1 November 2024 (Friday) - Nice Little Earner

I woke to the sound of a thud as Treacle jumped off the bed at four o'clock. Less than five seconds later she was whimpering and crying because she wanted help to get back on to the bed. Once back on the bed she made herself comfortable.

I gave up trying to sleep and got up.

Being the first of the month I got out a new razor blade. I'm mean - I make them last for a month. As I made toast I saw the lights were on next door. Not-so-nice-next-door seems to be up and about very early in the mornings, and now it is darker in the evenings I've noticed all the downstairs lights off and the bedroom light on at half past eight in the evening. I must admit that given the choice I'd got to bed early and get up early. If I could I'd set off for the dog walks in the dark and get to the woods for dawn. I doubt I'd be given the choice though.

I scoffed my toast watching another episode of "Everyone Else Burns". In today's episode the crackpot preacher was arranging marriages for his flock. Back in my religious days no one ever went quite that far, but we were certainly told what was and was not suitable pre-marital behaviour. Although I was beginning to turn to the dark side when it happened, the vicar did come round and tell us off when he heard that we were "living in sin" in Folkestone.

I had a little look at the Internet - last night was Hallowe'en. I completely forgot about that. It seemed from the local Facebook pages that nowadays you don't have kiddies banging on people's doors demanding sweeties any more. These days the etiquette seems to be that you put a huge bowl of sweeties where you can see in with your doorbell camera and leave it for the kiddies to help themselves. You record what happens, and then you judge children on how much they take. And post photos of the greediest ones to social media.

That caused one or two squabbles.

I got dressed and woke “er indoors ^TM” who needed to move her car. What with the idiot decisions of the local highways people there were a few dozen less parking spaces locally last night, so the “er indoors ^TM”-mobile spent the night on double yellow lines. She moved her car into the space I left before she got a ticket and before anyone else had that space. You might think that moving a car before six o'clock a tad keen, but I've seen traffic wardens out and about at half past midnight before.

Pausing only briefly to get petrol I was soon off up a dark motorway. But at least it wasn't raining today. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about David Goldstone. Having been involved with Transport for London, the UK Olympics and HS2, the chap is now heading up the government's Value for Money office. Only having to work for one day a week and being paid at nine hundred and fifty quid a day, he's laughing all the way to the bank. How do you get tickets for that gravy train?

And there was talk about ex-Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed. Apparently the Metropolitan Police were told of allegations of sexual assault done by this bloke a decade earlier than the Met would have us believe.

But it's all largely irrelevant as (yet again) the chap has been dead a year. What are the Met going to do? Stick his corpse in the dock?

Work was much the same as ever. I did my bit, and then came home to find the builder having a look at the bathroom. “er indoors ^TM” wants to get the bathroom done. Presumably not in the same way that the dogs have been “done” but what do I know? I suppose a nice new bathroom might be nice.

There’s rumours of cracking open a bottle of plonk shortly…

2 November 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club and Egerton

As I peered into Facebook this morning I learned something. There’s a nuclear bunker nearby. About twenty miles away in Brede there’s a nuclear bunker at the waterworks. The place has open days on the first Saturday of each month, so I’ve missed that for now. But it could be good for a day out some time.

I’ve walked past Brede waterworks many times, and commented on the place. If you look closely you’ll see dodos. Yes – dodos. The supposedly extinct birds. There’s loads of them there (you don’t have to look that closely). They aren’t geese and they aren’t ducks or swans. The only thing they resemble is a stuffed dodo I once saw at the Natural History museum.

And I saw my brother was on the coach from Brighton to Liverpool to watch the football. He must love it.

I put some washing in to scrub and we set off to Dog Club where we had a rather good session. Last week the dogs were all rather excited; this week they were all a bit quieter. We had at least twelve dogs along today – it is difficult to keep count as they all keep moving about. Morgan managed the entire session without having his muzzle on. Bailey rolled in something foul. Treacle had a ball and was happy. And the forecast rain held off too.

As we’d driven to Dog Club Steve had been on the radio doing the “Guess the Lyrics” competition. I got it right - “Blondie” with “Picture This”. As we drove away I got the Mystery Year competition too. “Ghostbusters” was in 1984. As was Tommy Cooper’s death. I can distinctly remember talking about Tommy Cooper’s death when I was working at the Royal East Sussex Hospital. Everyone else was saying that they’d seen it happen on the live TV show “Live from Her Majesty’s”, and all I could think was who would be sad enough to watch “Live from Her Majesty’s”.

Rather than coming home we took the dogs for a bit of a walk. What with me working tomorrow I wanted to do something with today, and if we came straight home after Dog Club we’d never go out again after, so we drove out to Egerton. There’s a series of geocaches from Hothfield to Egerton; a line of twenty-two of the things. Periodically we’ve been out and walked a few, then come back to the car. There were seven left that we hadn’t done. Parking in Egerton the furthest of them was just under a mile away as the crow flies, so that made for a rather good little walk. It was a tad muddy in places, and getting at some of the caches was a bit tricky as the brambles had grown rather impressively, but we found five of the seven we were after, and had a good walk too.

I took a few photos as we walked.

We came home for a wash. Some of us needed washing more than others. As “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs snored I carried on trying to solve geo-puzzles. If any of my loyal readers know of an app for locating fire hydrants or telegraph poles…

As I puzzled I had a message. One of the pups from Dog Club has got sickness and dire rear. Had anyone fed her anything? It has to be said that Dog Club can sometimes be one big feast. She might have had one of the tiny treats that I give out? Dogs is odd – the slightest thing can set them off being ill, but then they can have a good feast of fox poo and be fine (other than rancid farting).

And then I fell asleep…

3 November 2024 (Sunday) - Early Shift

I had an alarm set, and so didn't sleep very well. It didn't help that every time I moved about “er indoors ^TM” told Morgan off. Poor pup.

I gave up trying to sleep, got up and made toast which I scoffed whilst watching an episode of "Everyone Else Burns". In today's episode our hero had to fend off the amorous advances of a fellow congregant.  Shortly after we moved away from Hastings I heard that an old friend from our old church had a similar issue with the (female) organist wanting to get lesbidacious with his wife. Personally I would see that as a result, but things are different when you are a religious nut.

I had a quick look at the Internet. It would seem a nephew has got a new girlfriend. It must be difficult being young these days. Pretty much everyone that nephews and nieces hook up with seem to come with children from previous relationships.

As I watched telly and Facebook-stalked a prospective niece-in-law I could hear strange noises coming from next door. Last week I mentioned how she gets up really early every day. Quite often she makes strange noises before six o’clock - a sort of series of grunting-coughing sounds. Perhaps she does some sort of exercise?

I drove to work listening to what I can only describe as utter drivel on the radio. It was so bad I found myself listening in disbelief that something so dire warranted being played on national radio. There was some idiot waxing loquacious about how wonderful clear food packaging is because you can see what you are getting, and was trying to make out that tins were a complete rip-off as anything might be inside a tin and you would never know until you bought it and opened it.

This was followed by an interview with a farmer in the deep south of America who was talking about how the seasons are very different to how he remembered them as a child. He said that he used to go fishing for crayfish in the local swamps when he was a lad; these days no one dares go near because of the alligators. He got very aggressive when anyone suggested this might be global warming in action.

Just as I got to work “er indoors ^TM” sent a message. Bailey had blown. Twice. Yesterday someone had posted on the Dog Club Facebook page saying their pup had been ill when they got home, and someone else had posted that there was a bug going round giving dogs iffy guts. My lot have iffy enough guts already without bugs helping them along. Last night Morgan was rather squitty, this morning Bailey was throwing up; perhaps they have got a bug.

I did my bit at work. Last Sunday was a rather bright day and I sulked because I had to work. Today was rather overcast; I don't mind working on days like that. Even if I was far busier than I expected to be. I blame all these ill people.

But an early start made for an early finish. Over the summer we could take the dogs out after an early shift; this time of year I barely get home before the light starts fading.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of scran. Spicy pork chops, cauliflower cheese, and a large lump of trifle. Oh yus!!  As we scoffed it we watched this evening’s episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. I’d love to have a go at the amount of Lego the contestants get to play with.

4 November 2024 (Monday) - Start of a Week Off

When I wasn’t listening to snoring last night I was fighting dogs for bed space. The last time I looked at the clock was at seven o’clock, and I was sleeping blissfully when “er indoors ^TM” alarm went off half an hour later.

I made toast and had a look at Facebook. An old friend from my days in the Boys Brigade was posting photos from Fiji. He works as a lawyer specializing in a very specific field and so commands huge fees. Like many people these days he can work anywhere he has an Internet connection. Based in Melbourne he doesn’t work from home; he works from a succession of hotels, and this morning he was working (and posting to Facebook) from Fiji. I’m a tad jealous of the chap as he is obviously wealthy and can afford to travel. But I do wonder if he is lonely. There is rarely (if ever) anyone photographed with him or tagged in his photos. And travelling round like he does he can’t see anyone for any length of time. Mind you I saw him in the flesh a few years ago and he seemed happy enough.

I took the dogs up to the woods for a walk. We did our usual circuit and once we were away from the car park we walked for miles and didn’t see anyone. The dogs chased squirrels, it wasn’t that muddy at all… but (as always) Bailey found fox poo and rolled in it. The foul creature.

We came home for a wash.

“er indoors ^TM” had seen something whilst we were out. Did I want to change my car’s number plate?  Back in the day my old Espace had the number plate K17E MB. That cost me two hundred and fifty quid. For only eight hundred and fifty quid I could have BO07 DOG. One of the companies was offering a fifty per cent off deal. But when you looked closely that was fifty per cent off of their admin cost. A saving of twenty quid; not the four hundred quid that you might think. I found the same registration on another website slightly cheaper. I sent them an email asking if we might haggle.

And then I had a stroke of genius and went on the government’s website (which is where number plates come from!) only to find it was two hundred quid more expensive.

I then drove down to Folkestone. Whilst “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” have been on their little sojourn in Enfield, the garden of their flat in Folkestone has run riot. Gardens do that. I went down with a car full of garden tools and had a go at her front yard. I gathered up the rubbish, and found an Amazon parcel underneath it all. I then started off pulling weeds. After an hour I realized it was taking an age so as an experiment I had a little go with the strimmer. In retrospect I should have started off with the strimmer. Mind you it made a mess, so I popped inside and got “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”’s broom. Sadly it fell into four bits on the fifth stroke. I managed to sweep up using the biggest fragment, then had a look at her back yard. There were some rather tall weeds there, so I pulled them. By the time I’d pulled them and bagged them I’d had enough. I loaded six bags of rubbish and a poggered microwave into my car. As I’d worked I’d found a poggered microwave (as you do).

I drove all the rubbish to the tip… While I wasn’t paying attention the tip at Folkestone has been moved. It used to be up near Hawkinge. Now it’s at Shornecliffe. Only about five miles away, but once I’d driven five miles to the wrong place, and then driven to the right place I was rather miffed to find that Folkestone’s tip also operates an appointment system. However I didn’t see the notice until I’d got into the tip and I had to drive through anyway. So I drove in, and on the way to beg the nice man to allow me to empty my rubbish I bunged quite a bit of it into the skip on my way past.

I gave the nice man a load of flannel, and he was very good about it.

“er indoors ^TM” sorted sausages and chips then went bowling for the evening. I sat on the sofa and watched a film. The latest re-make of “All Quiet on the Western Front” wasn’t as good as the previous versions of the film, or the original book. Sadly this re-make was rather crap and abandoned any attempt at plot or storyline in favour of things exploding. I watched the film two years ago and wasn’t impressed then either.

