursday) - Heavy Rain

 

 

I slept well which was a result. I made toast (from the cheap bread) and looked at the Internet as I do most mornings. It was the same as ever. I did chuckle when I saw one of the posts on one of the local Facebook pages. Someone’s boiler was playing up and that person had asked how to deal with the issue. There were a few dozen replies; all advocating a different approach. One of them was possibly right. All the rest probably weren’t, and the person had a far better chance of achieving nothing or blowing their boiler up rather than solving the issue. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and pay an expert. Or have house insurance.

 

I had a look at my emails. Someone had been round Kings Wood yesterday. We didn’t see them; they didn’t see three of my geocaches…

I Munzed, got Wordle (chasm) on the fourth attempt, and prepared some replacement geocaches to put out on our morning walk. Not that we had one today. When I got up I’d checked the weather and it was light drizzle. Half an hour later it was hossing down. The weather forecast said that at the time there was an eighty-five per cent chance of heavy rain, and that was the lowest chance of rain for the entire day.

Ho hum…

 

I measured up our little fish tank and the table it sits on. It would be good if that tank was a little wider, and came forward a bit more, but was the same height. And armed with measurement I braved the rain and walked to where I’d parked the car yesterday (two streets away) and was quite soaked by the time I got there.

I drove to Pets at Home where they had quite a few fish tanks, all of which were far too tall. From there I went to Bybrook Barn’s aquatic shop who also had an extensive range of tall fish tanks. Maidenhead Aquatics in Dobbies had tall fish tanks as well. But they also had some rather sweet little blackmoors. One of ours died last week so I got a couple. I got the last ones nine years ago; they lasted longer than most fish.

I thought I might get us some buns to go with a cuppa, so I went to Sainsbury’s. I went into the Ashford branch and couldn’t see anything I liked. I asked a passing assistant if they had any cream cakes. With a face like a slapped arse she snarled “five!” Presuming that was what she meant I went to aisle five where there was some cream in amongst the dairy stuff. I went back to where the miserable assistant was standing glaring at the passing customers and loudly told here that I knew where to find what I wanted; it was in Tesco. And went to Tesco where I got some buns. Jam trifle buns.

 

I came home and put the bag with the little fish into the tank to equilibrate, and made us a cuppa to go with the jam trifle buns. With the Tesco Clubcard they worked out at eighty pence each. They were about a quarter of my daily calorie allowance… and whilst they weren’t at all bad; I don’t think I’ll be getting them again. There was precious little jam in them, and no trifle at all.

I marked some more trainees’ work, did a little CPD, then looked on-line for fish tanks. I want one which is about thirty inches wide, goes back about twenty inches and is about twelve inches high. No one seems to make them. I’ve asked for some quotes to have one made.

 

I then did my usual thing of watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which the proprietors of three decent bed and breakfasts found themselves being told the errors of their ways by some idiot who felt himself to be a big businessman. Offering a totally self-service place and charging about five times the amount that everyone else charged, said idiot was rather surprised when he came in last.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a very good curry which we washed down with a very good bottle of plonk which we got for Christmas. I then finished off the plonk with some Ritz crackers with the dogs as we watched whilst watching “Junior Bake Off” and then tonight’s episode of “The Traitors”. And with the bottle of plonk (and Ritz crackers) exhausted I had a go at the remains of the bottle of gin from Christmas.

 

And I’ll close tonight with a tale of disappointment. During the afternoon we had a delivery of dog food. The last one was just dumped on the doorstep and was stolen. We saw today’s being delivered and that too was just dumped on the doorstep. We watched it being dumped with no attempt to knock on the door.

We took what we wanted out of the box, filled it with the rubbish from the dustbin and put it out to be stolen.

No one took the bait…

 


16 January 2026 (Friday) - Early Shift

 

 

I slept reasonably well I suppose, bearing in mind I had an alarm set. Better than I have in the past. But because I had an alarm set I was wide awake far too early like I usually am when I have an alarm set.

I watched the last episode of “The Young Ones” then had a little look at the Internet. It was still there, and not a lot was going on at half past five. I had a quick Munz, and got ready for work.

 

There were no bin men to be seen this morning, and no bin lorry blocking the road as there so often is when I set off on a Friday morning. They hadn't even sent the advance party to move all the bins in such a way that they totally block the pavement (as they usually do). Either they were running late, or changed the bin collection day.

 

I drove round to the petrol station to refuel. Petrol looked a tad pricey; I could probably have got it cheaper in Aylesford but the petrol station there doesn't have sandwiches until late morning. And so for all that I might have saved some money, I'd have had to mess about going into the main Sainsburys to get lunch. On the plus side the voucher I had for getting double nectar points worked this time. 

I need to work out just how much a Nectar point is worth. I've accumulated about fifty quid's worth of them (according to my Nectar app) but I've been collecting them for years. I should really start spending more of them.

 

As I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing the head honcho of the Leon fast food chain. No?  I'd never heard of them either. Apparently they flog meals that you can microwave. The bloke was rather interesting; he said that when he appoints anyone, he looks for someone who can make meals to be microwaved. He was very clear that he had no interest in hiring anyone with a "business mindset". He went on at great length that in his experience people with a "business mindset" don't make as much money for his company as people who can actually do the job. He maintained that if you can do the job then that is how to make money; people who feel that they can "make money" don't actually do a very good job (for him the job is making dinners) and so sell less product.

The chap's probably got a point; this is exactly what happened in the episodes of "Four In A Bed" that I watched yesterday.

 

I got to work early, made myself a cuppa and wordled unsuccessfully. After six goes I still hadn't got it right (racer), so my streak of getting it right for eighty-three consecutive days came to a crashing end.

I got on with work, and sulked as I kept looking out of the window. Yesterday on a day off I'd been kept indoors by constant heavy rain. It was a dry bright day today. Probably a tad cold, but dry. We could have gone for a long walk round the woods. It's probably for the best that we didn't; I seem to have constantly aching hips these days, but I do like a long walk round the woods.

 

Just before lunch time I had a phone call from someone called Mella who claimed to be calling on behalf of the Three network. Apparently my Three sim card would be blocking up in two days' time unless I gave her lots of money. I asked her how many people fall for that scam because I'd like to start a scam like that myself. Mella pretended not to understand. I then asked her how she sleeps at night. She asked me what I meant by that; I explained that decent people don't randomly phone strangers and try to con them out of money. She didn't think there was anything wrong in trying to trick me into paying for a phone service that I don't use. I asked her how she would feel if I reported her to the police for trying to obtain money under false pretences. She replied that I could report her to whoever I liked.

