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1 October 2023
(Sunday) - Flip Out
I
woke twice in the night needing the loo. Each time I went I was followed by
an exodus of dogs, all of whom wanted to go up to the attic room to bother “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM”, “Stormageddon – Bringer of
Destruction TM” and “Darcie Waa Waa TM”. All of whom actually cried when they were told they couldn’t because
they would wake the baby. We all got up just after seven and over brekkie
watched “Lube-Tube” videos of dachshunds getting in to scrapes.
Dachshund Olympics, European holidays… it was all good fun. After
a flying visit from Auntie Cheryl we settled the
dogs and set off to Flip
Out for “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM”’s
birthday treat. We got there, put on our special socks (you have to wear the right socks), and trampolined about
like things possessed. It was rather good, if a tad
tiring. Though it probably didn’t help with me being fifty years past their
target age. After
two hours boinging and jumping and playing tag in a
three-storey maze our time was up, and so we went for lunch. The birthday boy
was given the choice of venue, and he chose McDonalds. Good lad. A Big
Mac with extra gherkins followed by McFlurry with extra choccie
and monkey blood is always a good thing. We
then ran the Folkestonians home,
and came back to the garden for a cuppa. I toyed with the idea of
taking the dogs out, but they all seemed knackered. They too had been worn
out from the grandchildren staying over… or (more likely in their cases)
having had Pogo staying over. Instead I read a
couple of chapters of my Kindle and then slobbed on
the sofa feeling rather washed out. I suppose having the family round was a
tad intense. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a
pizza which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters: USA” and
all sorts of other stuff. With the Sky-Q box you can record stuff six times
faster than you can watch it. Recording TV programs isn’t an issue, but watching them is akin to fighting a losing
battle. |
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2 October 2023
(Monday) - Week Off Day One
I
rather ached when I woke this morning. After-effects of Friday’s vaccinations
or too much jumping about on the trampolines yesterday? I
made toast and sparked up my lap-top. Two Facebook
friends had birthdays today. I sent out birthday wishes to the one with whom
I see regularly… the other made me think… The one to whom I sent the birthday
video is someone with whom I work. The one to whom I didn’t is someone with
whom I used to work twelve years ago, haven’t seen since and (in all
honesty) probably never will. Work
is strange, isn’t it? You spend so much of your life with some people all day
every day. Then one or other of you leave the workplace and you never see
them again… I loaded the dogs into the car
and we set off for WIllesborough. As we drove the
pundits on the radio were interviewing someone or other about his experiences
with someone else. I have absolutely no idea who the person being interviewed
was, or any idea who they were talking about, but it was rather captivating. We got to the Skoda garage where we left the car (to
get the brakes sorted) and walked the two and a half miles home. The walk
went well even if the dogs did have to stay on the lead the entire time. We
met a few dogs; most encounters passed off uneventfully. One didn’t though.
There was an elderly couple with a white Labrador. The dog didn’t seem
fussed, but the elderly woman started shrieking “Ooh, Ooh, Ooh” with
increasing volume and increasing panic for absolutely no reason at all.
Needless to say this wound all the dogs up. And then another woman screamed and jumped on to a
wall as we walked past. I’m seeing this more and more and (at the risk of
appearing racist) especially from the immigrant community. Are my three
hounds really *that* scary? As we walked we went past
where I once hid a geocache (nearly
ten years ago). I’d had a report that the thing was missing. Was it?
I don’t know – I couldn’t get anywhere near the tree where it was supposed to
be; the brambles were that high. We came home where I sorted a cuppa
for me and “er indoors TM” and warmed up the
last of the pains au chocolat from yesterday, and
then had a little think about that problem geocache of mine. Having thought about it I then put right whatever
geocaching dot com had done to the description of one of my geocaches near work (rendering
it unsolvable), then strained my brain on a puzzle geocache that I spotted
on the geo-map not far from home. The puzzle was straightforward. There were eleven
photographs of Lego models of famous landmarks each with a letter from A to L
(geocachers don’t use the letter “I”!) You have to
identify each landmark, then order them from the most westerly to the most
easterly. If the most westerly was “F” and the most easterly was “B”
then F=1 and B=11. (*If* they were… which they weren’t). Given a
numeric value for each letter you then substitute each letter into the
formula N51 (H-H)(C+G-B).(K-L)(L-F)(J-D+C) E000 (D-E)(L+C-H).(A+B)(K-G)(J-F+E)
and come up with a location either a short(ish)
walk from home or somewhere out on the Romney Marsh, depending on whether you
got it right or wrong. I got it right… I had hoped we might be walking past this geocache
when we went to get the car from the garage in the afternoon. I won’t give
any spoilers, but I will say that it would have involved a little more than
the teensiest diversion. Luckily “er indoors TM” suggested
we drove out in her car on her lunch break to see if we might find it. We did. As we drove home so my phone rang. My car was ready.