5 November 2024 (Tuesday) - Deer, Gardening

Finding myself wide awake far too early for no reason I could fathom I got up, made toast, and once I’d watched an episode of “Everyone Else Burns” I had a little look at the Internet in case I’d missed anything overnight.

I hadn’t really.

There was talk about today’s American presidential election. As an outsider looking in, it strikes me that absolutely anything would be better than Donald Trump, but an American friend has told me that Kamala Harris isn’t as brilliant as she might be. She’s told me she feels she has to choose between a large turd in a bowl and a pool of diarrhea on the sidewalk (pavement).

I suppose that’s true of elections everywhere though.

I munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, then went and woke the dogs to take them out.

As we drove to the woods so the pundits on the radio were also talking about the American election. Interestingly many people being interviewed claimed they were voting for the candidate with the Christian values, but both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris were extolled as the second coming and reviled as the antichrist in equal measures.

We got to the woods on a very misty morning and saw there was only one other car in the car park. Sadly we found its occupants. As we walked a herd of deer ran across the path. I managed to get a photo of the last one, and as I put my phone away so the others came back to see where their mate had got to. And then I heard something. And so did the deer who all ran off.

There was a bellowed conversation going on and getting closer. After a minute or so a group of three women and six dogs hove into view. Walking side by side, for some inexplicable reason everything the women said to each other was shouted at maximum volume.

They went one way and we went another. But after a few minutes I could hear them again, so I changed our direction. But no matter which way I went I couldn’t get away from them. There they were, shrieking at each other. We all got back to the car park at about the same time, and they got into that other car that had been there when we arrived. Still bellowing at each other.

We came home. No one needed a bath, which was a result. I made us both a cuppa, then leaving “er indoors ^TM” working and the dogs snoring I drove down to Folkestone again. Yesterday I’d sorted “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”’s front garden. Today I sorted the back. I went round with a dustbin sack and gathered up the rubbish. Then went round with the strimmer, swept up, went round with the strimmer again and swept up again. So easy to type; not so easy to do. By the time my tip appointment came round I’d got three quarters of it done. So I took seven bin bags of garden rubbish to the tip, and as I was about to come home I had a thought. There was only about an hour’s worth of work left to do in that garden. Rather than coming down tomorrow I could finish the job this afternoon.

So I went back and got nearly but not quite everything done when the strimmer started making funny noises and shaking as though it was having a fit. The bit where the strimming line goes had snapped in half; the poor thing hadn’t survived the ordeal. It has to be said that you need to be made of stern stuff to visit the abode of the most recent fruit of my loin. But rather than strimming the last bit of patio I went at it with the blade of a shovel.

That’ll do for now.

I gathered up those garden tools which had stayed the course, and with a bit of shoving I managed to get the strimmed greenery into one rubbish bag. I brought the lot home together with the remains of the strimmer which is currently laying in state in the front garden. These days the etiquette is that if you’ve got something to give away you leave it in the front garden. Hopefully one of the unsuspecting normal people will take it off my hands.

Mind you we left the carcass of “er indoors ^TM” bike in the garden a while ago. Someone took it, and on realizing what a state it was in, they chucked it in the dentist’s garden.

I then did the “feed the fish” ritual in which fish food goes down the necks of pond fish and dogs in equal amounts. As I fed the fish in the small pond I was amazed. Earlier “er indoors ^TM” had told me there were four fish in that pond. Originally we put in five, but two disappeared months ago. One seems to have returned, but it is tiny. Do fish shrink?

I made another cuppa and had a look on-line. The strimmer that died today lasted three and a half years, and Amazon say they can have a new one with me by tomorrow.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner, and we started watching the current season of “Bake Off”. We’re a little late with it this year...

6 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Got a Baby

I had a minor issue with my lap-top this morning. When I booted it up the screen was upside-down. I rebooted it to no avail. But as I tilted the screen so it went back to how it should be. What was that all about?

I eventually got my morning fix of Facebook. There was petty bickering on the local Facebook groups about how one should drive round the tank roundabout. There are a few places in Ashford where the local custom is to totally disregard the highway code, and that roundabout is one of them. This roundabout regularly features on local Facebook bickering. Everyone knows how to drive round it. Everyone is adamant that they are right and everyone else is wrong. And no two people ever agree on the matter.

And I signed an on-line petition. Apparently MPs are voting on allowing terminally ill people to have the right to end their suffering. The vote is in a few week time. You can send your MP a pre-written email on the matter by clicking here. There are those who will be against this sort of thing. I suspect those people have never watched their mother or father laying hopelessly in a hospital bed for weeks with vital body systems failing from terminal cancer or from irreparable brain damage from a massive stroke. The fruits of my loin have orders to pull my plug when (not if) I get like that.

This got me thinking… I had no idea that this vote was coming up. Apart from odd snippets in the news I have no idea what MPs are voting for. Democracy, eh? We elect someone or other to go run the country for five years… and for the most part we have no idea what they are doing. My MP has got a Facebook page. It’s a shame he describes himself on it as a “digital creator” but at least he or one of his staff updates the page regularly. Our local councilor doesn’t update hers.

And talking of democracy it seems that Donald Trump has done a Grover Cleveland. If there is anyone who thinks that is a good idea to have a system of selecting government in which the considered opinion of an educated person is of the same worth as that of a half-wit who believes the ramblings of an egotistical rich idiot, could they please explain why.

As we drove to the woods this morning the pundits on the radio were talking about Donald Trump’s victory. It would seem that across the world there’s celebrations from Russia, China, North Korea and anyone who might have meddled in the US election in order to put him in the White House. Everywhere else is caution and a sense of quietly expecting the worst.

The woods were quiet today. Not quiet as in not a lot of people about; quiet as in silent. There weren’t any sounds or noises at all. No birds singling, no trees rustling in the wind. It was rather eerie.

As we walked we saw deer again. And unlike yesterday Morgan saw them too. He shot off in hot pursuit, but after about ten seconds of being out of my view he came back again.

And then we had an “episode”.

All three dogs were playing a rough-and-tumble game of chase and attack. They play it together all the time. A passing dog thought he might join in, found the game was a tad too rough-and-tumble for his liking, and ran away in terror with my three hot on his heels. Fortunately the woman with the dog realized what had happened and didn’t have the arse with us.

We came home. I made a cuppa, then got on with gardening. I mowed the lawn… then stopped mowing and gathered up all the dog turds. Then started mowing again and found a load more dog turds. Eventually I got the lawn mowed, then I went round the front garden with the bionic burner. And then I cleaned out the pond filter on the little pond. And “er indoors ^TM” was right – there is a fourth fish in the little pond. I’ve done a little looking up on-line. Apparently comets can grow to be three inches long in their first year – I can only think we’ve had babies.

For some reason I was aching rather a lot, so I sat down and geo-puzzled. There are several (eight) geo-puzzles on the Romney Marsh in which you are told the distance and bearing that a geocache is from the point at which the photograph in the puzzle was taken. All you have to do is find exactly where the photograph was taken. I’ve been struggling with these puzzles for some time now, but Gordon was working on these this afternoon as well, and we spent a couple of hours messaging each other and between us we came up with the locations of five of them.

And then the nice double-glazing man came. The frame of our front window has been cracked for years and needs replacing. The nice man measured up and quoted us a price of about five hundred quid cheaper than I was expecting him to. His company has good reviews on Google and Checkatrade.

The surveyor comes next week.

7 November 2024 (Thursday) - A Walk, Pond, Chess...

As I booted up my lap-top this morning the antivirus told me about the latest cyber-threat I need to look out for. Apparently whenever you access certain iffy websites a load of dodgy scripts is copied to your computer. This website then asks you to prove that you are human by calling up the windows run screen and pressing the control and “V” keys together and then pressing the “Enter” key. This then installs whatever iffy software the hackers want on your PC. I would wonder who would be dumb enough to fall for that, but you only have to look at the news from the USA to see that there are rich pickings to be had.

Quite a few of my American friends were rather worried about this morning’s news. And rightly so. Not so much about who had been voted in as about who had done the voting. I’ve often said that democracy is a very silly idea, and finally it seems that people are slowly coming to my way of thinking.

I got the dogs onto their leads and we drove up to the woods for a walk. We did our usual circuit. I had my phone’s camera poised but we didn’t see any deer today. We did meet a noisy pair of women not far from where the deer usually lurk though. Like the three we met the other day these two were walking a yard apart from each other but were shouting everything they had to say.

As we got back to the car so I got a whiff of something foul. Treacle had rolled in fox poo. Treacle? It’s usually the smaller two.

We came home for a bath, and once bathed I popped up to the corner shop to get “er indoors ^TM”’s craft magazine. Whilst I was at it I got almond croissants for us both, and then used Google Street View to drive round Romney Marsh for an hour or so looking for a fire hydrant sign (it’s a geo-thing).

Despite aching I then spent an hour in the garden putting the new patterned pond edging into place. I’m not sure if I like it, but once it has weathered in it might look better.

I wrote up a little CPD and drove round Romney Marsh (on my lap-top) for another hour or so. All the time listening to pings on my phone. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” has taken to playing on-line chess, and consequently so have I. As Rik Mayall once remarked, chess is a game in which a prawn goes all the way and becomes a queen, and then it can go any way it likes.

I didn’t go all the way and consequently lost.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up some pork chops which we scoffed whilst watching more “Bake Off”. Much as I like the show, it’s not the same since Matt Lucas left.

8 November 2024 (Friday) - Lazy Day

I think I overdid the heavy gardening at the start of the week – I’ve been aching ever since. I hurt when I got up this morning.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. It was still there. One or two people were posting about having put up their Christmas decorations already. If people want to do that, then that’d up to them. Personally I’d just rather people didn’t start so early. By the time late December comes I’m not at all hyped up for it; I’m fed up with hearing about it all.

I had a message about one of those geo-puzzles I’ve been working on. Apparently I’ve found the location I need. If so then the chap who set the geo-checker up had made a mistake in the next bit. The thing has only been found once, and that person found it without using the checker, so that was my excuse why I wasn’t getting the green light from it.

I turned off the lap-top (as my brain was exploding at geo-puzzles) and drove the dogs up to the woods. As we drove Desert Island Discs was on the radio. Today’s castaway was Dr Nicola Fox. Born in Hertfordshire she is currently NASA’s head of science.

Something she said made me think… She was off on some works conference a few years ago and had left her small children with her husband. He didn’t answer his phone when she phoned home one evening. She tried again later to no avail. Eventually she got through and a small voice said “Hello”. Her three-year-old son answered the phone and said that daddy was asleep laying against the wardrobe and wouldn’t wake up. When the police arrived it turned out that daddy had died a few hours previously from an aortic aneurysm.

Could you imagine that happening?

We got to the woods and had a good walk. We didn’t see any deer, but Morgan and Bailey found deer poo. We probably didn’t see any deer because of all the noise. The other day I commented on how quiet the woods were. Today there were a few groups walking along bellowing at each other, and the local special school was up there too. They regularly go to the woods where, rather than doing anything educational like learning their lessons, they (quite literally) run round in circles screaming. The teachers just stand watching them with rather bored expressions.

I came home and sorted a cuppa and a slice of cake. “er indoors ^TM” had brought coffee and walnut cake home yesterday. That was rather good. I then took a deep breath and had another go at that geo-puzzle. I’d been told I’d found the right location… had I? The whole puzzle hinged on finding a fire hydrant sign on Google Street View. Had I found the wrong one? I found another, did the sums and got the thumbs-up.