I suppose that call went better than some I've had. I actually did make one of these scammers cry once; that idiot woman was trying to sell double glazing for a company with which I'd had an incredibly bad experience and had a track record of declaring itself bankrupt and then starting up again under a slightly different name. That woman claimed to have had no idea of the history of her employer. From her reaction she might have been telling the truth.

Mella seemed to be quite aware that she was operating a scam. I've blocked her number, but I expect her or someone else will just call from another number before too much longer.

 

An early start made for an early finish, but it was dark when I got home. “er indoors TM” boiled up a good dinner and we scoffed it whilst watching more “Junior Bake Off” and “Traitors”.

I’m feeling a bit worn out – the poor night and early start has taken its toll…

 

17 January 2026 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Star Trek, Games Night

 

 

I woke feeling full of energy and raring to go… at three o’clock. I then dozed on and off for the rest of the night finally getting up shortly before seven o’clock.

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there and much the same as ever it was carrying out its vital role. Its vital role being to allow people to argue bitterly over trivia. The NHS, fish tanks, frozen plasma, frogspawn… no matter what the topic there were people queueing up to squabble.

I had a look at my emails. Someone had been round Kings Wood yesterday and found over thirty of the caches I’d hidden up there. That was a relief – I won’t have to replace those ones just yet.

And I had some replies. A couple of days ago I looked at getting a custom-made fish tank which might better fit into the space where the current fish tank sits. The firm which advertises “We offer high end bespoke aquarium design & installation services including manufacture and maintaining aquariums for private and commercial clients in the UK” replied to say “Sorry this isn’t something we can help with”. One must wonder what a company that makes fish tanks can help with, if not with making fish tanks. Another company got back to me saying they could make be a tank to the size and shape I wanted… for two hundred quid (not including delivery).

I think I’ll make do with what I’ve got.

I Munzed, and started a new Wordle streak. Starting with “begin” I went through “tithe” and “field” to come up with “fiery”.

 

As I fiddled on-line so Steve was on the radio. I amazed myself with the “Guess the Lyrics” competition this morning. “All you need is your own imagination so use it, that’s what it’s for”. No? – Vogue by Madonna… How did I know that one?

 

Being Saturday we went round to Repton and Dog Club. There was a minor hiccup this morning as I arrived to find a sign on the car park gate saying that the car park was closed due to an electrical fault. I didn’t unlock that gate but went in through the side gate. And then some woman drove up, unlocked the gate and drove in. I asked her if we were allowed to use the car park as there was a sign saying the car park was closed. She stared blankly at me so I pointed out the notice. From the way she looked at it I got the distinct impression that she couldn’t read, and she chattered on about how we needed to use the car park.

I’ve emailed the centre to find out what’s going on.

Other than that, Dog Club passed off rather well. It was a bit cold and a bit muddy, but everyone seemed to have a good time. We had about fifteen dogs along, and the only fly in the ointment was when Luna and Morgan rolled in fox poo.

 

“er indoors TM” set off to Craft Club. As I drove the dogs home Steve was doing the “Mystery Year” competition on the radio. The Strawbs “Part of the Union” and the launch of the Austin Allegro? 1973.

We had a bath; muddy paws and fox poo needed scrubbing. I hung out the washing, had a little tidy-up (not that you’d notice!) and ran round with the Hoover. I then gathered dog dung from the garden and topped up the bird feeder. Seeing how the fallen bird seed was sprouting I scattered some of it over the lawn.

I made myself a cuppa, then spent a little while assessing more trainee’s work and wrote up a little CPD all in between shouting at the dogs who were barking at absolutely everything that went past the house.

 

The dogs eventually nodded off, and so did I. “er indoors TM” woke me when she came home with dinner. We scoffed it as we watched the first two episodes of the new “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy”. I won’t say it was rubbish; it wasn’t. It was rather good really. There were loads of little Easter Eggs in there for the fans (if you watched closely enough), but I suppose that what with it being the twelfth Star Trek series (yes – there’s twelve Star Trek series and that’s not counting the films!) it seemed as though it was just yet more of the same. Rather good more of the same… but it was nothing new. I don’t know what I was expecting from it, but I had been expecting something different to what it was.

 

Steve, Sarah and Chris arrived and we had a very good evening playing games on Chris’s big Infinity Table. The first game (Game of Life) was a tad difficult as the table was incredibly unresponsive, but rebooting and turning off the Internet connection sorted the issue. We then had a very good game of Sorry and of Ticket to Ride. I came last, but we had a good time.

I do like our games nights…

 

 

18 January 2026 (Sunday) - Geo Meet

 

 

I slept well, which was a result. I made toast and had a little look at the Internet. This morning loads of people were openly laughing at President Donald Trump. I can’t work the bloke out. He’s rich, he’s got to be the most powerful person on the planet. Can he *really* he the feeble-minded simpleton that he appears to be in the news and in the media?

There was a lot of talk about 27 Codrington Road Briston which was where “The Young Ones” was filmed. Some people claiming to be working in American blood banks were asking the most fundamentally basic questions. I follow several work-related Facebook groups and it never fails to amaze me how little many of the Americans posting there seem to know. Is this the sort of health care we want in the UK?

And I saw a lot of stuff about the new “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” show. Oh, there was squabbles. In the eighties and nineties I used to subscribe to fan-made Star Trek magazines which were basically a paper version of on-line discussion forums. The postings to that could be very bitter, personal and nasty, and thirty years later nothing has changed.

 

I Munzed, and got Wordle on the last try. My fifth try (scuba) had given me one letter in the right place, and three wrong ones. So I just randomly tried combinations if letters until the thing accepted “sumac” which apparently is a spice used in cookery. No – I’d never heard of it either.

 

We got ourselves organised and drove down to Newington. We walked the dogs round the geocaching Ad-Lab series that was there, and had a little diversion at the village hall. There was an interesting religious howling coming out of there which we ignored whilst getting clues. And clued up we then took a little walk across some wet fields to find a geocache at the base of an oak tree.

We then carried on with the Ad-Lab, and saw a few friends as we did. What a co-incidence that they were there (!)

From Newington we drove up to the Blue Silo micropub. We found this place a month ago and thought it might make an idea venue for a geo-meet, and it did. Over twenty of us turned out. It was good to meet up with friends; I do like the geo-meets. Excellent beer, sausage rolls, scotch eggs… it was a shame that Morgan had to be an idiot, but he got banished to the car boot, and after a few minutes in “dog prison” he soon behaved himself.

The organisers were very pleased with the amount of customers I’d brought in, and offered us the use of their private room for future meets. That was a result.

I took a few photos whilst we were out.