So pausing only briefly for a quick sandwich I got
the dogs onto their leads again and off we went to get it. We walked out past where my problem geocache was. I
put out a new one on the footpath a few yards from the old one, and then a
little later I replaced one of “er indoors TM”’s
geocaches which was missing. Eventually we got to the garage and got the car. There’s
no denying we drove home a lot faster than we drove out. I spent an hour reading more “Game of Thrones”
on my Kindle, and once “er indoors TM” had
boiled up dinner and gone bowling I sparked up Netflix and sat on the sofa
amongst a swarm of dogs. As they snored I watched a
film. “In Time”
started off with an interesting premise; rather than having a cash-based
economy, the currency of the society in the film was lifetime. Given enough
time people could live forever. However this was
just the basis for a police story with a difference… the difference being it
was pretty much the same as every other police story that has ever been told.
It descended into a sort-of sci-fi version of Bonnie and Clyde. Sadly despite being total paupers, Bonnie managed to have
a complete change of wardrobe in every scene. I watched it with a sense of déjà vu. Some of it
seemed really familiar. Had I seen it before? Today was rather busy; not
a bad start to a week off work really. |
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3 October 2023
(Tuesday) - Week Off Day Two
As I scoffed toast I tried
to look at Munzee what with today being the start of the Clan War. However the app (and the website) were slow to the
point of being unusable. A couple of months ago Munzee HQ had a major upgrade
to its IT, and like pretty much every IT upgrade everywhere the IT is now
doing all sorts of wonderful things behind the scenes… but actually
does the job it is supposed to do far slower and nowhere near as well
as it used to. There was a whinge on Facebook about the size of the
housing developments going up locally. Sadly some
people seemed to think what whinging on Facebook
equated to making a formal complaint to the authorities… because they felt
that “the authorities” was Facebook. Sometimes I get rather scared
about how thick normal people can be. I loaded the dogs into the car
and we went out. AS we drove the pundits on the radio were spouting all sorts
of drivel. The proposed HS2 train line from London to Manchester would seem
to be dead in the water. It was said that if that odious Nigel Farage were to
join the Conservative party and mount a leadership challenge, he’d be Prime
Minister before the year was out (what a chilling thought). But no one
really seemed to grasp the implications of the malaria vaccine that had just been announced.
More than one person dies from malaria every minute;
mostly children under five years of age. And pretty much all people from the
poorest parts of the world. No one asked our potential Prime Minister (and
those of a like mind) make of that. We got to the woods and saw that Dalmatian who was
running loose last week. Today he was on a lead being walked by a rather
doddery old lady. A little way into our walk we met the chap who gets dragged
all over the place by the akitas who are clearly far stronger than he is. And three quarters of the way round as we came
through one of the narrower paths through the trees
we found a tent. Someone was camping over a mile into the woods. After four miles we got back to the car and came
home. Treacle had a bath as she’d been stomping through the swamps. And as I
sat with a coffee and croissant so I got whiffs of
fox poo. Bailey then got a bath. I then set about the lawn. After a week’s growing
the lawn is too long to easily be able to see dog dung. Mowing the lawn, bionically burning the weeds and vooming
round with the garden vacuum took an hour. As I emptied all the lawn clippings and garden waste
into the green bin in the front garden I did
chuckle. Two young(ish) chaps were walking
down the road, each with the most ridiculous haircut. Imagine growing your
hair for five years then sticking a dessert bowl on your head, shaving away
everything that fell outside the dessert bowl and covering what was left with
cooking oil. As they walked past (rubbing the obviously sore bald bits)
one said to the other (in all sincerity) “That barber’s good, isn’t
he?” Having completely forgotten the earlier issue with
the Munzee app we got the leads onto the dogs and drove down to Stanhope with
the intention to have a half-hour Munzing session. We had a go, but it is a
tad frustrating to have the app taking over five minutes to do what it used
to be able to do in a couple of seconds. Our plan had been to get a Qrate each; I managed, but “er indoors TM” didn’t.
Eventually we abandoned as “er indoors TM” had
to be back for lunch. I spent the afternoon doing more gardening. Over the
years the stepping stones up the lawn have sunk
deeper and deeper into the grass. So I took the
first one, lifted it out of the lawn, trimmed the grass from around the edge
of the hole, popped in seven scoops of soil, replaced the stepping stone and
stomped it level. In a novel break with tradition I
used a spirit level to make sure all actually was level. And having done the first one I then simply repeated
the process for the other twelve. The ninth one is a tad wobbly; if it doesn’t settle I shall have it up and bung in some more soil to
balance it out… in a day or so. “er
indoors TM” boiled up pizza and chips and went off to
see her mates. I set the dishwasher going and settled down on the sofa with
the dogs and watched a
film. “65” was… crap, really. It started off with someone whose daughter was dying
and so the chap had a phenomenal medical bill. If that’s not an advert for
state-provided healthcare, then what is? Anyway… to pay the bill this bloke
took a whole load of people (in hibernation) off for a ride in outer
space in his space ship which he inadvertently
pranged on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico sixty-five million years ago on
the very day before that great big asteroid crashed and wiped out all the
dinosaurs. I suppose the film could have been good but… (to
give but one example) if you are being attacked by some sort of dinosaur
thingy and your only means of defence is a space
laser, what would you do? Personally I would shoot
the dinosaur with the space laser. I wouldn’t let the dinosaur get to within
biting distance and then repeatedly clout it with the blunt end of the space
laser. My Munzee app has completely died now… |
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4 October 2023
(Wednesday) - Thirty Seven Years Later
Some
people have more money that sense. This morning as I looked at Facebook there
was an amazing post on one of the Lego groups I follow. Someone had been to
Edinburgh castle where the gift shop was selling single Lego bricks with the
Edinburgh castle logo for one pound twenty-five pence. The chap who’d seen
them was asking who would be so daft as to spend that on one Lego brick.