I had a lazy afternoon. What with gardening and pond work earlier in the week I deserved one skive this week. I slobbed on the sofa and watched episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which some vindictive old harridan had the hump that other people had better guest houses than she did and were charging less than she was. It’s a standard theme of the show, but always amusing to watch the jealousy.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a decent bit of curry which we scoffed whilst watching more “Bake Off” which we washed down with a bottle of coffee stout.

I’ve done pretty much nothing today but walk the dogs and watch telly… I still ache from sorting “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”’s garden earlier in the week. I needed a lazy day. So why do I feel guilty that I’ve done so little today?

9 November 2024 (Saturday) - Another Lazy Day

When I went to the loo at three o’clock this morning I saw all the lights were on next door. She was up late or early. Whichever it was. I went back to bed.

I got up a few hours later, made toast and had a look at Facebook and rolled my eyes. Several people weren’t happy this morning. One of the triumphs of Brexit (!) was that it created an environment in which all the UK’s immigrant workers didn’t feel comfortable any more and so many went back home. This left the country with massive shortages in the hospitality and agriculture sectors. It would seem that as well as the illegal immigrants, Donald Trump now wants to send home naturalized Americans too. Bearing in mind that America imports a *lot* of its more intelligent and highly-skilled workforce this isn’t going to end well. I’m reminded of my whinging at school about how dull the history lessons were, and our French teacher telling me that those who don’t learn the lessons of the past will repeat them for themselves.

Mind you, what is Mr. Trump actually trying to achieve? Since when has any politician ever acted in the national interest rather than just doing whatever they can to appease those who are more likely to vote for them?

And I saw an advert on-line. There’s a “Samhain Pilgrimage” tomorrow – a five mile walk across the South Downs doing all sorts of hippy things along the way. And it is only sixty quid a ticket, but if that is a bit much you can make your payment in smaller amounts. Hippies never used to charge that much back in the day.

Meanwhile on one of the nerd sites that I follow was one of the most bitter and acrimonious arguments I’ve ever seen. This one was about who would win in a fight between a Star Wars death Star and a Star Trek Borg cube. Oh, people were getting angry…

I suppose people being more worked up about hypothetical fights between fictional spaceships than they are about innocent people being deported speaks volumes about why the world is in the state it is in.

Being Saturday we set off to Dog Club. We had quite a few first-timers along today, and one episode. Some old chap came along with his dog. He immediately let the dog off the lead and stood and watched it trying to hump all the other dogs. This happens with dogs. Those getting humped generally tell the humper off and all is fine. However this dog wouldn’t be told, and the chap whose dog it was just stood watching. When not humping, this dog was playing rather roughly and the excitement was winding everyone up.

Morgan got so excited he had his muzzle put on as he is easily provoked.

After a few minutes this dog walked past his owner who put it on a lead for a few minutes.

Five minutes later the same dog was causing more problems and the owner was nowhere to be seen. I managed to catch the dog just as the owner bumbled round the corner from the next part of the field (he thought he’d go for a little walk). I marched the dog back to him and he got the idea. This dog stayed on the lead watching and calming down. With that dog under control things went back to usual. Which was probably for the best with (at least) seventeen dogs along today.

“er indoors ^TM” went off to craft club. I drove home listening to Steve on the radio. Having totally failed to guess the lyrics on the way to Dog Club I got the mystery year on the way home. ELO’s album “Out Of The Blue” and Elvis Presley dying? 1977.

We got home where the dogs had a bath. There was a distinct whiff of fox poo. And then I set about the ironing. It doesn’t iron itself.

“er indoors ^TM” came back from craft club and sorted a ham and pickle roll. Very nice. And then we had another lazy day. “er indoors ^TM” practiced what she’d learned at craft club and I looked at geo-puzzles in the area where we’re going on holiday next year.

“er indoors ^TM” announced she was cold and turned on the fire. Our electric heater fire blows out warm air. At the first sound of the thing working, Bailey runs and sits in the flow of warm air. When the thermostat kicks in and turns it off, she goes back to her basket until it turns on again. The other dogs aren’t at all bothered by it, but Bailey was up and down like a thing possessed all afternoon.

Over a rather good bit of scoff washed down with a decent bottle of plonk we watched more “Bake Off”, and having had half of a decent bottle of plonk I expect I shall spend the evening snoring in front of the telly.

10 November 2024 (Sunday) - Romney Marsh

There was a post on Facebook this morning which made me think. Apparently there is some road in nearby Headcorn with the same name as a road in Ashford. Someone living in the Ashford one has been ordering stuff on Amazon only to have found everything is being delivered to the house of the same number in the Headcorn one. Whoever lives in the Headcorn one is just taking the parcels and thinking it is Christmas. It is easy enough to get a refund from Amazon, but it is arse-ache when the replacements get sent to the wrong address as well.

Back in the day I lived in Grove Road in Hastings and we regularly got the mail for Elmgrove Road in Brighton.

We also used to get a postcard every year from someone who holidayed in Ashford-on-the-Water. We never did find who that was from, or who it was supposed to be delivered to.

There wasn’t much else happening in the Internet today. I sparked up the Munzee app and saw that a friend (who lives near Bluewater) had Munzed our Skyland at five o’clock in the morning. He was up and about early.

I munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and then got a message. The first fruit of my loins had poggered his back. “My Boy ^TM” and Cheryl were planning to come on a rather short walk with us today, but they had to cry off.

But we went ahead with our walk anyway. There is a short series of a dozen geocaches near New Romney which we thought might make for a good dog walk. And it did. About a dozen geocaches over four miles on flat ground took us a couple of hours. Treacle was allowed off-lead but we took no chances with the littluns after a pheasant shot out of a ditch and we saw another dog-walker with his dog caked on fox poo. Whilst we kept Bailey and Morgan out of the fox poo, Treacle went wading in swamps.

I took a few photos as we walked. With walk walked we drove round the marsh finding up a few of the puzzle caches I’d solved in the week.

We came home where in a novel break with tradition “er indoors ^TM” took command of dog bath time.

Oh dear…

Personally the first thing I do when I’m doing the dog-scrubbing is to chuck all three in the tub so I know where they are, and so that they are contained and captured. Bathing them one at a time gets the first dog clean, but the second two can see what is coming and they escape still caked in whatever it was that made you want to bath them in the first place.

Eventually the dogs ended up scrubbed and we had a cuppa and a hot cross bun.

“er indoors ^TM” sorted a rather good curry which we scoffed whilst watching today’s episode of “Lego Masters”. We recorded it and watched it later so’s we could fast-forward through the adverts. What took an hour and a half to record took fifty-five minutes to watch. Bearing in mind how easy it is to avoid adverts I can’t help but wonder why they are still made.

11 November 2024 (Monday) - This n That

My old mate who travels the world from hotel to hotel rather than having any fixed abode was posting to Facebook from Hawaii this morning. There were several photos of him in various expensive-looking places. I suppose he must be happy but there’s no denying that I get homesick after only a few days away.

There were also photos of Anastasiia Pokreshchuk who has had surgery to get the world’s biggest cheekbones. She likes the look, or so she says. I suppose she would have to say that. Does anyone else find it attractive? When I was a lad there were people walking on the Moon. Shortly after we had amazing computers, mobile phones… and now we have Donald Trump and people thinking that looking frankly ridiculous is something to which we might aspire. Where did it all go wrong?

Treacle seemed OK on yesterday’s walk, but during the evening she had occasional limping. So rather than our usual four miles round Kings Wood we had a shorter walk today. We went down to Orlestone. We used to go there all the time, but after a couple of incidents with Morgan and Bailey (when they were smaller) we’ve not been there for ages. We went back today and all three dogs were as good as gold. We barked at some normal people who were foraging; they looked terrified. The woman foraging looked at Bailey in much the same way that I might look at a wild tiger. And we had an episode with three Dobermans, but to be fair to them they only wanted to play. It was a shame they were so big; Treacle got very defensive of Bailey, and Morgan just ran in terror.

Where we’d normally walk four miles round Kings Wood we were back at the car after a mile and a half today.

We came home where the dogs didn’t need a bath. In the past Orlestone has been a swamp. It wasn’t today.

I made us a cuppa, loaded up rubbish into the car and set off to the tip. A week ago I put the old poggered strimmer in the front garden in the hope that some passer-by might have been daft enough to take it. Sadly no one was.

I went to the tip and taking care not to run over the people who weren’t paying attention I get rid of a carful of rubbish then drove up to Kennington. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” had bought a sackload of remote control toys and I had to collect them. And pay for them as well.

From there I went to Bybrook Barn. I bought a few rocks and got a few ideas for what I might do with the front garden. But just like at the tip, not one person in a hundred was looking where they were going, or seemed to have any idea that there was anyone else around them.

And then I had a phone call from an old colleague. The chap is up before the professional regulator. Apparently he made racist comments in private messages, but the person to whom they were sent chose not to respect the confidence.

I wish there was something I could do to help him…

I spent the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which some new-age hippy spent quite some time banging on about his eco-friendly cleaning products and then had the right arse when he was told how filthy his toilets were and how they needed a good scrubbing with bleach.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza and chips then went bowling. Earlier in the day I’d read a description of the film “Alien” which had been rather dubiously translated from a Hong Kong DVD so I sat with the dogs and watched it. I can remember going to see the film when I was fifteen years old and lying about my age. And now, quite a few years later, two things strike me about it.

Firstly despite being on an interstellar spaceship everyone was smoking.

Secondly just how much the film dragged on. It was about half an hour too long. I got bored with it.

12 November 2024 (Tuesday) - Level Two

With an alarm set I had another restless night. I woke feeling full of energy and raring to go… at twenty past midnight. I then lay awake for much of the rest of the night.

I eventually got up at five o’clock, made brekkie and sparked up Netflix. With hundreds of things to choose from, nothing appealed. I saw there was a second series of “The End of the F***ing World” so I thought I might try that; I could vaguely remember liking the first series. But I couldn’t really remember anything about it, so I started watching the first series to remind myself. I don’t remember it at all, but it was entertaining enough; two young psychos chum up and go off on a road trip.

I then had a quick look at the Internet in case I’m missed much overnight. I rarely do, and today was no exception. But I had an email about the household insurance. Exactly a year ago I wrote “I had an email saying the household insurance was up for renewal… at over double what I paid last year. …. Insurance companies are a pain in the glass (to coin a phrase). They always do this – they send through a renewal at a ridiculous price, and when you phone them to whinge they reduce the quote; often to lower than what it was last year”.

This morning I had the renewal email saying they were offering me the same policy as last year but two hundred pounds cheaper. I’m seeing that as a result.

I set off to work. One advantage of the dark mornings is that I can press the button on the car’s key and see the indicator lights flashing from quite some way away so I know where the car is. I saw it from probably about ten times the distance at which (at the last minute) I saw an idiot on an e-scooter and then another idiot on a pedal bike. Both all in black, with no lights on, half an hour before sunrise.

I drove to work listening to the pundits on the radio. There were calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, and as the day went on so he did throw in the sponge. Apparently some bishop or other has been kiddy-fiddling. It was alleged that the Archbishop had known about it for years but did nothing. Some official report into the matter concluded that concluded that the errant bishop might have been brought to justice ten years earlier had the Archbishop formally reported what he knew to the police.