 

We came home where I had a little doze. Perhaps the afternoon’s fifth pint was a tad keen. “er indoors TM” boiled up pork chops which we scoffed whilst watching Friday’s episode of “Junior Bake Off”. We’ve now caught up with that show until tomorrow’s episode.

We’re now watching “The Floor” with Rob Bryden.

 

And there’s a constant hissing sound in my ears. I’ve had tinnitus for weeks and it’s not getting any better…

Perhaps I should see someone about it.

 

 

19 January 2026 (Monday) - Blue Monday

 

 

Last night I did that thing where I woke far too early. I woke feeling full of energy and raring to go… at ten past one. I then dozed on and off until half past seven when I gave up and got up.

I stood on the scales. Having had quite a pig out this weekend I was pleasantly surprised to see that my weight had held constant over the last week.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. There were lots of people saying nice things about yesterday’s geo-event that I’d organised. I rather enjoyed it myself and was very pleased at how it went.

On the other hand there were far more people saying nasty things about the new “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy”. Back in the late eighties the die-hard Star Trek fans hated “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Twenty years ago it was the reaction of the (so-called) fans that led to the cancellation of “Star Trek: Enterprise”. And here they are doing it again.

And there was some chap claiming to be a real ale fan who was bigging up some beer describing it as “second only to Guinness”, and getting rather miffed that such a statement meant that either he didn’t know the first thing about beer, or that that what he was selling was mediocre at best.

I Munzed, and got Wordle on the last try. “Waxen” – they are putting some seriously silly words on there at the moment.

 

I got the leads onto the dogs and took them up to the woods. As we drove there was talk on the radio about the use of artificial intelligence in academia. One expert on ancient Rome was saying how there’s something or other that never happened in ancient Rome (I can’t remember what it was) but all the artificial intelligences will tell you that it did. Apparently this sort of thing is happening more and more and is known as A.I. hallucination, and is a bit of a problem… The University of Manchester is tackling this head-on and is giving all its staff and students access to the Microsoft 365 Copilot and asking them to use it and challenge it.

This will be how the world ends. Not through malicious A.I. but through A.I. mistakes.

 

Being a bit warmer today the dogs didn’t have their coats on. They don’t like their coats, and I can’t help but think that they just hold cold water and make the dogs colder. And Bailey’s coat seems to rub in places. But because it was a tad warmer the mud had melted and the dogs got a bit grubby.

The birds were singing a lot today as well. My birdsong app detected a common greenshank or so it claimed. I’ve never heard of them before.

We walked a slightly different route today. I’d had some reports that some of my geocaches were missing to I took some replacements. Of the ones that had been reported as being missing, one was missing, two weren’t. And we found something of a mystery. Last week as we walked I saw one of my caches was missing. It simply wasn’t there. When we came back this morning it was where it was supposed to be. What was that all about?

 

We got back to the car and came home for baths. I made us both a cuppa then did the admin for the geocache maintenance I’d done.

I chased up English Heritage about that EarthCache I was hoping to set up at Camber Castle.

I arranged Treacle’s vaccinations.

I marked a trainee’s portfolio work.

I wrote up some CPD.

 

I settled in front of the telly underneath a pile of dogs and watched some episodes of “Four In A Bed”. Today’s ones were particularly vicious. Everyone underpaid everyone else, there was a lot of snarling, and even some swearing. It never fails to amaze me that the contestants in this show don’t seem to realise it is a TV show and that everything is filmed. If a contestant finds piss all over a toilet or a load of hairs in the bed, then we see it on the screen. Contestants denying it and claiming that it was all lies aren’t fooling anyone and just make themselves look silly.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a decent bit of dinner then went off bowling. I sparked up Netflix and watched a couple of episodes of “Soulmates”; a rather good sci-fi show on Netflix. Imagine a system that could find your ideal and perfect partner… and how that might be abused…

 

Oh – and today was supposedly Blue Monday – the most depressing day of the year. Was it? Probably not for me. I’ve just had a rather good weekend and a good walk round the woods today. I’m quite enjoying helping the trainees with their portfolio work. Working up this EarthCache is giving me a little project. There’s more geo-meets and games nights in the pipeline. I’ve got a day at work tomorrow (which I rather like these days) and more walks in the woods later in the week.

I’m reminded of a post on one of the local Facebook pages I read over the weekend in which some billy-no-mates was bemoaning just how terrible he felt Ashford was, and in the subsequent arguing it became apparent that this chap did nothing with his life but sit and whinge and rarely (if ever) leave the house.

For all that life can conspire against you, it helps if you try to make the most of it.

 

 

20 January 2026 (Tuesday) - A Day At Work

 

 

I had another restless night. Having woken at one o’clock I eventually nodded off again only to be woken two hours later by no end of crashing about from the back bedroom. Treacle was having a funny five minutes. I settled her, went back to bed, and after an hour or so I woke in a cold sweat following a nightmare in which because of government enforced economies I was having to get the toilet to double up as a washing machine.

 

I got up, made toast and watched another episode of “Soulmate”. It was a rather good show, but it made me think. Are all American homes about four to five times larger than my house? I’ve never seen any home in an American TV show which is even remotely close to the size of my small abode.

 

I had a look at the Internet which I do every day. The usual tripe abounded, but one thing was interesting. Over the last few days I’ve been mentioning the latest incarnation of Star Trek. Something else coming back would seem to be Blake’s Seven; there’s talk of a re-boot. Apparently some chap who has been a director in the most recent episodes had got the rights to the thing. I always thought that him who played “Avon” in the original series had those rights, but it turns out that Paul Darrow died seven years ago.

I wonder how many there will be in the new ensemble; the original “seven” never got above six.

 

I Munzed, and got ready for work. It was still dark as I set off. As I drove up a very busy motorway the pundits on the radio were talking about the latest antics of President Trump. He has invaded Venezuela. He wants Greenland. He openly insults his closest allies. He does whatever he wants with no one brave enough to say no to him.  He will carry on like this until he dies. No one will stop him; any sort of impeachment will just be ignored and there won't be any more elections until he says so. As if he's ever going to have another election after the debacle when they gave him the heave-ho last time?

Democracy, eh?

And despite the world about to dissolve into chaos there was quite a bit of talk about Victoria and David Beckham. An ex-singer and an ex-footballer quarrelling with their children is clearly of far more interest to the masses than the possible end of the world.