Dozens of people said they would. And then someone who lives in Edinburgh
posted a comment offering to go to the castle’s gift shop to get bricks and
post them out… for a fiver each (the fiver covering the cost of brick and
postage). Dozens of people were asking for one, and
were handing over their money. And then there was a rather bitter squabble over a rather
trivial point in an episode of “Star Trek: Picard” started by and
egged on by some chap who openly admitted he’d not seen the show but had read
others’ opinions on the Internet. We got the dogs onto their leads. Being over an hour
later out of bed than usual when on a day off, we didn’t have time for Kings Wood so we took the dogs to Orlestone.
Orlestone is much closer to home but has the
disadvantage of roads much closer to the car park, of being muddier, and…”something else”. I wish I knew what that ”something else” actually is.
Something down there sets Morgan off. When he’s in Orlestone
his recall is terrible, he is constantly over-excited and always in a state of
semi-frenzy. I’m not saying he’s an angel in Kings Wood but there is a
noticeable difference. I’d love to know what the difference is. But today the walk passed off rather well. Morgan
did get a tad over-exuberant, but came back when
called. In fact today’s problem pup was Treacle who
at the end of the walk (when only a hundred yards from the car)
jumped into what I can only describe as a small river. She was still dripping
when we got home. We (I) bathed Treacle, settled the dogs and
leaving Alexa playing them “Soothing Jazz for Dogs” (she’s an
obliging girl!) we set off. We’d been given a Wowcher/Groupon
ticket for a look round Chiddingstone Castle.
I won’t say it was crap (because “er indoors TM” assures
me it isn’t) but I will make the observation
that when the owner of the place died and left it to the National Trust, they
turned it down. The chap who used to own the place seemed to have
been some sort of rich eccentric with more money than sense who spent good
money on old tat. Each room had different themed old tat. One was Japanese tat, one was Egyptian tat. One room contained “objects”
that were under a cover. You were invited to pull the cover back to see the
objects (and cover them again afterwards). If ever you find yourself
at the “objects exhibition” at Chiddingstone
Castle, just keep on walking. On re-reading this I think I might be being a tad
harsh. It wasn’t *that* bad really, but after over an hour’s drive to
get there I was rather expecting more.I
don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but I was expecting more of it. Mind you the tea room was
rather good. As part of our ticket we got a cream
tea. Very nice. As we scoffed scones and jam and cream
we tried to listen in on the couple on the next table. They’d made some sort
of mistake; they’d either come on the wrong day or gone to the wrong castle.
Either way their voucher wasn’t valid and were having a heated, if rather
quiet, argument with the staff about it. We couldn’t quite make out what the
problem was, but there is nothing as entertaining as someone else’s misfortunes,
is there? We came home to find my new pruning device had
arrived, so as “er indoors TM” popped out
for milk and dog biscuits so I started lopping the rose brambles that were
overhanging half of our garden from two metres up in the overgrowth
from not-so-nice-next-door’s garden. Once she’d got the shopping
I popped down the road to the Chinese takeaway to get a rather good bit of
dinner which we washed down with a bottle of hock whilst watching more “Lego
Masters: USA”. And with that scoffed we had far too much trifle as today
was a special occasion… today is our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary. Looking back at previous blog entries it would seem
to be something of a novelty not to be working today. Today was rather good. |
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5 October 2023
(Thursday) - Dentist, Pants, Camera
As
I had my usual rummage around Facebook this morning
I saw quite a few posts from Midge Ure’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall
last night. Earlier in the week I had an offer of a ticket to be there (and
a lift to get there) but what with wedding anniversary I turned it down.
It looks like I missed a good show. There wasn’t much else happening on-line, so
with “er indoors TM” off to the Sandwich
office I settled the dogs and walked down the road to the dentist. I took my place in the waiting room and my piss boiled as I watched some young mother with her brat.
The brat had a scooter and when it wasn’t trying to smash lumps out of the
floor and walls by using the scooter as a hammer, it was running round the
surgery like a thing possessed. Mother followed making rather pathetic
excuses. I realise that in today’s (rather
pathetic) society we are supposed to try to reason with the brat to ask
it to consider a different way of carrying on whilst in no way criticizing what
it is doing, but seriously… Give it one firm crack across the arse and it will behave. And
having had one firm crack across the arse
the threat of more will ensure it doesn’t wreak havoc again. I realise there are those that disagree, but in my
experience those who disagree either have no children of their own or have
the most ill-behaved brats. A couple of weeks ago I had a rather bad toothache
and was told I needed a root canal filling. Today it was happening. I’d read
up on the things and was prepared for an hour’s pain. I was in and out in
fifteen minutes and was told to come back for more treatment in a month.