Perhaps the Archbishop reported it to God…

Personally I’m reminded of Bishop Peter of Sussex who was everyone’s hero back in the day when I was a god-botherer. He turned out to be a wrong ‘un.

And there was talk about the COP29 international climate change conference which has started in Azerbaijan. The Prime Minister has gone, and is apparently proudly crowing about what the UK are doing. But the Americans and the Chinese are no-shows. Without them being on-board, anything the UK does will be little more than pissing in the wind.

Work was work; I was on an early shift today. Given the choice I prefer those. I came home and “er indoors ^TM” went out. She was off to the cinema with Cheryl and Lacey. I settled in front of the telly and watched more episodes of “The End of the F***ing World” until she came back.

She came back with KFC, which was something of a result.

Oh – and our Munzee clan got to level two today…

13 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Three Years Late

Another night with an alarm set, and so another restless night. At least I stayed asleep until after three o’clock this morning. After a couple of hours I gave up and got up. I made toast and watched another episode of “The End of the Fxxxing World” in which our heroes travelled to the Isle of Sheppey. There were some spectacular aerial shots of the Kingsferry bridge; I do like seeing places that I’ve been on the telly.

As that finished I caught the end of an episode of Bullseye in which two rather greedy idiots from the 1970s gambled some frankly rubbish prizes in the hope of getting a speedboat, and lost the lot. Personally I could never see the attraction of winning a speedboat. The things are utterly impractical. Where are you going to keep it? If you store it on your drive or in the garden you’ve got to find a slipway from which to launch it. Have you ever tried to get a boat out of the water and back on to its trailer? And if you are going to keep it moored somewhere, harbour fees ain’t cheap.

I’ve experience of boats. An uncle once persuaded my father to go half-shares on a fishing boat they kept on St Leonards’ beach and I can remember my dad constantly griping about what a load of arse-ache that was.

I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. It was still there. Today’s petty squabble on Facebook was about why people should leave cash tips in a restaurant (of at least twenty per cent of the cost of the meal) because the waitresses are so poorly paid. Others were taking the line that it is up to employes to pay staff, not customers. People were getting rather nasty with each other on the matter.

If I’m going to leave a tip in a restaurant I’d not leave a cash tip. I’d pay it on the card so’s everyone working in the place could get a share. I used to work in the kitchen of a seaside restaurant. My basic wage was the same as the waiting staff. My take-home was a fraction of theirs. They got tips and I never did.

I set off to work on another dark morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting their drivel as they do. There was more talk about the Archbishop who resigned yesterday over the ongoing scandal, and talk of four more bishops who should resign. The Archbishop of York said that those who "actively covered this up" should go but he said those were not bishops. I suppose he would, wouldn't he?

As I said yesterday, in my experience bishops are a dodgy lot.

Meanwhile President Trump is planning who is going to have the top jobs in his new government. He's giving senior positions to the world's richest man Elon Musk, and to Fox News pundits and (so it was claimed) those who'd supported him in his campaign. There was quite a bit of consternation that he wasn't appointing people who'd been elected to public office but was appointing those who'd done him favours despite their having no political experience. It strikes me that Mr. Trump hasn't really got any political experience, and that's never stopped him, has it?

I got to work where I did my bit. In between this and that I did an external quality assessment blood film. Periodically NHS Head Office send out slides from obscure cases to check we don't miss anything important. It was in one of these that I saw some trypanosomes today.  Trypanosomes are nasty little things that get into your blood and cause sleeping sickness. I've never seen them outside of external quality assessment exercises, but I live in hope.

And I got a certificate and award for forty years service. It came in the post. Bearing in mind I hit forty years in September 2021 I can only assume it got delayed on the way somewhere.

I came home to find the Christmas "Viz" magazine had come in the post as well. That hadn’t been delayed.

14 November 2024 (Thursday) - Plov Mk IV

With no alarm set I slept like a log last night and had been hoping for a lie-in this morning. But about ten seconds after “er indoors ^TM” got up so Treacle got off the bed to follow her with the biggest crash you ever did hear. And then Morgan and Bailey embarked on a rather vigorous game of chase in which there were two play areas – on the duvet and under the duvet.

I got up.

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. Yesterday I got a trophy-thingy from work for forty years service. This morning over a hundred people had clicked the “like” button. That was nice. Personally I’ve half a mind to either bin the thing or sell it on eBay; I’ve really taken against it. Perhaps had it not been three years late in arriving and been presented to me rather than posted to me, I might be a little more grateful.

There were several people posting to Facebook this morning about how they were abandoning Twitter/X as it has become very political. Apparently BlueSky is now the way to go. Personally I abandoned Twitter years ago as I couldn’t get my head round all the # and @ nonsense. And I was already spending far too much time in Facebook. I didn’t need another social media to complain about.

Will I follow the herd and get a BkueSky account? Probably. I suppose I’d best find out something about it first.

“er indoors ^TM” set off to work. I took the dogs up to the woods for a walk. Being rather misty I hoped we might see deer. We saw one – or that is I saw one. A dead one laying on the side of a path. Fortunately the dogs didn’t see it. Seeing the dead deer reminded me of an old friend though. Thirty years ago back in the days of the snake club my old mate Bob used to live in Challock and was gamekeeper on some of the land that backs on to the top end of Kings Wood. He once told me that part of his duties was culling the deer. He claimed that he had to shoot one deer a day every day of the year to keep their numbers in check. That sounded a tad excessive to me. Sadly Bob’s no longer with us to confirm or deny this...

It was rumoured that through the reptile keeping Bob acquired a rattlesnake. Shortly after the rumours started he was found dead in his house having died of a heart attack. When one of the snake club was called to collect and re-home Bob’s snakes no rattlesnake was found, but one of the vivaria was open. Heart attack is one of the results of a rattlesnake bite. Did he have a rattler that had him?

There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

We came home. Although the dogs hadn’t rolled in anything they were a bit whiffy and so had a bath. I then mowed the lawn and whilst I was at it gave the new strimmer its first go. It seems to do the job.

I put washing in to scrub and got on with the ironing whilst watching all of the second season of “The End of the FXXXing World” which featured the chap who had been shot dead at the end of the first season.

I then started making dinner. It bubbled and simmered until “er indoors ^TM” came home. We scoffed it whilst watching more “Bake Off”. Sadly Plov Mk IV was also a tad bland and had far too much rice, but I have plans for Plov Mk V.

But the plonk wasn’t too bad…

15 November 2024 (Friday) - Bodging a Fence

The dogs let me sleep in until eight o’clock this morning which was something of a result. I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet.

There was something of a theme on Facebook this morning. People in all sorts of groups including work-related ones, baby-boomers and sci-fi (to name a few) were banging on about how they plan to put up their Christmas decorations this weekend, and were rather confrontational and aggressive about it. If putting up the tinsel makes people happy, then good for them. Why not - after all, the Christmas adverts have been in the shops and on telly for some time already.

However (as I’ve said before) personally I get fed up with it. This year I think I would enjoy Christmas were it in the first weekend of December. However it isn’t. It’s in the fourth week of December and I suspect I will be fed up with hearing about it by then.

I munzed, and amazed myself by getting Wordle on only the second attempt. I always start with “table” and today got the first two letters right first time. I could only think of one other word starting with “ta”.

I then drove the dogs up to the woods. As I drove the footballer Ian Wright was on “Desert Island Discs”. He sounded rather interesting, but does he *really* listen to opera?

We got to the woods where there was chaos in the car park. When we get there the dogs stay on their leads until we are a little way away from the car park. Today several people had arrived at the same time and just thrown their car doors open. Dogs were running wild round the car park, and the queue of cars waiting to get in was growing. No one wanted to drive in for fear of running a dog over.

When we eventually parked we had a good walk. We walked for four miles and once away from the car park we didn’t see anyone else at all. The dead deer was still there but the dogs didn’t see it. I had half a mind to drag the thing home and see if I might flog it to a local butcher, but according to the British Deer Society that would be illegal. According to the Internet if you find a dead deer on Forestry England’s land you should phone them and tell them.

So once home I gave Forestry England a ring.

I then looked at the clock, got out all the pond filter cleaning kit, cleaned out the pond filter, put all the kit away and looked at the clock again. It took less than fifteen minutes and I wasn’t left with a seriously aching back and smelling of fish poo like I used to be after filter cleaning. This pressure filter is so much better than what I used to have.

I then took a hammer to the front garden fence to repair the poggered panels. In theory the fence belongs to next door. In practice the thing has been falling apart for years. I bodged it back together, then popped over the garden centre to get one of those plastic plant trellis things to cover it over. It’ll do for now. It needs a proper fix, but I’m loathe to do anything major that will upset hibernating insects and bugs until they wake up next spring.

That’s my lame excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

I made us both another cuppa then had another look at the Internet where Facebook showed me a memory. There’s a local path that floods regularly. A year ago I contacted my local councilor about it. She eventually replied saying it wasn’t her problem. And a year later the path still floods.

Over a dinner of pie and chips we watched more “Taskmaster” which was rather good.

I’ve got a minor guts ache now…

16 November 2024 (Saturday) - Rather Busy

Despite all its connections to the Internet being turned off, my phone went berserk with a flurry of notification pings shortly after four o’clock. And despite the alarm being turned off, it played the alarm at seven o’clock.

That phone does what it likes.

I made toast and peered into the Internet. It hadn’t really changed. Petty triviality and bickering persisted as it always does. There was quite the argument over the term “totty” on a Facebook group about the 1970s. I felt about commenting but decided against it.

There were quite a few people posting the same sort of thing to work-related Facebook groups this morning too. Having spent many years becoming qualified to do the job, people were rather surprised to realise that hospitals operate round the clock, and so many people wanted suggestions for a nine-to-five job for which they could use their existing qualifications and not have to go right back to square one and start again from scratch.

You’d think people would find out what a job entails before spending six years training for it, wouldn’t you?

Being Saturday we got ourselves organized and set off to Dog Club. Yesterday we came home from the woods via Pets at Home where I got Treacle a new tennis ball for Dog Club. She lost it within a minute of arriving; just as well I’d bought a spare as well. We had a great time at Dog Club. At one point I counted seventeen dogs. I’m not sure I counted them all (they kept moving about) and three more arrived after I’d counted. Morgan did get a little over-excited, but it is all part of his learning to socialize. He comes when called, and just showing him his muzzle calms him rather impressively.

Sadly we missed Steve’s Mystery Year competition on the radio; just as we drove away so Steve was on the radio giving the answer saying that he’d not had an entry from us and that Dog Club must have over-run.

It had.

We came home for a cuppa, then “er indoors ^TM” set off to Hobbycraft for a new glue gun. Hers had vanished. I spent a frustrating hour struggling with a geo-puzzle. If any of my loyal readers know how to reverse a text string in Microsoft Word (i.e. turn “abchef” into “fedcba”) please let me know.

We then drove out to Biddenden for the monthly geo-meet-up. Twenty of us met in the garden of the Three Chimneys and spent a very pleasant afternoon chatting about all things geocachical.

We came home, and after a little doze Steve and Sarah arrived, followed by Chris. We had a very good evening round the Infinity table playing “Game of Life”, “Sorry” and “Ticket to Ride”. I was rather smug when I won at “Sorry”, and I think I’ll do much better at “Ticket to Ride” next time now that I’ve figured out how the scoring works.