 

I went to Sainsburys as I do. Having acquired a lot of loose change from when I cashed up the Dog Club money at the weekend, I spent quite a while this morning paying for my shopping with one, two and five pence pieces at the self-service till. As I fed shrapnel into the machine, one of the assistants glared at me. In the past she's complained that I shouldn't use their self-service tills to get rid of my loose change, and in the past I've told her that I will pay using my card *if* there's someone operating the till for me. She won't open the till, but she will glare at me.

 

I got to work rather earlier than I might have done, but with much of Hermitage Lane being one-way because of the road works I wasn't taking any chances. Being a tad early I had a cuppa and Wordled, going from "games" to "sully" in five moves.

Work was rather busy today. Very busy. I was glad when it was home time.

 

I got through the traffic lights this evening quicker than I did this morning, and was soon home. “er indoors TM” boiled up cauliflower cheese and sausages which we scoffed whilst catching up with episodes of “Junior Bake Off”. We had a bottle of plonk with dinner, and I slept through more “Bake Off” than I watched.

I’m worn out…

 

 

21 January 2026 (Wednesday) - Longbeech Woods

 

 

I slept rather well last night, waking just after seven o’clock when Treacle declared “Red Alert” for no reason that I could see. It was probably as well that she did though; I was embroiled in a nightmare in which I had been seconded to the Department of Health to head up a program to screen wild rabbits for sickle cell disease, and I was the only person who could see the stupidity of rounding up wild animals to test them for a condition that they don’t have.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet and saw something interesting on Facebook. A question: “You are walking past a shallow pond when you see a child struggling in the water. There is no one else around—no parent or guardian. You are about to wade in to save the child, when you notice that you are wearing your most expensive new shoes, and there’s no time to remove them. Shoes or kid?”

Well, obviously I’d jump in… But I didn’t realise that I wouldn’t have to. Legally here in the UK there is no obligation for anyone to help anyone who might be in distress. Which made me think. Is there anyone who I would leave to drown? It bothers me that there might well be. Is there anyone you would leave to drown?

I also saw that last night’s squabble on the “Upstairs Downstairs” Facebook page that I moderate had died down. Late yesterday evening someone posted up a quiz about the TV show. Someone else felt the questions were too hard, and got rather nasty in their criticism. I’ve fiddled with the settings so that anything else the nasty one wants to post to the group from here on needs to be assessed by a moderator. It’s rather pathetic that a woman in her late sixties needs to be treated in this way.

I Munzed, Wordled from “after” to “cubic” in four goes, then looked out of the window again. It had been raining when I got up, but the rain had eased off a bit.

 

For a change we went somewhere different for our walk today. We’ve not been to Longbeech for a while. We got there to find much of the car park was being used as a free campsite by a huge motorhome. They often park there because they save twenty quid a night by not going to a proper campsite. But we parked up and went for a little wander. In the past I’ve mentioned that I’m not keen on Longbeech Woods as there’s effectively one long path and several paths branch off at right angles leading either to the road or to dead-ends. But since we were last there someone’s opened up new paths making it possible to have a decent walk without having to back-track on yourself all the time.

Despite the forecast rain, it didn’t rain whilst we walked, and we got over two and a half miles done; only seeing one other group as we went. It was muddy though.

 

As we drove home the pundits on the radio were talking about Finasteride. Supposedly a drug available only through prescription, it is openly advertised on-line. It claims to combat hair loss, and it would seem that not everyone is like me and resigned to being bald. A sizeable proportion of the nation’s six million slapheads want to turn back time and hand over good money to hair loss drugs. Sadly for all that this Finasteride does combat hair loss, it also shrinks the nads and reduces the base urges that inspire you to brandish the nads, which (ironically) is the main reason why many want to get their hair back, isn’t it? And in some extreme cases it also causes severe depression. And many of these side effects don’t happen until after you’ve stopped taking the drug.

Personally I think there’s something faintly ridiculous about seeing someone who was once losing their hair suddenly having the head of someone thirty years younger, but what do I know?

 

We got home. Muddy pays and bellies were hosed off in the bath. Muddy trousers went into the washing machine, and I sorted a cuppa. I then spent a couple of hours assessing trainees’ scripts. Blood borne parasites, infectious mononucleosis, sickle cell disease and anticoagulants… the sooner they get their qualifications the sooner they can do all the shifts that I keep whinging that I am too old to be doing.

 

I spent a dull afternoon watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which (as always) people started off friendly and end up being as nasty as possible to each other.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up pie and mash and we settled into what seems to be a standard way to spend the evening. “Junior Bake Off” followed by “The Traitors”. It was only a shame that Treacle had to elbow me in the pods.

 

 

22 January 2026 (Thursday) - Plov

 

 

After a good night’s sleep I checked the weather forecast. Yesterday it had been for a dry morning. This morning it said drizzle becoming rain, getting heavier as the day wore on. So I scoffed my toast quickly and took the dogs out to make the most of the best weather.

 

As we drove I listened to the radio as I do. That idiot Donald Trump was in the news again. Really he should be addressed as “President”, but sadly “that idiot” is really the best I can do. He’s announced that there is a "framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland", but he’s rather vague on the specifics, and no one had any idea what he’s talking about.

And there was an interview with the head honcho of Britain’s foster carers. I thought about turning the radio off; this is a sensitive subject for me. But I forced myself to listen, and my piss boiled. There’s fewer and fewer people willing to be foster parents, and the government is looking to ways to alleviate this As far as I’m concerned, the answer is obvious – don’t take children away from their mothers on the strength of lies made by the  inexperienced.

The woman being interviewed was saying about how foster parents are regularly inspected (so they should be), and one thing which would help the foster parents would be for them to be provided with cleaners.

So… the state can take a child into foster care because its home isn’t felt to be clean enough… and then the state will provide a cleaner for the house into which it puts the child because that house isn’t clean enough?

You can’t make this up…

I took a deep breath…

 

The woods were busy today. I’ve never seen so many squirrels about. And neither had the dogs. They had a great time. And I’ve never seen so many people in the woods either. All were friendly. It was a shame that the two young ladies had to shout everything to each other; they were walking two yards from each other and I could hear their conversation from a hundred yards away.

We had a minor episode at the half-way point. There’s a point where the path turns through a right-angle and you can’t see round the corner till you get there. Morgan had run off ahead like he does. He knows the woods and comes back when called so I wasn’t worried. But I turned the corner and saw someone who was worried. Morgan was wagging his tail at some woman who was shrieking into her phone shouting “What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?” like a stuck record. She saw me, and asked if I knew anything about the lost dog she had just found. Bearing in mind he’d been out of my sight for maybe ten seconds I would hardly describe him as “lost”; she must have already been on the phone as she wouldn’t have had time to make a phone call in the time available.