Hopefully by then the burning taste will have gone from my mouth. I came home to find the dogs asleep. I woke them and
we drove up to Kings Wood. We took a little diversion to our planned walk
today; several dozen small children were running round screaming where we’d
hoped to go, Now I don’t mean that figuratively or sarcastically. I mean that
quite literally After five minutes walking in to the
woods we encountered a very large group of primary school aged children who
were all running in random directions, all screaming, as half a dozen adults
looked on. Was this some sort of school activity? We went the other way. When we go to the woods we
often chase squirrels, roll in fox poo, wade in swamps and try to avoid the
normal people. Today we explored a path we’d not wandered before… and found a
rather large pair of recently shitted underpants. Someone had crapped themselves and abandoned pants. Between screaming children and crapped pants the dogs were incredibly well behaved. We came home where I scoffed the last of yesterday’s
Chinese then cracked on with the ironing. As I scoffed and ironed I watched
four episodes of “Alice
in Borderland”; a Netflix program which isn’t entirely unlike “Squid
Game”. With the ironing done I watched telly from under a pile of dogs…
and then the doorbell rang. My new Dog-o-Vision security camera had arrived.
After a little fiddling about I managed to get the thing up and running.
Connected to the house wi-fi it can transmit to my phone via the mobile data
and so I can keep an eye on the dogs from miles away… not that they are every
left alone for any length of time. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a
very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the final of “Lego
Masters: USA” in which the best team were robbed. I then fell asleep during the first episode of the
most recent season of “Taskmaster”. |
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6 October 2023
(Friday) - Solving Geo-Puzzles
As
I scoffed my toast this morning I saw that one of
the professional bodies with which I am associated has given out its Gold
Award to someone of whom I’ve never heard. They may well be very deserving of
the honour; I honestly don’t know the first thing about them. But in singling
out one person for what they have done automatically belittles the efforts of
others. Something similar happened in the geocaching world earlier this week
when the Geocaching Association of Great Britain gave out their annual awards.
Five people were nominated for “Geocacher of the Year”; the only one
I’d ever heard of has done noticeably less for the hobby that half a dozen
others I could name. I’ve ranted about this sort of thing before. Honours are all very well for the recipient but… So many people get given an OBE or a knighthood for
doing the job for which they are paid, but the chap who ran our old Boys
Brigade company and the woman who runs the local scout group
and the leading light of the kite club gets nothing. I got the leads on to the dogs… well, on to Treacle
and Bailey. For all that he seems to love his walks, Morgan is a bugger for getting his collar and lead on. Does it hurt?
Does he get travel sick? But I captured him, and
leaving “er indoors TM” working we set off
for the morning’s adventure. As we drove Katherine Ryan was on “Desert Island
Discs” and was surprisingly interesting. Billed as a “comedian”,
whenever I’ve seen her on the telly she always looks
miserable and doesn’t so much crack jokes as just makes surly put-down
comments. Perhaps I should try her again? We got to Kings Wood where we walked for nearly four
miles. We met a couple of other dog walkers, but my three were as good as
gold, coming back to the sound of the whistle. Morgan did that hopping thing
a few times. The vet has hinted at surgery, but Fudge had a luxating patella
too, and from what the vet says (and people on forums whose dogs have had
the surgery have also said) the surgery seems to be a lot of stress on
the poor dog for minimal improvement. When Morgan’s patella pops out he hops a bit, gives the leg a shake, and carries on
regardless; just like Fudge used to do. We came home. I settled the dogs then popped up the
road to get pastries. As I came back I retrieved our
garden waste bin from where the bin men had thrown it. I’ve whinged about the bin men before; it has
to be said that they could put more effort in *if* they tried. As I scoffed my croissant and had a cuppa I had a look at the
geo-map. Over brekkie a new geocache had gone live in New Romney. With little
else I had to do today, I might have gone to chase a
First to Find… However the chap who lives up the
road who’d flown out of the house yesterday and done a round trip of thirty
miles for the new cache in Sissinghurst had already gone down to the marsh. So with nothing else on the agenda I spent the afternoon in the garden
alternately reading “Game of Thrones” on the Kindle app and trimming
and tidying until it got too cold. I came in then and spent a little while
straining my brain solving geo-puzzle before preparing “Hannah” “er
indoors TM” sorted out fish
and chips which we scoffed whilst watching all sorts of nonsense from the
Sky-Q box. We’ve got the new series of Bake Off and Ghosts… It might be good if telly stopped bringing out new
stuff for a few months to let us catch up… |
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7 October 2023
(Saturday) - Dog Club, A Walk, A Sleepover
I
slept well. As I scoffed toast I was messaging a
friend in the hope of getting a hint for the solution to a geo-puzzle that
had eluded me. He was bemoaning how he’d offered to help with a local scout
group. Had he made a mistake in offering? He was beginning to wonder. This