17 November 2024 (Sunday) - Manky Tennis Ball

I’d set the alarm for half past six this morning so I woke at four and lay awake watching the clock for a couple of hours. Eventually I gave up, got up and made toast. I watched an episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” then sparked up my lap-top to have my usual trawl around the internet. Nothing much had happened overnight for once, so I had a quick Munz then got Wordle right on the third attempt. As usual I started off with “table” and only had the third and last letter wrong. I couldn’t think of any other word than “tally”.

It was light when I set off to work this morning. Being a Sunday the roads were nowhere near as busy as usual. Normally if I leave home at half past seven the traffic trying to get to the motorway is at a snail's pace from the Matalan roundabout (about a mile from the motorway). Today I sailed all the way.

As I drove the pundits were interviewing an author who'd written a book about the succession of a hypothetical pope. The book sounded rather interesting; it was a shame that having been talking about a book for five minutes the chap conducting the interview said that the film is released this week; speaking in such a way that films and books are synonymous. I suppose in this day and age for most people they are... Everyone knows about Harry Potter. Everyone’s seen the films. How many people have actually read the books?

There was then a round table of various windbags pontificating on who would be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. One of them banged on about how an Archbishop should raise awareness of child poverty and how we shouldn't be dependent on food banks. Another accused the first of being too left wing and said that politics should be kept out of religion. Sadly when the first chap asked the second if he's heard of what Jesus had preached about being nice to each other, it seemed that (despite being some big-wig in the church) the chap clearly hadn't. And then some well-meaning old biddy claimed that Christianity was for the well intentioned and the self-serving alike.

And this was followed by the news that Donald Trump is planning to appoint the head honcho of a fracking company to be in charge of American energy policy. I've lost count of the amount of times I've said what a stupid idea democracy is. Here's another example. Oh well, as I once said (in jest) to “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” "f... the environment. It will probably last longer than I will". I suspect I will actually croak before the environment will, but what kind of a planet are we leaving behind?

Work was much the same as ever. Originally I wasn’t supposed to be working today, but I’d had a message asking if I could step into the breach. I didn’t have much else planned for the morning, and stepping into the breach at short notice is what hospital work is all about. I got there a few minutes early so’s I could pop into the canteen for a spot of brekkie, and I was only needed for the morning. I was back home in the garden harvesting dog turds by half past one.

After a spot of scran we bundled the dogs into the car and set off to Folkestone. A couple of weeks ago I sorted “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” ‘s patio. Her outside guttering was overflowing but at the time I thought I’d sort that problem another day. So today I went and sorted it. The problem was that the downpipe wasn’t draining the gutter. I took along all sorts of tools… Well… I won’t lie. I took a trowel, a bucket and a length of hose pipe. What more could anyone need?

We got there, and as “er indoors ^TM” farted around making the beds I went and did some plumbing. I rammed the hose pipe up the down pipe in an attempt to loosen the blockage. There was something pretty solid blocking the down pipe, and coming from underneath with a hose pipe wasn’t working. So, using onto a particularly rusty garden chair as a ladder to get at the guttering, I came in from the top with a trowel. After a few seconds of particularly vigorous trowelling I excavated a rather manky tennis ball from the down pipe, and the accumulated stagnant water immediately gurgled away. So I trowelled out the residual muck and then used the bucket to flush the guttering with some fresh water. Trowel, bucket and hose pipe. I didn’t need anything else. Mind you it has to be said that the gutter is still a bit rancid, but gutters generally are. A decent load of rain will wash it through.

We then walked the dogs round the Leas for a bit, even though it was dark. So dark that when we came to do “Boot Dogs”, as Treacle jumped into the car boot so Morgan jumped onto the bonnet of the car behind.

I caught him in mid-air going in entirely the wrong direction.

Today I spent the morning at work, unblocked a drainpipe, and walked the dogs for half an hour. Why am I worn out?

18 November 2024 (Monday) - Perry Wood

I spent most of yesterday evening asleep in front of the telly, and slept like a log last night. I woke at eight o’clock to the sound of Morgan heaving., so I leapt up and bundled him outside.

Finding myself wide awake I made toast and peered into the internet where I laughed at the Christians posting on an atheist Facebook page I follow.  That page is often amusing; today the righteous were gloating that the iniquitous sinners have only got six months left in which to repent. Apparently the world is ending next April. I had a look on Google to see if this is true; apparently some Bulgarian mystic called Baba Vanga has predicted the end of the world starting next year. She also predicted Muslim rule of Europe in 2043, the entire world going communist in 2076 and humanity being wiped out in 5079.

I must admit I’m not unduly fussed. I remember the first end of the world. It was on the first of January 1980 and had been predicted by Nostradamus. Me and my mate Douggie Small spent the day walking round Hastings looking for any signs of the world having ended, and we both had something of a sense of anticlimax about the whole thing. There’s been several end of the worlds since. Only two years after the first one I was rather disappointed that the planet Jupiter’s gravity didn’t pull the Earth apart as had been predicted by some prominent astrophysicist. Halley’s comet didn’t wipe anything out in 1986, the Rapture didn’t come in 1988 (or any time in the early 90s – there were several of these), several predicted nuclear wars and alien-instigated wipeouts failed to materialize, and by the time we got to Nostradamus’s second go in July 1999 I rather gave up on end of the worlds.

There’s a list of most of them on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

I had an email telling me that someone had commented on yesterday’s blog entry. People rarely do, but the option is there. However I moderate each comment before it gets published since spambots have tried to use this blog as a vehicle for their advertising. Sadly this is what happened overnight. Someone wrote “It sounds like you had a rather slow start to your day, with the early wake-up and some quiet time before heading to work. It's always a nice surprise when the roads are clear, especially on a Sunday! Sometimes those quiet mornings are a welcome break”. And then they followed this up with two adverts; one for cheap pharmaceuticals and for Rack Supported Mezzanine floors. Whatever they are.

I deleted the comment.

I Munzed, got Wordle on my third attempt, and took the dogs out. We drove up to Perry Wood today for a change. As we drove I listened to the pundits on the radio who talking about political advisors. Historically they have been unelected buddies of politicians and have been useful not so much to offer advice as to take the blame for unsuccessful policies. The examples of Thomas Cromwell and Dominic Cummings were given. Despite being hundreds of years apart their cases were rather similar, weren’t they?

The last time we went to Perry Woods I couldn’t find the place. Today I used the sat-nav and we arrived to find an empty car park. I sparked up my geo-app; there’s one geocache up there that has eluded me for some time, and over the weekend the chap who had hidden it had given me the heads-up on it and had been out to check on it himself as it hadn’t been found for three years. The chap had even put crossed sticks forming an “X” over it but I still took fifteen minutes to find it. Some people who hide geocaches want them found, and some don’t.

Having found it we then went on through the woods looking for the other three geocaches in those woods. We found one of them. We’ll go back for the other two in the spring – it was rather slippery and swampy today. I took a few photos though – Perry Wood is a rather pretty place,

We came home where the dogs had a warm shower. I’d rather not wash the dogs after a walk if I can get away with it though. They come home very tired but the shower/bath somehow puts them all in a very hyperactive and excitable mood which lasts for far too long.

Eventually they were asleep, and I then cleaned out the filter in the little fish pond. I need to see if I can find a very small pressure filter for that pond; the current one needs cleaning out every couple of weeks and isn’t the easiest to clean.

I then spent the afternoon re-writing a Wherigo cartridge. Over the last few years I’ve spent ages writing fun little GPS games only to have people using cheat software to extract the final geocache locations… and then complain that by cheating they can’t get the hints and tips that I write into them. After a couple of hours I came up with one that isn’t entirely cheat-resistant but does throw people off the scent.

“er indoors ^TM” sorted dinner then set off to bowling as she does on Monday evenings. I settled on the sofa and was soon snoring underneath a pile of dogs. Who were also snoring…

19 November 2024 (Tuesday) - It Rained

I woke to the sound of heavy rain. I had planned to take the dogs to the woods this morning, but it’s no fun in the rain.

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. The Wherigo I made yesterday had gone live at half past seven, and two people had already downloaded it. Were they going out in the rain? If they were, let’s hope they were going to do the thing properly. They would have got very wet if they fell for my anti-cheating ruse.

There wasn’t much else happening on-line today. There weren’t many squabbles really. I munzed, I got Wordle on the fourth attempt, and got seriously cross looking at the rain.

With nothing else to do I scrubbed the kitchen wall, cleaned out the bathroom cabinet, and seeing the rain was showing no sign of easing up I started writing another Wherigo. Well, not so much writing as re-vamping an old one. Bearing in mind the cheat software looks for pictures of final co-ordinates I’ve put in a dozen into this new one for it to find. That will be nice for it, won’t it?

The rain eased off by mid-afternoon so I walked the dogs round the block. As I stood up to do so, they all leapt up as well. I’d got up for various reasons half a dozen times during the day and they hadn’t batted an eyelid. But when I intended to take them out, they were there right away.

How do they know?

I didn’t think the rain had been that heavy, but we all came home soaked. I then went through the Wherigo to give it a final check… and found half a dozen issues with it.

Two hours later I packed the thing off to the geo-feds.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled me up a pizza and she set off to Hastings for a booze-up. I stayed with the dogs; they don’t like being left for any length of time. I scoffed pizza and watched “Star Trek: First Contact” – is that film really twenty-eight years old?

20 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Late Shift

As I scoffed brekkie there was something that amazed me on Facebook. The goat sanctuary has a new goat – “Callie”. The poor thing was found tethered on a roundabout leading on to the local motorway. Who would do such a thing? If you’ve got a goat you can’t cope with (for whatever reason) why not take her straight to the goat sanctuary? It strikes me that it is less arse-ache to take the goat there than it would be to sneak about at night when no-one is looking and messing about on roundabouts.

I also saw the Wherigo I wrote yesterday had gone live, and three people had downloaded the cartridge in the first half-hour. I’m hoping people do this one properly and don’t try to cheat; I’ve put in so many red herrings that it is quicker to do it properly than check out all the bogus locations. It bothers me when people cheat at the Wherigos – the whole thing is a fun little game to play on your phone. The geocache at the end is just an added bonus if you like that sort of thing. There are those that do, and they do the Wherigos pretty much right away. After a while those using the cheat programs come along just to get their geocache count up. I wish they wouldn’t.

Some chap went round Kings Wood doing my Wherigos last week – reading his written geocache logs it is plain he did them properly and laughed out loud at them. Which is what I intended.

I Munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and took the dogs out. I went outside to see that winter had officially arrived. In my world the first day of winter is the first day at the end of the year when I have to scrape ice from my car. Scraping didn’t take *that* long, and we were soon on our way.

We drove to Orlestone today as it is closer to home than Kings Wood and makes for a shorter walk. Our usual walk round Kings Wood is four miles and takes an hour and twenty minutes. Our walk round Orlestone today was a mile and a half and took thirty-five minutes. Mind you I had a minor melt-down when I looked at my watch at the end of the walk. The same walk round Orlestone used to take an hour when Fudge used to dawdle and pootle round with everyone else waiting for him. Without Fudge along these days we walk the same route in half the time.

I had this stupid idea that being so cold today that the mud would be frozen and the dogs wouldn’t get filthy. Sadly it wasn’t, and they did. We had a warm shower when we came home.

I set off to work. Being at Pembury today for the late shift I drove through the -hursts and the -dens. It was a very pretty drive, marred only by the lorry which had got itself wedged at the sharp corner at Goudhurst church. Luckily I didn't have to backtrack that much to find an alternative route.

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the supposed failures of maternity services in the UK.