 

We walked a slightly different route to our usual one today – it was about half a mile longer than usual. We walked for about an hour and three quarters and it stayed dry for us. So much for weather forecasts, eh?

We came home for a bath; bellies had got seriously grubby.

I voomed round the garden harvesting dog dung.

I voomed over my head with the clippers and saved a small fortune; have you seen the price of a haircut these days?

I went over the road to the shop and got the makings of dinner, and spent the afternoon making it.

 

In between boiling up some plov I watched the last three episodes of “Soulmates” which was rather good. Good science-fiction works by having believable characters, and this show worked rather well. Such a shame it has been cancelled.

 

“er indoors TM” came home from a day in the office. We sparked up the telly and watched more “Junior Bake Off” as we scoffed dinner. It wasn’t that bad really… I suppose. I must admit I never really like scoffing anything that I’ve cooked myself. But I can’t help but think that the entire “plov” idea was a bit keen. Next time I’ll just curry up the chicken and maybe fanny about with the rice?

But the bottle of rose wasn’t bad.

“The Traitors” is on is a minute…

 

And if any of my loyal readers are interested, here’s my recipe for plov… It was probably too much for the two of us, but unless you add a side salad or something it’s not really enough for four. The entire lot came in at about one thousand five hundred calories…

 

Ingredients

 

  • Two apples
  • Two parsnips
  • Three carrots
  • Two chicken breasts
  • Half a pound of rice.
  • Curry powder (whatever flavour you fancy)

 

Chop up the apples, parsnips and carrots. Chuck them into a pan of water and simmer until soft.

(about an hour or so)

Chop up the chicken breasts and fry in hot oil for a couple of minutes.

Tosh a cup of water with the curry powder in with the chicken breasts and leave it to marinade (or soak for the less culinary amongst us).

Boil up the rice for fifteen minutes.

Drain the vegetables, mash them up, and put them on the bottom of a pasta dish (about half an inch deep).

Stick the cooked chicken on the mashed vegetables.

Cover with the cooked rice (save any extra rice for the dogs – they love it).

Cover it with tin foil, stick in a pre-warmed oven and bake at 200 degrees for half an hour or so.

Take off the cover and bake for another ten minutes.

Scoff with a bottle of rose wine (hello sailor)

 

 

23 January 2026 (Friday) - Finals Night

 

 

I woke at two o'clock, and again at three o'clock, and again at quarter past three... by the time half past five came I was fed up with it and I got up. There was a minor hiccup when I came to use the loo - the light switch is broken and tiddling in the dark can be something of a game if you don't know where to aim.

I made toast and as I scoffed it, I watched something new on Netflix. I'm now three episodes in, and I still can't decide if "Future Man" is either really good or really bad; I can't make my mind up. It would help if the script writer didn't keep having the characters point out just how derivative the show is of other sci-fi shows. Realistically there are very few new ideas on telly and nowhere more so than in sci-fi.

 

As I watched telly so I heard the bin men going up the road. I got dressed and weaved my way through the discarded bins to my car. The bin men had again left the bins in such a way as to totally block the pavement.  I really should get on to my local councillor about it... I've contacted her in the past and not found her to be very helpful. And it would seem she's missed more council meetings than she's showed up for.

I'll drop her a line and see what happens.

 

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about that idiot Donald Trump who was claiming that the rest of the world had contributed pretty much nothing to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Offence had been taken round the world. I can't help but think that the global community do themselves no favours by taking Donald Trump seriously.  He's got a proven track record of saying all sorts of confrontational and outrageous statements which he then either completely forgets that he ever said or backtracks entirely. At the beginning of the week there was all sorts of talk about tariffs against anyone who opposed his proposed annexation of Greenland. Now, that's all dead in the water.

The international community should treat him like an idiot toddler, smile at him, pat him on the head, take no notice, and get on with the serious business of running the world safe in the knowledge that whatever he says he will do today bears no relation to what he  will say he will do tomorrow.

 

I went to Sainsburys to get lunch, then joined the traffic jam in Hermitage lane. It took as long to drive the mile up that road as it did to drive the twenty-five miles from home to the bottom of that road. I wouldn't have minded if anyone had actually been doing anything in those road works. You'd think there would be some law saying that if a major thoroughfare is to be closed for road works, then those road works have to actually happen, wouldn't you?

 

Work was work. I did my bit. This evening there was far less traffic trying to get through  the road works at peak time than there had been at half past seven this morning.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up fish and chips which we scoffed watching the final of “Junior Bake Off”, and after that the final of “The Traitors”. I won’t give spoilers, but what are we going to watch on the telly now…

 

 

24 January 2026 (Saturday) - A Wassail

 

 

I had another restless night. I gave up trying to sleep at half past five, got up, made toast and watched another episode of “Future Man” and still couldn’t decide whether or not I liked the show.

I sparked up my lap-top and had a little look at the Internet in case it had changed overnight. It rarely does, but you never know. Pretty much nothing had changed overnight really.

As I pootled on-line so Gold Radio was playing “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals. Many, many years ago that was the favourite record of my best mate of the time. For a few years we were inseparable; best of buddies in the Boys Brigade… but we left school and went our separate ways. I became me, he became a very successful businessman. I stalked him on-line this morning. He’s currently one of the directors of Lloyds bank. I’ve sent overtures of friendship over the years… sadly he’s moved on from associating with the likes of me.

 

I Munzed, and using my strategy of starting with a five-letter word that I have just written, I Wordled from “likes” to “cliff” in five goes, then got ready for work.

 

I set off west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens listening to the radio as I do.  There was a *lot* of talk about last night's episode of "The Traitors". It was as well we watched it last night; spoilers abounded this morning. I thought they would though. I can remember getting up at two o'clock in the morning to watch episodes of "Game of Thrones" because by the time the morning came spoilers would be abounding. I can remember going to buy one of the later Harry Potter books at midnight one Friday night and spending the weekend reading the book as fast as I could so I could then deliberately give spoilers to someone I knew who couldn't stop himself doing exactly that whenever he could.

And apparently there is to be a major shake-up for the country' police. Some forces will merge, and individual coppers will have to keep up to date with changes in modern policing... There's a novelty. They will have to do continuous professional development... like I've been doing for years.

 

I stopped off at Tesco in Pembury to get Belgian buns for lunch, and whilst I was at it I got myself an almond croissant for second brekkie. When I work at the weekends I often go to the works canteen for the cooked breakfast. It is always a disappointment. An almond croissant is far better and about a third of the price.