made me think me of my time as a cub scout leader… I saw (through Facebook) that several other
friends were on foreign holidays, and there was a rather amazing argument
going on in which some religious idiot was claiming that the Bible was true
for the simple reason that it said it was. When challenged to come up with
non-biblical proof the fellow was amazed to ask how anything non-biblical
might be used to prove the bible. It is always best not to argue with the
righteous… Being Saturday we set off
to Dog Club. It was rather good. The puppies charged around like things
possessed with new and old friends. Treacle tolerated the other dogs as I
shared treats with them all. There were a few new dogs (and people)
along today; everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. At one point I counted
dogs… I’m not sure I got the count right but I was
surprised at how low the number was (mid-teens); it seemed a whole lot
higher. After
Dog Club we set off west-wards. In a novel break
with tradition Steve wasn’t on the radio today; his replacement wasn’t as
good. There were no quizzes or competitions and the
reception was nowhere near as good as it usually is so we turned over
to “er indoors TM”’s choice of music which
featured far less “Ivor Biggun” than mine
does. Our plan for today was to walk round Hemsted forest. In years gone by I
had a Sparks-themed series of geocaches in those woods, but like all series
of geocaches they soon ran their course. Last summer I archived them, and a
few months ago a friend asked if I was going to replace them. I wasn’t
intending to, so she asked if I would mind if she put some caches out in
those woods. Fine by me!! She did, and today we went to go find them. It was a
shame that our visit coincided with some girl guide event, but the woods was
plenty big enough for all of us. I’d forgotten how pretty those woods are. My
main memory of the place was how muddy it is in winter, but today there
wasn’t *that* much mud. Treacle found some swamps though; that’s the
kind of dog she is. Our route (for the most part) followed a different
route to the one I set out (four years ago) and so we explored
different paths. Geocaching-wise it was a very good walk with some easy and
some not-so-easy hides. I took a few
photos of the day. It was only a shame that my GPS was playing up. It
took ten minutes to realise we were in Hemsted forest and not at home, and it did struggle to
settle on locations; seemingly unable to get to more than twenty feet
accuracy. Mind you, “Hannah” is eight years old; how long do these
things last? Once home I strained my brain on some geo-puzzles.
If any of my loyal readers can make (Half a ton – urban) / 11 come out
to eight, nine or ten, please let me know. “er indoors TM” then set off to
collect “Darcie Waa Waa TM”; with “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM” off out with her mates, we were
looking after littlun. The girls soon returned home
and we had a rather good evening singing songs and scoffing KFC. “er indoors TM” and “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” have gone up
to the attic room followed by a mass exodus of the entire wolf-pack. I’m
going to stare at the telly for a bit then hopefully have a bit of space in
the bed (for once) |
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8 October 2023
(Sunday) - This n That
I
slept like a log with the bed to myself last night. I eventually woke to the
sounds of “Darcie Waa Waa TM” jabbering
away to herself just after eight o’clock. She jabbers and chatters away, but
none of it is in English. We
all got up and had an hour or so chattering at the dogs and feeding the fish
and singing the “Nanny’s In The Toilet” song and throwing wet
cornflakes around the room and trying to snog the dogs.. Once
the washing machine had stopped I hung out the
washing… and immediately brought it all back in to hang over the banister and
the clothes horse. The idiot in the house over the way was having a bonfire.
I pointed out to him that he might want to bring his own clothes in off of his washing line as his smoke would make them
stink. He assured me his bonfire wasn’t a barbecue… and then pretended he
couldn’t speak English. Interestingly his wife then started shrieking at him
and the bonfire was out within seconds. “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” seemed very
content being with her nanny, and Treacle was definitely
staring at me expectantly, so I took the dogs out. Just lately the
Munzee app has been playing up a lot (and there has
been endless complaints on various Facebook groups) so I thought I’d take
the dogs round the roads on a little Munzee session. As we walked
we met a few other dogs who barked and snapped at us; Morgan totally ignored
them. As we walked we met Bernie; it was as well he
said “hello” as I was miles away. It was good to catch up. We
had a good little walk, but Munzee-wise we proved a point. The app was slow
to the point of being useless. We
came home. “er indoors TM” took
“Darcie Waa Waa TM” home
and I had a very late catch-up on what was happening in the on-line world. I
had an urgent email from the nice people at Credit Karma. My credit score has
gone down by eleven points over the last month. The nice people at Credit
Karma seemed utterly unable to explain why though. However
they did suggest I ask for a higher limit on my credit card, and that I pay
for a lot more things with that credit card. Personally
I’m not keen on spending money when I don’t have to, just to increase some
meaningless number. And
it would seem there was an incident at one of the later Dog Club sessions
yesterday. Some chap was having a rant about how disorganised it all was, and
then blocked the Dog Club admins so’s they couldn’t find out what the issue