It turns out that most of the problems come from all the expectant mothers having this starry-eyed idea of how a perfect birth will go. Sadly very few of them seem to have realised that having a baby is a dangerous game. Furthermore everyone is allowed choice in their treatments these days, so wannabe mothers are leaving decisions about medical intervention too late when things are going iffy. And then rather than realising this, the media continues to blow the relatively few tragic cases out of proportion and make no mention of how many births happen without incident (lots). And consequently there's a recruitment crisis in midwifery. Who's going to study for years for a job which has a decent chance of getting you crucified in the papers?

And so more and more mothers are looking outside the NHS to have their baby. Often with a doula. There was an interesting interview with the UK's head doula.

I say "UK's head doula"; actually there isn't one. A doula is someone you pay to be your birthing partner who has absolutely no medical qualifications whatsoever. From what was being said some are good and some act as though they are consultant gynecologists and cause quite a few problems themselves.

It turns out that people are very happy to go running to the papers every time the NHS is involved with a tragedy, but those who've employed doulas tend to keep quiet when it all goes pear-shaped. And can you blame them? It would seem that having turned away free expert medical care, they've paid good money to an unqualified quack.

The UK's wannabe head doula being interviewed was some woman who was trying to form a professional association of doulas. She wanted written standards of practice for them all. But as she said with no legal control of them, there is nothing to stop the rogue ones taking the money and doing what they please.

I get so cross with this sort of thing. What I do is legally controlled with all sorts of checks and controls. Why isn't doula-ing?

“er indoors ^TM” had given me orders not to come home without tea bags (on pain of death) so I stopped off at Tesco to get some.

I got cross there too. Dozens, if not hundreds, of customers were blundering about quite literally crashing into each other with only one (me) seemingly aware there was anyone else in the shop.

I got to work and did my bit. As I do. I must admit I wasn't keen today.  Periodically I looked out of the window and saw it wasn't raining. There was so much at home I could have been doing, and yesterday when I'd been at home it had been hossing down.

Another reason I wasn’t keen was that I was on a late shift at Pembury. By the time I’d scraped the ice off the car and navigated my way home through pitch-black lanes it was gone ten o’clock.

21 November 2024 (Thursday) - A Cold Walk

I quite often get up silly-early and leave “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs in the pit where they all stay asleep. In a novel break with tradition “er indoors ^TM” got up very early today. Treacle and Morgan immediately followed, and Bailey started crying because she is too small to get off the bed on her own.

With “er indoors ^TM” eventually off on her errand I went back to bed. That is I went to the bed. I ogt there to find Bailey was whinging because she’s too small to get up on her own. And once she was up, the three of them started a great fighting-chasing game.

I did eventually get them to settle.

I got up a couple of hours later, made toast and had my usual root round the Internet. Nothing had changed. Star Trek fans were being particularly hateful to each other this morning. When I first got involved in Trekkie fandom (forty years ago) it was one big argument… but looking back it was a better quality of argument. Long before the Internet, Star Trek fans used to have fan-made magazines every few months. People would write in their opinionated rantings and have them published. Everyone else would then take offence, but rather than immediately responding (like we do with today’s Internet) we would have a few weeks in which to hone our bitter and sarcastic replies. I once made the mistake of saying that graphic novels are comic books, and the ensuing argument dragged on for years. But it wasn’t an argument like today’s bitter Internet squabbles. Because it was all done by posting to a magazine we had time to consider our replies… and so we actually had something of a debate. Admittedly no one ever agreed about anything, but there was a degree of civility about it which is lacking in today’s bickering.

I got the dogs onto their leads and we wandered up the road to find the car. As we went so the bin men were in Denmark Road… actually going into people’s gardens, taking the bins out and bringing them back. Usually you have to bring the bin to the pavement for them as they flatly refuse to get the bins themselves… they are clearly hoping for a Christmas box.

We drove up to the woods and parked in the lower car park for a change. Last weekend someone had stayed in a local hotel and spent three days doing all the geocaches I’d hidden there. Today we went and had a little look at the ones he couldn’t find. Three were there all along. Two were missing (or I couldn’t find them either) and one was at the other end of the woods so we left it for next time. But sorting these made for a good walk. And unlike yesterday the mud was still frozen so we didn’t get too grubby. We didn’t roll in any fox poo either. Bailey ate some though…

After five and a half miles we were back at the car.

We came home to find “er indoors ^TM” had returned from her errand. She popped out to collect “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” whose enforced sojourn in Enfield had come to an end. After we’d scoffed KFC they all set off to Enfield to collect stuff and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” .

I settled in front of the telly and watched “Star Trek: Insurrection” which wasn’t a bad film, and then fell asleep during “Star Trek: Nemesis”. As I dozed in front of the telly so Bailey dozed in the flow of warm air from the living room fire. She seems to like that. She does feel the cold, and it has been nippy today.

I’ve not really done anything much today, and I’m worn out. I suppose we did walk a little further than usual this morning; my daily step count is over fourteen thousand and my left knee is aching a bit. Perhaps I shouldn’t walk the dogs quite so far?

22 November 2024 (Friday) - Early Shift

Finding myself awake far too early I got up on a rather cold morning. I made toast and turned on the telly wondering if I might watch something or other for a few minutes. I found myself watching The Benny Hill Show. Forty years ago the Benny Hill Show was peak-time viewing and this morning I found myself wondering why. It wasn’t actually very funny. That’s not me being politically correct or being woke. It simply wasn’t funny.

I then sparked up my lap-top to see if anything remarkable had happened on the Internet since I’d last looked at it only a few hours previously. It hadn’t really. I checked my emails – three weeks ago I first contacted my MP about the upcoming House of Commons vote on the assisted dying bill. I’ve since tried twice more to get a response but still no joy. I sent a fourth email this morning. This one got an automated reply which I suppose is a step in the right direction. I can’t pretend that I was ever a fan of the previous MP, but at least he made himself visible (albeit in what seemed to be a rather self-aggrandizing way). So far this chap hasn’t got off to a good start. But as well as setting up auto-replies to emails he’s also changed his Facebook profile to say he is an MP and not a “digital creator”.

I tried to Munz, but the Munzee app had something of a fit. It thought it was ten o’clock last night even though it had today’s date right. But I got Wordle on the third attempt.

I scraped the ice from my car's windscreen; it didn't take that long really. I set off to Sainsbury for petrol. Sadly the cantankerous old bat was on duty at the till today. She has been better recently but had the right arse today. I got myself a sandwich and one or two bits and bobs, and I asked for a carrier bag to put them all in. She threw the bag at me, and I struggled to open it. When I commented that I can never get the things open she snarled that she couldn't either and that was why she'd given (thrown) it to me. I threw it back and said that I wouldn't bother with a bag. Faced with removing it from the bill she ungraciously ripped it open and stuffed all my shopping in.

I drove up the motorway listening to the news. The French authorities aren't happy about all the effort they are putting in to stopping illegal immigrants getting to the coast only to have the British welcoming them all in. I suppose they've got a point.

And President Putin has warned the UK government that by supplying arms to the Ukrainians, the UK has made itself a legitimate target for a Russian attack. Let's not pretend that we didn't see this coming.

I got to work for the early shift. I had booked the afternoon off, but what with the most recent frit of my loin having come home yesterday I didn’t need the afternoon off. And seeing work was short-handed I cancelled the leave. That was good of me, wasn’t it…

But an early start still made for an early finish.

“er indoors ^TM” had sent me a shopping list so I went from work to Sainsburys. You wouldn’t believe the difference in attitude between the staff in the Ashford Sainsburys and their petrol station. The staff in the store were so friendly and helpful. Perhaps their management might need to redeploy the cantankerous old bat across the road to the main store so’s she might learn how not to deliberately antagonize the customers.

Having brought the shopping home, “er indoors ^TM” then got busy with it and boiled up a very good bit of scran which we washed down with a bottle of Sainsbury’s best. As we scoffed we watched the Bake Off semi-final. The more I watch that show the more I am convinced that there’s a lot of farting around in baking.

Mind you I still scoff the cakes though…. all the time someone else I making them.

23 November 2024 (Saturday) - A House Guest

I slept like a log last night but woke feeling like death warmed up. The after-effects of one bottle of plonk? I made toast and had my usual root around the Internet. Nothing had changed. Petty bickering and name calling continued, and I had a sea of videos on Facebook featuring people pulling things out of cows’ hooves. Just lately I’d say at least a third (of not more) of what I see on Facebook is videos of cows having hoof infections treated. What’s that all about? I suppose it’s an improvement on the dodgy pornmongering I’ve had in the past, but I have to wonder whatever prompted their algorithms to come up with this idea.

There were quite a few twee inspirational memes being posted too. Have you ever noticed that they are posted by people who have been lucky in life. Those who suggest that when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade have never been handed a lemon by life..

I then made the mistake of allowing the antivirus thingy to do its thing. It does its thing in the background without issue, but periodically it asks me if it can do a big scan and clear out. And I always let it, completely forgetting that when I do it automatically throws away all memory of saved passwords and settings.

It didn’t take *that* long to get the laptop back to how it was supposed to be.

“er indoors ^TM” was off out with the craft club this morning, so whilst she coated the inside of the microwave with porridge (don’t ask!) I took the dogs to Dog Club. The weather was very overcast but we still had about fifteen dogs along. They played and rough-and-tumbled as dogs do. Morgan got rather excited as he does, but as time goes by he is learning that nipping gets him time-out and muzzle time, and he was as good as gold today. Whenever there were any little spats he was immediately there, but watching on the sidelines. Not making an iffy situation worse as he used to do.

And Whisper came along too. On our walk in Kings Wood last Thursday as we were a few hundred yards from the car park, the dogs charged round a corner and a small voice said “that dog is smaller than Whisper”. Whisper was a little dachshund who then played with my three hounds for quite a while in the woods. I told his family about Dog Club and they came along today; they seemed to enjoy themselves. Whisper certainly did. New dogs at Dog Club are usually quite timid to begin with, but dachshunds just get stuck in, and Whisper certainly did.

The forecast rain held off until we were getting into the car to come home. But having had a good session at Dog Club so it rained heavily for the rest of the day.

As I started the car so Steve read out the giveaway question for the Mystery Year competition. The first Moon landing? 1969.

We came home for a bath; the dogs were filthy. And I changed into trousers that weren’t plastered in muddy dog paw prints. To be fair I do encourage the dogs to jump up at me.

I set the washing machine going, made a cuppa and got Alexa to play Radio Ashford as I wrote up a little CPD. And with CPD done I turned on the telly and watched several episodes of “Brassic”.

“er indoors ^TM” returned from craft club, then went straight back out again. Her and Cheryl were off to Folkestone to help “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” have a bit of a tidy-up. I watched two more episodes of “Brassic” then had a sleep until “er indoors ^TM” came home. She brought Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” and Pogo as the most recent fruit of my loin was planning on having a much-deserved decent night’s kip tonight.

My favourite lady charged up to me for a hug, and as our dinner was boiled up for us so we played. At one point littlun got up from the sofa, turned to me and said “excuse me Granddad” and then pottered off. Where did she get that from?

She’s currently in the bathroom with her grandmother. It is quiet, which is either a result, or ominous. I’m not sure which.

24 November 2024 (Sunday) - Before the Night Shift

With “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs up in the attic bedroom with Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” I had an excellent night’s sleep. I even went to the loo at five o’clock and didn’t have to fight for bed space when I came back.