 

I did my bit at work, but I was only on for the morning, and was home shortly before two o’clock. We scoffed the Belgian buns then went round to the park where a Wassail was taking place. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was something of a disappointment really. A burger stall, a burger van, a cider stall, an overpriced tat stall and a bunch of Morris dancers…

A Wassail is an old English tradition harping back to the days of Margaret Thatcher in which the unscrupulous milk the gullible for every last penny. Bottles of cider at a fiver each and burgers starting from six quid flying off the stalls… tradition was honoured.

We had a little walk, and came home. It was too cold to wassail for too long.

 

I had a look at the monthly accounts. As always they could be a whole lot better, but they could be a whole lot worse.

We then watched this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” which was rather good, but in retrospect nothing actually happened.

And then we sparked up the Infinity Table and had a rather good evening. We played “Ticked to Ride” and shelled out the amazing sun of two pounds fifty pence for the Scandinavia and Switzerland maps, and having played them we then had a go at India and Asia as well. And then Chris came on-line and we played Trouble and Sorry and Scrabble. “Dux” – more than one duck (!)

 

I started to wilt at about half past eleven which (bearing in mind the four pints of Timmy Taylor) I thought was rather good for me these days…

 

 

25 January 2026 (Sunday) - Seashells in Winchelsea

 

 

I slept well; staying in my pit for over eight hours last night. I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do. It was much the same as it ever is. Someone had posted a photograph of a blood cell on one of the work-related Facebook pages and asked what it was, and there were as many different answers as there were people to give them. No one was saying this is whatever it is for the following reasons; everyone was saying this is whatever it is because I say so. It bothers me that it is quite clear from the profiles of some of the utterly wrong protagonists that they are in a position to have their utterly wrong ideas taken seriously. 

I rolled my eyes as I read the reviews of the most recent episode of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy”. The so-called fans were again doing their best to get the show cancelled. So-called Star Trek fans have been actively opposed to all the follow-on Star Trek series ever since the animated series came out in 1973.

 

We got ourselves organised and drove down to Winchelsea. During the week the latest set of geocaching treasures came out, and there was a little series of caches along a footpath from Winchelsea to Rye that would fit the bill.

We parked up at the railway station and walked along a quiet lane to our first target. We soon found that, and then wandered along to our second quarry in the wonderfully-named “Dumb Woman’s Lane”. It turns out that the dumb woman in question had her tongue chopped out so that she couldn’t squeal up the local smugglers.,

The third cache was one that was missing. I’d messaged the chap who’d hidden it, and he was happy for us to replace it. So after a little look round to be sure it was missing we replaced it.

The fourth was a cute little model insect hanging in a tree. So many people must walk straight past it and not notice.

The fifth probably went in the floods following the recent heavy rain so we replaced it

The sixth was blatantly obvious… but I couldn’t see it for looking.

The seventh was rather close to someone’s back garden. The paper inside was soaking wet so we replaced it.

And then we turned round and came back along the way we’d been. Having checked out the path on the way there, we let the dogs off the leads for the way back as there was a river on one side of the path and a fence on the other so they couldn’t get into trouble… or so we thought. It didn’t take them very long to get through the fence and start chasing rabbits through the thick gorse. They came back after less than five minutes, but it seemed a lot longer.

The chap who’d hidden the caches had mentioned that he doesn’t live locally and that maintenance was an issue for him. He said he’s looking for someone to adopt the series… It’s too far away for me, and when I go doing geo-maintenance I want the dogs to be able to run without getting stuck on the other side of a fence.

After two miles there and two miles back we got back to the car. I was surprised at just how short the walk from Winchelsea railway station to Rye had been. I took a few photos as we walked.

 

We came home. The dogs had baths and were soon all snoring contentedly. I did the geo-admin for this morning’s walk then spent a couple of hours marking more trainee’s portfolio work before nodding off.

 

I might have an early night… I’m not feeling on top form…

 

 

26 January 2026 (Monday) - Harlots

 

 

I was feeling rather iffy when I went to bed last night. I felt a little better this morning. I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. Again my Facebook feed featured flat Earth conspiracy theories. Surely this must be a joke? Do people * really* think the Earth is flat?

There wasn’t a lot else going on this morning so as “er indoors TM” went off to the office for the day I Munzed, did Dog Breakfast, and we got ready for our walk.

 

As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how schools should deal with how the children use their phones. The Education Secretary is all for an all-out ban. Would that work? I somehow doubt it. I can’t help but think that phones are part of our daily life, and somehow the school curriculum (*not* “cricklum” as everyone who has ever been interviewed on the radio wants to call it) should somehow reflect this.

And there was talk of Andy Burham the mayor of Manchester whose chips have been pissed on. He’s not going to be allowed to become an MP again. Becoming an MP would just be a stepping-stone to becoming leader of the Labour party… I can’t help but wonder what the people of Manchester must think about him as he’s made it clear his heart isn’t in his current job, hasn’t he? So many people are like that though. Every job is just a stepping-stone to the next job.

 

We got to the woods where I used my phone. To photograph the dogs. To see what birds were singing (not many). To navigate to the missing geocache that we replaced. To make a map of our walk. As I said earlier, phones are part of our daily life.

As I walked I met a couple of noisy women who were bellowing their conversation at each other. We all arrived at a crossroads and they seemed terrified that I was going to go down the path from which they’d just come. I had to go that way as that was the way to the geocache that needed replacing, Ideally I would have gone any way but that one; they had clearly scared off any wildlife that might have been in the area.

And a mile later I heard the panicked screaming of some woman who had lost her dog in the wood. She’s often in the woods, often screaming for her dog that never has any intention of coming back to her.

About a mile into the walk Treacle found a dead squirrel which she carried for the rest of the outing. She looked so pleased with herself.

 

We came home for baths. I had plans for the afternoon, but first warmed up some of last week’s leftover plov for lunch and put on an episode of “Harlots” on Netflix. I can only describe it as a saucy version of the third Blackadder series, and I found myself captivated by it until “er indoors TM” came home.

We had pizza, then with “er indoors TM” off bowling I watched more “Harlots”.

 

And in closing, today would have been my dad’s ninetieth birthday. I can hardly pretend to have been the devoted son, but I miss him.

 

 

27 January 2026 (Tuesday) - It Rained Hard

 

 

I would have had a better night’s sleep had Morgan not sat on my head in the small hours, but he did. I dozed, listening to the rain hammering on the window, and got up just before half past eight.

 

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. It would seem that there’s now a charge to use the car park at Battle Great Woods. Bearing in mind that Forestry England run those woods and also run Kings Wood (insofar as anyone “runs” a wood) does this mean I shall be shelling out to park in future? Certainly holidays in the New Forest are going to be a tad more expensive with parking fees being applicable to every car park in the New Forest from April.