was. We
then had something of a lazy afternoon sitting in the garden (recovering
from “Darcie Waa Waa TM”). As I
read more of “Game of Thrones” on the Kindle app I chuckled at a
pigeon. This pigeon would land on one side of the pond, and as the dogs all
ran at it, so it would fly over to the other side of the pond, then fly onto
the fence, then fly into a tree overlooking the garden until the dogs lost
interest in it. Then it would come back and repeat itself until the dogs
calmed down. Watching the pigeon it was deliberately
provoking the dogs. I then had a little sleep whilst “er
indoors TM” got on with painting the back room. I
won’t say she got more on Treacle than she did on the walls (as she didn’t)
but there was certainly more on Treacle than there might have been. Having done the painting, “er indoors TM” then
boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching a couple
of episodes of “Detectorists”; I’d forgotten just how good that show
was. |
|
9 October 2023
(Monday) - Back to Work
I
woke shivering at three o'clock this morning to find that an alliance
of “er indoors TM” and the dogs had captured
pretty much all of the duvet. I managed to
take back six inches of covers and then lay awake for much of the rest of the
night. I thought I had a major opportunity to get some duvet when “er
indoors TM” went for a wazz at half past four, but unusually it was just
her that went. There was no great canine exodus (as there usually is)
and the sleeping dogs weren't budging much. I shifted them sufficiently to
get enough duvet to cover myself, but when “er indoors TM” came
back she took back everything I'd gained, and then had a bit of a set-to with
one of the dogs (I think it was Treacle; it usually is). At half past five I gave up and got up. I made toast
and watched an episode of "Alice in Borderland" which was entertaining, but would have benefitted from someone
bilingual in both Japanese and English doing the translating. The program was
originally made in Japanese and in the English version the characters speak
in pretty much the way that Google Translate would speak. No
English-speaking actor would come out with the phrasing that the show uses. With telly watched I got ready for work and set off west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens aiming for
Tunbridge Wells. You'd be amazed at how many dustbin lorries I got stuck
behind today. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking
about the ongoing
situation in the Gaza strip where the Palestinians and Israelis are
indiscriminately killing each other again. I blogged about this on 16
October 2015 when I wrote " Israelis and Palestinians
continue to kill each other. They have been doing that for as long as I can
remember and show no signs of stopping". I don't want to appear
cynical, but there was an interview on the radio a
couple of years ago with the leading lights on both sides of the
conflict. Both people being interviewed kept on about irreconcilable
differences dating back to twenty years before I was born. Sadly
the only thing either agreed on was that they would never agree. There was also an interview with the head honcho of
Unite the Union who was grumbling that the Labour
party would never get into power unless they stopped
being so timid. This is the trouble with our system of government
though, isn't it? Sometimes tough decisions need to be made, and tough
decisions are often vote-losers. Doing the right thing can get you out of
office, and threatening to do it can ensure you never get into office. As I drove I found that I
was (sort-of) following a hot air balloon. I can remember following
one deliberately many years ago. A friend who was visiting suggested we
followed it to watch it land. As well as that hot air balloon we also
followed a truck with a trailer. I will always remember the hot air balloon
not so much landing as crashing in a random field, and the frantic rush to
load it all onto the truck's trailer before the land owner
arrived. There used to be hot air balloons randomly crashing on the Bat-Farm
in years gone by. Sometimes they would escape before anyone could get to
them. Occasionally my mate would block their getaway with a land-rover and
pretend to be cross. The hot air balloon people would smile and offer a free
ride as a sweetener. When you book a hot air balloon ride no one ever
tells you that the ending of the ride is somewhat random. Having been unable to find my sandwich box this
morning I popped into Tesco in Pembury to get a sandwich. Like Sainsbury's in
Aylesford, rather than having staff on tills doing their job they too had
staff glaring with contempt at people fighting with the self service devices. I hate the self-service tills; if I wanted to use them I would pack it all in as a blood tester and get a
job in a supermarket. I got to work. In between doing work we had a “Name
the Disney Animation” competition in which I did surprisingly well. As I came home my car came up with an alarm. It
suggested I might check the back left light. I did. It looks fine to me. I’ll
phone the garage in the morning… |
|
10 October 2023
(Tuesday) - Rostered Day Off
Last night everyone was settled
and I slept rather well. Over toast I had a peer into the Internet. There was
a petty squabble about the price of full-sized Daleks on one of the Dalek
building Facebook pages… Now that’s “one of the Dalek building Facebook
pages”; there’s quite a few people into building daleks, and they are
incredibly critical of each other. Other than that, there wasn’t a lot going on so I set off to town. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the ongoing
situation in Gaza. The Foreign Secretary was being interviewed on the matter.