I eventually got up at half past eight and managed to shave in peace before everyone came down. We attempted brekkie. I scoffed toast; littlun and Nannie (no longer Grandma!?) put on YouTube for Kids and watched a succession of videos in which littlun soon got bored. We eventually settled on videos of the Meowmi Family and videos about Stranger Danger which I thought were a sad indictment of today’s society. On Thursday when we were up the woods we met the little dachshund Whisper and her family. The little boy started talking to me about dogs. We had a good chat, and Whisper came to Dog Club yesterday. I don’t deny some strangers are dodgy, but most aren’t. I can remember going round the park years ago and a small child chattering to me. Grandmother hurried over and told the kid not to talk to strangers. The kid replied that I wasn’t a stranger, I was the man with Fudge-dog.

Sadly, initial efforts to feed littlun were largely unsuccessful. Like her mother at her age, littlun eats very little. There was talk of a bowl of choco-thingies, but only talk. Eventually she set about a packet of iced gems whislt sitting on the sofa with me. I found the less fuss I made about her eating, the more she ate.

As we scoffed iced gems and toast I peered into the Internet. And got cross. Having clicked on that which she wouldn’t and downloaded something iffy, a friend’s mother has handed the family’s tablet to the police and turned off the router. Permanently.

And a friend took his dog to the emergency vet overnight and was asking for people to pray for his dog. How does that work? Presumably an all-knowing god already knows about the dog? It seems to me that prayer might be one of the bravest acts there is. Given that there is a supreme being with a plan for the universe (which is open to debate!), praying for a change to this plan is tantamount to telling Big G that its plan’s not as good as it might be. It would take a brave person to hint to the almighty that it has made a balls-up…

We took littlun and the dogs up to the park for a walk. We went past the road works in Christchurch Road. The road is closed and a deep hole has been dug, which has made several parking spaces unavailable. Residents have parked on double yellow lines and adjacent to the road works but weren’t obstructing anyone or anything, but had been given parking tickets. At the same time less than a hundred yards away there was parking mayhem where people weren’t so much parking as abandoning their cars to do their shopping in Princes or get a haircut from the barber, and the traffic wardens continued do nothing about it as they have done for years. Am I being unfair in wondering if traffic wardens are picking easy targets? 

Once we’d walked a rather uneventful walk I emailed the local councilors suggesting that perhaps traffic wardens might be trained to use a little discretion, leave those cars which aren’t causing a problem and deal with those that are. The problem was on the border of two local wards so I emailed all councilors involved. I suspect everyone will say it is everyone else’s problem, but now’s their chance to prove me wrong.

We watched more YouTube, then I took myself off to bed for the afternoon. Littlun made too much noise for me to get much sleep, but after a couple of hours it was time for “er indoors ^TM” to take her home. I thought I might have got some sleep then, but Bailey cried pathetically.

I’m off to the night shift soon. Originally I was down to be doing the early shift, but a colleague wanted to swap, and I got a day with littlun.

I’d forgotten what hard work she can be…

25 November 2024 (Monday) - After the Night Shift

Last night was one of the better night shifts, but I was still glad to get out. I was also glad not to have to scrape ice from the car in the car park.

As I drove home I listened to the pundits on the radio. There was a lot of talk about this week’s assisted dying bill before Parliament. There was an interview with two Labour MPs. One had been a surgeon and felt that allowing people to say that enough was enough was long overdue. Another claimed to have been some sort of health care professional but was rather vague about the specifics. She was very keen that people shouldn’t have the plug pulled just so that relatives can get the money that would otherwise have been spend prolonging the suffering of the dying. And she got rather aggressive when it was pointed out that she was something big in religious circles and  was only against assisted dying because her religion said so.

I don’t understand why the righteous are against euthanasia for the terminally ill. The whole raison d’etre of religion is that when you croak you go to a better place, isn’t it?

In any event if I get to the stage where I need to spend a thousand quid a week on being nursed, then that’s when I want my plug pulled. The fruits of my loin have written instructions that they are not to prolong the inevitable. To their credit they got rather emotional when I told them…

I got home and went to bed. Bailey and Morgan soon joined me, and we all slept peacefully until mid-day.

I got up, made toast, and made some minor adjustments to one of the Wherigos I wrote last week. Several people have done it without issue, but one person who was unfamiliar with the app managed to find something that arguably might cause an issue. It was nothing that making a zone invisible yet still active couldn’t put right, but it still took twenty minutes.

And then I took the dogs out. In between doing my bit on last night’s night shift I read some old blog entries from 2016. It would seem that back then I would do far more before and after a night shift than I ever do these days. More and more the day before and after a night shift are pretty much wasted days. So we went to the woods.

Bearing in mind I was a tad tired and didn’t want to be out for long I thought we’d go to Orlestone. It is half the journey time of Kings Wood, and being smaller than Kings Wood makes for a shorter walk. But I made one schoolboy error.

We went there last week hoping the mud would still have been frozen. It wasn’t, and today was about fifteen degrees warmer. Oh, we all got filthy.

As we walked we met some normal people in the depths of the wood. They had a greyhound-type dog on a lead. We exchanged pleasantries and as I turned to walk off I realized I only had two dogs. I commented that I was missing one and whistled. Morgan emerged from a thicket about twenty yards away, trotted past their dog and followed after me, Treacle and Bailey. As we walked off I heard the normal chap saying to the normal woman “wouldn’t that be lovely”.

I get very smug when the dogs come when called…

We came home where we had a bath, and I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. It was still there. Rather than wasting too much time in there I had a look at the monthly accounts. I’m nowhere near as badly off as some, but there’s no denying I would like to have a *lot* more money. I don’t need it; I just want it.

And my credit score has dropped by eleven points. What’s that all about?

While I was at it I emptied out the Dog Club money pot. Every two weeks I count up what is in that pot, pocket the money and transfer that amount from my bank to the Repton people’s account. Today I found a foreign coin in amongst the takings. My first reaction was “Pah!”… but then I had a look on-line. There’s an identical coin on eBay up for over a hundred quid. Whether it will fetch a hundred quid remains to be seen, but I remain hopeful. Whilst it clearly isn’t my money (it’s the Dog Club’s) it will pay the insurance bill in March.

“er indoors ^TM” sorted out some scoff and went bowling. I settled in front of the telly. I really should do the ironing, but it will keep. I’m feeling a bit tired and sleeping through no end of drivel on the telly will see me right…

26 November 2024 (Tuesday) - Bake Off Final

I actually had an early night last night. I got an hour’s sleep before “er indoors ^TM” came home quietly and Treacle kicked off. I eventually managed to nod off but woke in a cold sweat just before four o’clock following a rather vivid dream in which Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” was going hysterical because she wasn’t allowed to have a “My Little Pony” tattoo.

I lay wide awake for another hour before giving up and getting up.

I made toast, watched an episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” the sparked up my lap-top. Friends were posting photos from their holiday in Sri Lanka, in India and Greece. A friend’s mother had died; another friend’s dog had died… I do like social media in that it keeps me up to date with what people are up to.  I can remember when we first moved to Folkestone (in 1984) the closest we had to social media was a phone box half a mile up the road. Back then we just accepted that everyone was completely out of touch with each other.

And I had an email from my MP. He’d replied to the email I’d sent him three days ago. He wrote a rather lengthy reply to my question about where he stands on assisted dying. In theory he’s all for it; in practice he feels that what he’s being asked to vote on lacks safeguards. This is *exactly* what I’m hearing on the radio and on the news. I suspect that a golden opportunity to improve the lot of the terminally ill is about to be lost.

I stopped off on my way to work and popped into the co-op to get myself a sandwich. There was consternation at the front of the queue for the till. Some idiot woman was demanding that she be allowed to jump the queue. She was insistent that because her neighbours were currently living in a hotel due to some issue with their plumbing, it was only fair that she shouldn't have to wait her turn to pay for her shopping. She was getting more and more wound up that no one was letting her push in, and was ranting about how unfair it was that some people should be in a hotel whilst she had to queue up with everyone else.

As I drove up the motorway the pundits on the radio were talking about the heavy rain the country has had recently. There are floods everywhere, and there was an interview with another "particularly delightful woman". Living in a caravan park in a flood plain somewhere or other she'd been evacuated overnight and her caravan was now arse-deep in water. This woman wasn't at all bothered that her home was awash; all that worried her was that whenever she got evacuated (it seems to happen a lot) she didn't like having to walk away. She felt that "they" should send someone to carry her and her son. She was adamant that because her son has learning difficulties, "they" need to carry the pair of them.

This woman was rather vague as to who "they" might be... her sort usually are.

This was followed by an interview with someone who used to be one of the head honchos at the Environment Agency who made an interesting point. She claimed that whenever there are major floods in the UK the government of the day spends a small fortune on flood defences in the area that has been washed out. However whilst money is spent on flood defences (such as levees, sluices and the like), there is never any money allocated for the ongoing maintenance of whatever the money has been spent on. It was claimed that there are millions of pounds of flood defence equipment spotted round the country which is just being left to rot and rust.

Work was work... I had asked for the day off today so’s I could babysit Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. I couldn’t get the time off so “er indoors ^TM” took her lap-top down and worked from home from “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”‘s home. I’m told that my favourite lady has crayoned all over the lap-top’s screen. I’m seeing that as a work of art - Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” can do no wrong.

In the meantime “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” has lost her phone… It’s all very well having a “Find My Phone” app, but have you ever tried a “Find Someone Else’s Phone” app? They all claim to be free – they all want payment. Just as I was downloading the twentieth so the most recent fruit of my loin phoned. I say “phoned” – she can transmit using Facebook messenger via one of littlun’s toys. Which is all very well all the time littlun is asleep…

“er indoors ^TM” returned, and we watched the final of “Bake Off”. I like to watch the final of that on the evening that it is broadcast so as not to be told the result by seemingly everyone…

I won’t say who won.

27 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Before Another Night Shift

I found myself thinking about the old days as I scoffed my toast this morning. Yesterday a colleague had been out to some adult education course and had met a couple of people who were senior managers where I once worked many years ago. When it came up in conversation what they all did for a living, my name came up, and these two asked if my colleague knew me, and apparently they both said very nice things about me and claimed to remember me fondly.

I was frankly amazed.

Sadly I can’t (in all honesty) say the same about them (!). Rather than digging up old bitterness about which no one cares, I’ll just make the observation that when one of them left and moved to another place of work the leaving collection raised eleven pence.

And this morning Facebook told me that someone with whom I worked forty years ago had a birthday today. He is sixty-four. I can remember him being very angry about getting a speeding ticket. The police had done him for driving at ninety-eight miles per hour down the Lewes bypass; he took this as an insult and was adamant he had been going over one hundred miles per hour at the time.

Facebook also gave me quite a few adverts for phone tracking software; obviously prompted by yesterday evening’s little fun and games. And I had quite a few adverts for “AI companions”, some bot hiding behind the photo of some foxy woman. What was that all about? I suppose it’s one step up from the dubious friend requests I get on Facebook. Not that I’ve had any for a little while now.

Usually if I’m not at work my standard plan is to take the dogs out. But it was hossing down outside. Storm Connall didn’t hit us as hard as it hit some, but it was still too wet for a walk in the woods. I wasn’t happy, but the dogs didn’t seem fussed; they’d had a full-on day yesterday visiting Pogo.

I put on some washing then cracked on with a new idea I’ve got for another Wherigo for an hour or so, then we phoned where “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” had been yesterday. There was relief all round as the cleaner had found her phone, and bearing in mind it was hossing down in Folkestone too I drove off to collect it to save her from getting soaked. If nothing else it was a chance to spend time with my favourite lady.