If there is to be a parking charge it might be cheaper to join Forestry England. If what is happening in the New Forest is anything to go by, at three quid for two hours parking I’ll be shelling out between six and eight quid a week for parking. But for only (about) one pound fifty a week I can become a member and as such get free parking.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt and looked out of the window. The weather forecast had been right; heavy rain. And with it forecast for all day, a decent dog walk (or any dog walk at all) wasn’t happening.

I got dressed and spent the entire morning marking trainees’ portfolio work.

 

“er indoors TM” had an appointment; I put the washing machine on and then read my Kindle for a bit until she returned. She then took the dogs round the block as the rain had subsided a little, and not one of the three had done any “business” at all since getting up. Baking it for that long couldn’t be healthy. I didn’t fancy braving the rain so I stayed behind.

 

When they all returned I got the ironing board out and spent the afternoon using it whilst watching episodes of “Four In A Bed”. Today’s contestants were a rather confrontational simpleton, a young couple running a dog-friendly place in the Yorkshire Dales, an amiable enough chap with slightly more teeth than brains and some ballroom dancers from Bournemouth.

Everyone got on reasonably well, which was a disappointment, and in the end it was a tie between Toothless and Thickie.

 

I then had a phone call. “Beaker from Three” phoned with an offer of “lots of data and the good time” and asked what I “thought of deal”. I told him I thought it was a scam. He wanted to know why. I told him that https://who-called.co.uk had labelled his phone number as dodgy. “Beaker from Three” then got rather aggressive, recited the address of the Three Network’s head office and claimed to be phoning from there, and then told me that I was a scammer. You would think that anyone living and working in Reading would realise that “scammer” isn’t a name-calling insult, wouldn’t you?

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the first two episodes of “The Traitors: Ireland” which also featured some really thick contestants who were oh-so-fast to show off how thick they were.

The producers must rub their hands in glee when these people apply to go on the telly.

 

I’ve walked less than two thousand steps today. I’ve not set foot outside the house. The rain has stopped, but the news is of floods everywhere. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow…

 

 

28 January 2026 (Wednesday) - Five Pounds Up

 

 

Again with an alarm set I woke far too early. I made toast and watched another episode of "Harlots" which was rather good. The scriptwriters have now got away from flopping out the jubbliles every so often and moved on to actually having a plot. 

I had a very quick look at the Internet. What with all the rain yesterday the underpass near Asda had flooded again, and the Facebook page devoted to that underpass flooding was full of whinging. I asked if anyone (other than me) had contacted the councillors or our Member of Parliament about the issue. From the comments it was quite clear that no one wanted the flooding to actually get dealt with; everyone would far rather have something to whinge about

 

Taking great care not to wake anyone I got dressed. Have you ever got dressed in the dark? Not getting your undercrackers on back to front is simple enough, but socks can be tricky.

I looked out of the window and saw the cars outside were iced up.

I’d checked the weather forecast just before I went to bed last night. The forecast from eleven o’clock last night until this morning had been cloudy but with no rain and temperatures of about five degrees. There was also a formal warning for ice and snow. How did that work? Only one could be right.

Sadly it was the warning about the ice.

 

I scraped the ice off of the car’s windscreen and drove west-wards expecting the roads to be terrible having seen loads of photos of floods on the local Facebook pages yesterday. They weren't that bad really; there was a large puddle at London Beach (just north of Tenterden) but other than that the roads were quite passable.

As I drove I listened to the radio as I do. The pundits on the radio were broadcasting from Cardiff where they are gearing up for elections to the Welsh parliament. Apparently Reform UK look set to get at least a third of the vote. And that is despite Reform UK not having a leader in Wales, nor having published any policies or manifestos. One in three people have already decided who they are voting for with no idea of what they are voting for. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying Reform UK will be bad for Wales. I'm saying that we have absolutely no way of knowing what they are promising, but one in three Welsh people clearly don't care. Democracy, eh?

And there were interviews with disgruntled Cornish fishermen. In the past they made their living from selling the crabs and lobsters they caught, but more and more their crab and lobster pots are coming up full of empty shells. Apparently octopi are eating all the crabs and lobsters and dumping the empty shells in the pots.

 

There was a minor result as I got my sandwich in Tesco; as I pocketed my change I saw a fiver laying on the floor by the self-service checkout.  Had I dropped it, or had it been there all along?  At worst I'd broken even, and at best I was a fiver up on the day. 

 

I went in to work, and did my thing. By nine o'clock I'd walked more steps than I'd walked all day yesterday.

I did spend a little while sulking though. Yesterday had been a very dull day as the constant heavy rain had stopped me doing anything. Today might not have been the best day, but it was dry. We could have gone a few miles round the woods. We might have got muddy, but we could have got a decent walk in.

But on the plus side was a little biccie at tea time.

 

Being on an early made for an early finish, and I had most of the drive home in daylight. “er indoors TM” boiled up bacon, egg and chips and we tried to watch more episodes of “The Traitors: Ireland” whilst Treacle squeaked like a thing possessed. Having wolfed down all her biscuits she was adamant that she should have Bailey’s half-dozen biccies too. Treacle is such a greedy thing.

Dogs, eh?

 

 

29 January 2026 (Thursday) - A Longer Walk

 

 

I slept well; as I often do when there’s no alarm set and the dogs are settled. I got up at eight o’clock, made toast and peered into the Internet.

This morning my Facebook feed was full of adverts for wine companies. All of them operating under the same premise – buy six bottles of wine from them for about thirty quid (bargain!)… and then they send you six more bottles every two months for a hundred and twenty quid. I’d rather buy a bottle from Sainsburys when I want one.

And I saw there’s a Taco Bell coming to Ashford.  There used to be one in Folkestone. I quite liked it; shame that hardly anyone used the place.

I Munzed, Wordled from “house” to “flaky” in four moves, and seeing it wasn’t raining I got ready for the off.

 

I drove the dogs up to the woods. As I drove “In Our Time” was on the radio. It’s a show that can be really interesting or incredibly dull. Today’s was about the Roman circuses which featured gladiators fighting wild animals and each other… or so we think. It turns out that there’s very little actual evidence of what Roman circuses were all about. Take for example the thumbs-up or thumbs-down for whether or not the loser gets killed. There’s no evidence at all that this was ever a thing. I can remember being told this at school when I did Latin O-level. Pretty much everything we think we know about gladiators was made up by Hollywood for their films.

 

We got to the woods, and took a different walk to our usual one. As we walked we met no end of noisy normal people, and our friends Amie and Willow. I didn’t recognise them; I’m hopeless at recognising people.