It was quite plain that regardless of what was actually
happening, the UK would side with the Israeli government and regard
the Palestinians as Satan incarnate. Meanwhile the poor innocents on the
ground suffer. I got to town a tad early and had a little look around. The town has
changed quite a bit since I last had a look. Ashford has a surprisingly large
number of nail bars, international food suppliers, and vagrants begging. I joined the queue outside Boots which was being entertained and
disgusted (in seemingly equal measures) by a rather drunk young pair
who were boasting about the strength of the cider they were swigging, and
telling anyone who would listen that the pissed woman needed a new bandage
for her knee. Apparently she’d smashed it rather
badly when out on the piss the other day. She seemed unable to keep hold of
the crutches which she was holding, and was falling
over every time she dropped them. Interestingly when Boots opened their doors
the drunks showed no interest in going inside, and
seemed rather upset that they’d lost their captive audience. I went in to the optician which is based
there. I had photos taken of the insides of my eyes, had air blown into them,
and read various letters of various sizes. After twenty minutes I was told my
eyes were pretty much unchanged from last time and I didn’t really need new
glasses. I was pleased about that. I popped to Tesco for milk and pastries and came home. After a cuppa and a croissant I loaded
the dogs into the car and we went up to Kings Wood for a walk. Kings Wood is
odd in that there’s usually about twenty cars in the car park, but once you
are more than a hundred yards from the car park if you see more than two
other walkers, that’s a lot. Today we walked about three and a half miles (guesstimating
from the step count) and saw one other walker with two dogs. Apart from
Treacle wading in a swamp, the dogs were as good as gold; coming back when
called and not upsetting the only other person we met. We came home via the petrol station where I saw an old friend. Someone
who had a baby at about the same time that “er indoors TM” squeezed “My
Boy TM” out. In the late eighties we were rather chummy…
she didn’t recognize me at all when I smiled this lunchtime. Once home I put a load of washing in to
scrub, and whilst it scrubbed I wrote up some CPD. And with
CPD written up I went into the garden and mowed the lawn, then sat by the
pond reading more “Game of Thrones” on my phone’s Kindle app. As I read
I watched the antics of a pigeon who was
having a drink not four feet from where I was sitting. I then dozed off for an hour or so… Today was rather busy for a rostered day off. |
|
11 October 2023
(Wednesday) - Bit Tired
Having
spent much of yesterday afternoon asleep it's probably not surprising that I
woke feeling full of beans and raring to go at twenty to two this morning. I
lay dozing on and off until three o'clock when I heard a thud. One of the
dogs was going downstairs. They only do that for one reason
so I hurried after whichever one it was. As I suspected it was Morgan; he's
had an iffy rear end for a day or so and I'd rather he did what he had to do
outside rather than on the carpet. Sadly our getting
up meant everyone else followed us, and we were all restless for a while. (I
say "we" - I could quite happily have gone back to kip given half a
chance). When Morgan got up again at five o'clock
I saw that as God's way of saying I'd wallowed in my pit for quite long
enough. Once he'd "raked out" in the garden
I made toast and watched another episode of "Alice in Borderland".
It's a good show spoiled by sloppy writing. Take today's episode in which
fifty-eight people were involved in a game-to-the-death. After seemingly
endless killings, at the end there were clearly over a hundred contestants
still going strong. I got ready for work; by this time everyone else had
settled and were all sparko... As I started my car so the
alarm about checking the tail light came on. Even though the tail light came on. The garage says the sensor is at fault
here; I shall have to put up with this until they can fix it. As I drove west-wards the pundits on the radio were
talking about the frankly awful situation in Gaza where no end of innocents are again suffering. This morning they were interviewing
someone from the UK luxury foods industry who had the arse about the war, or more specifically the
media's coverage of it. Apparently the
constant mention of ongoing atrocities makes people in the UK realise just how lucky they are, and so they spend any
spare cash on charity donations for international aid and stop buying caviar,
champagne and brandy. The implication was that if people want to have wars,
that is all very well. But could they do it quietly and not cut into the
luxury market's profit margins. First world problems, eh? There was also a report from the Labour
party conference claiming that if (when) they come into power the Labour party is going to build one and a half million new
houses. I wonder where? Certainly not between Ashford and Pembury; the
Conservatives have beaten them to pretty much every spare scrap of land
there. And then my piss boiled at
the "Thought for the Day" in which some vicar or other
earnestly explained that it was natural for us all to be angry with his God
for seeming to be doing nothing about the ongoing situation in Gaza. He
totally glossed over the demonstrable fact that his God really isn't actually doing anything... With a few minutes spare I took a little diversion
through Staplehurst on my way to work. Having solved several geo-puzzles in
the area I expect we'll be going for a walk there some time soon. There are
four multi-geocaches up the high street where you have to
go to a location and get information on the spot to solve a different sort of
geo-puzzle. I got all the information required to find them (as well as
dinner from Greggs) and set off to work. Work was work… the morning wasn’t so bad. The
afternoon was somewhat marred by the guts ache that the baguette from Greggs
gave me. It looked so nice as well. I came home where “er indoors TM” boiled
up a very good bit of dinner which we washed down with a bottle of plonk
whilst watching more “Detectorists”. The dogs all seem rather subdued and slept much of
the evening… perhaps (like babies) they should be kept active and
awake to ensure a good night’s sleep? I’m going to plot where these four
multi-geocaches are, and see if I can’t plan a
little walk in the area. If I can stay awake… |
|
12 October 2023
(Thursday) - Dull
I slept like a log last night, which was a
result. I got up, made brekkie and scoffed it whilst
watching more "Alice in Borderland" which has taken an
interesting turn; the picture cards have turned up. When you need a complete
deck of cards in order to stay alive, having no
picture cards is a definite disadvantage. I then had a little look at the Internet. Someone on one of the local
groups had recently bought a pet tracker and had put up a picture of where
her cat had gone overnight. It was rather amazing just how far a cat roams.