With phone collected we watched Peppa Pig videos for a while whilst “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” argued with the glazier who claimed he was on the doorstep and no one was home… even though we all were. He then claimed to be in Hythe and said he’d come back later.

As I drove home there was an interview on the radio with Joan Armatrading who’s been going strong for over fifty years. I can’t pretend to be a fan of her music, but listening to her was interesting. She was saying that when she first became famous she had major arguments with managers and producers and the like. She wanted to perform her own work, but everyone else advised her to do cover versions as few people last more than five years in the music industry and she should maximise her profits. She’d not done badly.

I came home just as the rain slackened off to a medium monsoon. I hung the washing on the clothes horse, then spent a little longer working on the new Wherigo project. In total I spent about three hours on the thing today and all I’ve done is devised a vague plot and got a few pictures together.

I took myself off to bed for the afternoon. The dogs were funny. In the late evening when I go to bed I always ask them who’s coming to bed and they all look at me and take no notice. They prefer to sit with “er indoors ^TM” on the sofa. But if I go to bed mid-afternoon before a night shift (like today) they can’t charge up the stairs quickly enough. I got a few hours asleep, but woke in a cold sweat following a rather vivid dream in which the dogs flatly refused to come to the sound of a whistle any more. Instead, from now on whenever I want them they would only respond to the sound of rousing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Hopefully “er indoors ^TM” will feed me soon. And then I’m off to another night shift. Via the supermarket as we’ve run out of bread.

As I drive through a very wet evening I shall be bearing in mind that this evening sees the presentations of the National Drainage Awards. If you are considering getting your drains done, these would be the people to ask for a recommendation…

28 November 2024 (Thursday) - Rather Tired

I was glad to see the relief when they arrived at the end of last night’s night shifts. What with the vagaries of the Duffy blood group system and people being unwell I didn’t stop last night. I can’t claim that I was rushed off my feet, but the only break I got was by walking out for ten minutes. Back in the day I had a little DVD player which I took on night shifts. During the course of an evening I would watch films and TV shows and do the odd blood sample in between telly, and then spend much of the night asleep. Not any more…

Once I’d scraped the ice from my car I set home-wards. As I drove I listened to the radio as I do. There was loads of talk about the dire situation in Sudan. Eleven million people have been displaced, twenty-five million in desperate need of help… and (so it was said) pretty much no one knows anything about these people.

There was then talk about ex-Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed who died last year. Following stories of his having sexually abused women, dozens more people have come forward to claim that they too were abused by him. Were they? I don’t want to sound callous and uncaring, but what does this achieve? The chap is dead, and stories go back years, in some cases to the 1970s. How can anyone prove anything either way from such a long remove in time?

Meanwhile Masterchef star Greg Wallace is in trouble. However from what the BBC says, I can’t help but think he’s done little more than carry on as a bit of a lad and is now having his racy conduct judged by today’s standards. Am I wrong? Possibly. But…  the other day a colleague at work made some comment about me being fat and bald. As quick as a flash I turned to another colleague and told them that they were my witness that I’d been fat-shamed. I couldn’t keep a straight face when I saw how worried the first colleague looked. We all had a good laugh, but everyone agreed that these days absolutely anything you might say could be misconstrued.

I had planned to take the dogs straight to the woods this morning, but it was very cold when I got home. Certainly too cold for Bailey. So I went to bed for the morning where I didn’t really sleep properly. I got up after three hours and thought about taking the dogs out. But I don’t like driving after a night shift really; Kings Wood is a bit far. Orlestone would have been one big swamp, and the dogs were all fast asleep. And it was still very cold. So we didn’t go out.

Instead I had a late brekkie and peered into the Internet. Not much had happened. It rarely does, really. I paid the household buildings and contents insurance and saved quite a bit of money by paying the lot in one go rather than paying in installments. I started the process of getting the boiler serviced, then cracked on with the ironing.

As I ironed I watched episodes of “Four In A Bed” as I do. One hotel caught my eye. Not far from where “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” lives, the place offers afternoon teas and take-out Sunday roasts and I was all for trying it out until I watched the episodes. The people who run it were rather nasty; finding trivial faults with competitors and blowing them out of all proportion when their own place was far less than perfect. Claiming to be vegetarian they were happily scoffing eggs and chicken, and it would seem that they are now edging on going bust.

As “er indoors ^TM” boiled up dinner I watched an episode of “Downton Abbey”. I’ve been watching that in the evenings on and off just recently. In this evening’s episode Thomas narrowly avoided getting the heave-ho for his unnatural behaviours, and Lady Mary turned down the amorous advances of Mr. Matthew. Bearing in mind that Lady Mary once porked the Turkish attaché to death you’d have thought she’d have been up for a portion, wouldn’t you?

Dinner was rather good. We washed it down with a bottle of plonk as we watched more “Lego Masters: Australia”. What with last night’s night shift and the plonk I’m feeling a tad tired.

Oh - I’ve created the album for this year’s Lego Advent Calendar. Every year I get a Lego Advent Calendar and make up a little story, but I do myself no favours by not opening any of its windows until the right day.

I wonder what this year’s one holds in store – no one will be more amazed than me about how it turns out.

29 November 2024 (Friday) - Iffy Innards

I did have an early night last night; I was all in at ten o’clock. Sadly two excited little dogs woke me when then came to bed at quarter past one. I lay awake in desperate need of a tiddle for half an hour before finally giving up and going for that tiddle, then took another half-hour to warm up again. Just as I was nodding off my stomach rumbled and I sprinted to the loo when I unleashed what I can only describe as an Uzbekistan-class dose of the two bob bits.

At half past three I realized that sleep wasn’t going to happen so I made toast and watched the Christmas episode of “Brassic” which was rather good.

I sparked up my lap-to pat five o’clock and spent ten minutes fighting with the goat sanctuary’s website. Over the last couple of weeks they’ve taken on twenty-seven more goats and things are rather stretched for them. I gave them a bung – if any of my loyal readers could spare them anything it would be much appreciated. Click here if you can.

As I was about to go out I asked the Alexa for the weather forecast for the morning. It told me it was five degrees outside. That was wrong, bearing in mind how much ice I had to scrape from the car. I soon gave up scraping and went back inside for a bottle of cold water. That shifts the ice so much quicker.

I went to the co-op to get a sandwich, and shivered outside waiting for them to open. There was some woman inside that I'd not seen there before. She busied around whilst watching me standing outside. She made no effort to unlock the door so after a few minutes I gave up waiting and drove up to Sainsburys instead where I got my stuff. I got a tad hacked off with the staff there as well. With no manned tills open we were forced to use the self-service checkouts.  Having refused to open the proper till, the staff then simply refused to leave the customers alone and kept trying to interfere with what we were doing.  Rather than having staff busying round getting in the way at the self-service checkouts, why don't they have these people working the proper tills?

As I drove to and fro the pundits on the radio were talking about the overnight resignation of the transport minister. Details were rather sketchy; it seemed that she had a criminal conviction from ten years ago but no one seemed to know much about it. Apparently there was some story about her claiming to have been mugged and having had a phone stolen, and then her withdrawing the claim of having been mugged and the phone re-appearing. It was alleged that her employer at the time said that this wasn't the first time a phone of hers had gone walkabout. The implication was that she was nicking work phones. Was she? Somehow I doubt it, but the media will say any old tosh to get a story, won't they?

I got to work where I immediately had a sudden reprise of the night's unpleasantness and showed the works chodbin who was in charge. And then I cracked on with that which I couldn't avoid… in between hurried trips back to the chodbin.

I clenched for the journey home. Having spent ten days in Uzbekistan where the closest functional toilet (as opposed to a hole in the ground) was fifty miles away, the trip home was a walk in the park.

Once home I spent a little while messaging “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” whilst watching more “Downton Abbey”. Lady Edith is looking set to get more than she bargained for from the editor, and Edna got the sack for trying it on with Mr Tom .

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good dinner, and one I’d scoffed it I promptly fell asleep on the sofa until my guts rumbled again.

I think I’d better nip to the loo…

30 November 2024 (Saturday) - A Hole in the Lawn

I slept like a log last night; it was only a shame that five minutes before the alarm was due to go off my phone gave a very loud ping to suggest that I might like to turn off the upcoming alarm. There are no end of people concerned that artificial intelligence is about to take over the world and humanity will be reduced to little more than its pets; the AI of my experience is a bit thick.

I made toast and had my usual root round the Internet. It was still there. Some half-wit was posting on one of the theist-related Facebook groups I follow. He’d found an article claiming that scientists in the Vatican have made a device that allows you to see the past and so have watched the life of Jesus and shown that the bible stories were all true. Sadly for the half-wit he clearly hadn’t read the article he posted as that the article was quite clear that the Pope had threatened anyone using this time-viewer with excommunication. What had it supposedly seen that the Pope didn’t want made public? There was quite the argument going on about what was clearly a load of old tosh.

And I saw that I had two more comments on entries on this blog – I say “comments”; “Albert” was trying to sell fake guns on what my anti-virus software said was a fake website, and “VIP Devices” gave a plug for some website claiming it could unlock your 5G phone.

Both got deleted.

The dogs came down so I took them into the garden to do what they do. As I gathered what they’d done I saw a rather deep but narrow hole in the lawn. Had the dogs been digging? The hole was an odd shape – very narrow. If the dogs had been digging they would have got filthy. But what else might have dug it? Do cats dig holes?

Being Saturday we went to Dog Club. As we drove Steve was on the radio doing the “Guess the Lyrics” competition. “I get the same old dream same time every night. Fall to the ground and I wake up”. I got the thumbs up from Steve when I said it was Rainbow – “Since You’ve Been Gone”, but I’ve since found that I was only partly right. It turns out that Rainbow were doing a cover version of someone else’s song.

We got to Dog Club and opened up. People and dogs soon arrived, but after ten minutes my heart sank. The over-excitable collie who’d caused issues a few weeks ago was back. The old chap let the collie off its lead and it immediately jumped on the back of the first dog it saw, trampling Bailey in its rush. Fortunately this was right next to me so I grabbed the dog’s harness, yanked it off and marched it back to the old chap telling him that we can’t have that, and that the last time it happened a dog was hurt (little Skye was!). The collie spent the rest of the session on the lead. I felt sorry for the dog, but there are two issues. Firstly it needs it’s plums cutting off. And secondly it is far stronger than the old chap who brings it along.

But with the collie restrained we had a great time. I tried counting a few times; I’m pretty sure there were over twenty-one dogs along. I took a few photos as mayhem happened.

The dogs weren’t keen on coming home. I got into the car just as Steve announced what the mystery year was. “er indoors ^TM” set off to craft club; I brought the dogs home for a bit of a wash, then I had a few minutes in the garden. It didn’t take that long to fill that hole in. I mentioned the hole in our lawn at Dog Club; several people suggested that it might have been a fox. Apparently they jump fences. Foxes in the garden? That would be a pain in the glass (to coin a phrase).

I then settled in front of the telly underneath a pile of dogs and dozed until “er indoors ^TM” came home.

We all then drove down to Folkestone to spend a few hours with “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”. Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” was poorly, but we had a good time. In between no end of other stuff on the telly we watched a Lube-Toobe video of a couple of lads who bought a cheapo kayak from Lidl, tried to sail it from their house to the sea, and were surprised when it sprung a leak in the first few hundred yards.  

I’ve checked the garden – nothing has disturbed the hole I filled in earlier. I shall have another look in the morning.