Usually we walk a shade over four miles; we covered six today.

 

We came home for a bath. When we got into the car all three dogs were filthy. When we got home the girls had quite clearly cleaned themselves a bit. Morgan hadn’t. And with dogs bathed I made a cuppa for “er indoors TM” and me, and then spent a couple of hours marking more trainees’ work. Sickle cell, malaria, morphology…

 

The afternoon was spent (as it so often is) watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which one stuck-up toffee-nosed old biddy found fault after fault with everyone else’s B&Bs, but needed the other contestant to help her make her breakfasts, and her place was utterly filthy because (as she openly admitted) she wasn’t a cleaner.

I sometimes wonder if these people are actually actors.

 

“er indoors TM” boiled up bangers and mash which we scoffed whilst watching this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” which was rather good. I do hope this show survives the serious attacks being made on in on-line by the supposed fans.

 

 

30 January 2026 (Friday) - Bit Dull

 

 

I would have slept well had Treacle not decided to stomp all over my head at half past four, and having stomped all over my head she then took over my pillow. “er indoors TM”  “quietly remonstrated” with her (!) and Treacle set up next to me and pushed and pushed. I eventually dozed off again once she eventually fell asleep.

 

I got up at eight o’clock and stood on the scales. I stood on them before going to bed last night, and overnight my weight had gone up by two pounds.  I stood on them again after I’d had a shave and my weight had come back down by five pounds. What was that all about?

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. I do that every morning. It was much the same as ever.

I Munzed, and looked at the drizzle. With rain showers forecast for all day I thought I might as well take a chance on a walk and hope for the best.

 

As I started driving so the heavens opened, but the downpour only lasted for about a minute. As we drove to the woods the leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch was on Desert Island Discs. Like so many politicians she spoke a lot of sense. Politicians wind me up. When you listen to what they have to say it is so sensible, and usually utterly at odds with what their stated policies actually are.

We got to the woods. We walked four miles; not quite our usual route as I didn’t fancy the uphill bit in slippery mud. As we walked we saw several other dog walkers, and a herd of deer which was far too fast for me to catch with the camera.

 

We drove home via the petrol station where (as well as petrol) I treated myself to a creme egg. There’s a hundred and seventy calories I really didn’t need. And we had a minor episode as we came along Brookfield Road. Some idiot in a lorry took exception to my stopping for the red traffic light and had a good blast on his hooter, and then drove about two yards from the back of my car for the next mile, even though from his high vantage point he could see I could go no faster. It was a shame that his lorry bore no company logo so I had no idea to whom I might complain. I contented myself by having a little whinge on rate-driver.com. More people should use that website.

 

We got home and the dogs had a warm shower. For all that we were right to have gone out for a walk (we had maybe five minutes of drizzle in an hour and a half’s walking), the dogs got very grubby. And with them scrubbed and soon snoring I made a cuppa for “er indoors TM” and me.

I then spent an hour marking more trainee work. It’s what I used to do back in the day when I was supervisor and manager. But back in the day things were different. When I was supervisor and manager I never felt that I was very good at supervisor-ing and manager-ing. I’ve never seen the need for endless paperwork, and I don’t have the temperament for meetings. I can remember (about twenty years ago) being formally ordered to a meeting at which the managers of our department would discuss our approach to a larger meeting of a bigger group of managers. However the outcome of that larger meeting had already been decided.

Not only was I the only one who felt that both meetings were a waste of time, I was taken to one side and told that I wasn’t being a team player.

I don’t want to go back to supervisor-ing and manager-ing, but I can assess trainee’s work.

 

I wrote up some CPD, and them remembered I’d not Wordled. So I Wordled. Starting with “waste” was a waste of a go, so I tried “found” and got two vowels (if nothing else). “Group” got me no closer. Bearing in mind that there wasn’t really anywhere else to put the vowels I eventually came up with the answer (jumbo) on the fourth attempt.

 

I did my usual trick of spending the afternoon watching episodes of “Four In a Bed” in which an obnoxious pair of oiks won despite no-one actually managing to sleep in their establishment because of all the road noise. 

 

“er indoors TM” sorted fish and chips and went off out for the evening. I settled under a pile of dogs and watched more episodes of “Harlots”.

I’ve spent a lot of today watching telly…

 

 

31 January 2026 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Folkestone, Infinity Table

 

 

As I peered into Facebook this morning I saw some extremes – heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures from friends in America; over forty degrees from friends in in New South Wales.

Other than a lot of nasty bickering about politics there wasn’t much else on social media this morning really. Perhaps I should fiddle with the settings of my Facebook feed. I see so little from the groups I’ve joined (period dramas, eighties music, painting, dogs, fishing, Sparks, Munzing…) and I get so many suggestions of “you might be interested in” about things that are of no interest to me at all.

Three Facebook friends had birthdays today. One I vaguely know through having met through geocaching. One with whom I used to work ten years ago. And one who died a couple of years ago. Paul was a good ‘un. Very active in the kite-flying community he was one of the people who organised everything so that everyone else could have a good time. The world needs more people like him.

I had no emails of note. I Munzed, and Wordled from “thing” to “allot” in five goes. As I strained my brain so Steve was on the radio doing the “Guess the Lyrics” competition. “We know all our lines so well. We’ve said them so many times. Time and time again”. No? – “Wow” by Kate Bush.

 

We drove round to Dog Club where we had a rather good time. It was a tad cold, and very muddy. But the dogs had a great time. They usually do. It was a shame that Roo had to get a tad amorous at Smudge. He does that, but today we got as far as brandishing the lipstick. That sort of thing is always very entertaining all the time it is someone else’s dog doing it.

As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year on the radio. When did Chessington World of Adventure open? 1987.

I like my Saturday early morning with Steve on the radio and Dog Club. I missed it last week, and unless I can swap shifts I will miss it again next week.

 

We took the dogs down to Folkestone and had a rather good walk along the Leas. There’s some rather posh apartments where the market used to be. I had a vague plan about upping sticks and retiring to one of them until I had a look at the place’s website. I’d be paying a *lot* of money for very little other than a sea view which for much of the winter would be bleak, and for much of the summer would be heaving with the normal people.

 

We came home; I dozed for an hour or so, and then Mark and Sam came round. They’d been thinking about getting an Infinity table, and so we spent the evening putting ours through its paces. Trouble, Sorry, Game of Life, bowling, Chicken Wrangler, Hungry Hippos… It was good to catch up. There are so many people in my life that I really don’t see enough of. We really must do this again…

Perhaps the fourth pint was a tad keen – I’ve got to be up early tomorrow…