Such a shame that the things don't work on dogs which have gone walkabout
when out in the woods. I got ready for work, and pausing only
briefly to nearly (but not quite) splat a cyclist I set off. Why on
Earth would anyone be riding a bike in pitch darkness on the wrong side of
the road, with no lights or reflectors and clad entirely in black? Do they
want to die? I wound down the window to shout abuse at the idiot and was
somewhat amazed to see it was someone far older than me. You'd think he'd
know better, wouldn't you? Mind you the warning about checking the car's rear light didn't come
on this morning (but the rear light did). As I drove through the rain the pundits on the radio were talking
about moves afoot in officialdom to try to curb the growth
in teenagers vaping. It rather amazed me that this was seen as news;
forty years ago I was part of a very small minority
of teenagers who didn't smoke. Kids have always smoked; did anyone seriously
expect vaping to be any different? There was also talk of the recent samples of asteroid
returned to Earth from the asteroid Bennu. The pundits on the radio
amaze me sometimes. Last week they were banging on that the world is short of
all sorts of mineral resources and today they were presented with a solution
to that problem... and all they could do was take the piss out of
anything remotely sciencey But most of the morning's radio was devoted to the ongoing situation
in Gaza. Things look pretty bleak there, and are
showing no sign of improving. Meanwhile there's thirty-one
other wars going on elsewhere in the world to say nothing of a major
earthquake in Afghanistan. Our old friend science has
found something new – “never-seen” material that is “beyond
the periodic table”. And none of these got a mention. I got to work and did that which I couldn't avoid. Work was a tad
dull, really. As I drove home “er indoors TM” sent
a message. The co-op was doing a deal on steak and chips; could I pick some
up on the way through. I did… Admittedly the steak and chips was cheap. But it was cheap because there was sod all of
it. Some days in my life are rather good. And others are on the dull side… |
|
13 October 2023
(Friday) - A Housefull
Treacle
was snarling for absolutely no reason at all at three o'clock this morning.
That woke me up. And on hearing Morgan running downstairs at four o'clock I
got up and chased after him. It was pouring hard outside
but he still went out; it must have been urgent. I gave up trying to sleep at five o'clock and
watched the first episode in the second season of "Alice in
Borderland" which was more like an episode of Alexei Sayle's "Things
Exploding", then got ready for work. This morning the lights on my car seemed OK - they
worked, and there were no warnings coming up. I headed off west-wards
listening to the pundits on the radio who were again talking about the
deteriorating situation in Gaza. Apparently the Israelis have ordered a
million people to sling
their hooks and move. The United Nations have asked them not to say that,
as it is clearly impossible for a million people to sling their hooks and
move but the Israelis remain adamant. Meanwhile the Americans and the UK are sending
warships to help the Israelis anyway. I expect the Ukrainians must be rather pissed off about that. As I drove through a rather dark rainy morning I think I inadvertently found a road race. A
couple of cars dangerously overtook me at Biddenden
and then drove as close as possible to the back end of the car in front for
several miles. This sort of thing happens rather often... a clear sign of the
absence of police on the roads. I
got to work and did that which I couldn't avoid. But being on an early was a
result. Once I was done I drove down to Folkestone
to collect “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”, “Stormageddon
– Bringer of Destruction TM”, “Darcie Waa Waa TM” and Pogo. As
we drove home so the warning about the iffy rear light came on again. Just
the warning though. The light seems OK. Once home we had a “Dogs Chaos” five minutes
in the garden, then watched some Lube-Tube videos (as I am reliably
informed “You Tube is pronounced). We sang our own words to some of the
songs… “There Was a Man Who Had a Dog and Desmond Was His Name-O”. For
some reason Darcie Waa Waa TM” thought
this was hilarious. After a couple of hours “er indoors TM” and “Stormageddon
– Bringer of Destruction TM” went up the KFC. They
came back with dinner which included baked beans… “Beans Beans, the Wonderful Fruit. The More You Eat, The More
You Diarrhea”. Apparently. In a novel break with tradition the dogs were shut
in the lobby so we could eat without scrounging pups harassing us. They
weren’t keen on that. “er indoors TM” and “Stormageddon – Bringer
of Destruction TM” are currently making all sorts of
things with her craft stuff. “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”
and “Darcie Waa Waa TM” have
thrown in the sponge and gone to bed. I’m
biding my time… I’ve heard rumours of jelly and ice cream. |
|
14 October 2023
(Saturday) - Dog Club, Rye Harbour Despite
the excitement of having family round I slept very
well last night. I would have slept better had my phone not started
bellyaching about wanting to have a virus scan at ten past five this morning.
If it wanted one that badly, why didn’t it just do one for itself? Did it
really need to bother me about it? I got up, and eventually so did everyone else.
Seeing there was something of a delay, ably assisted by “Stormageddon
– Bringer of Destruction TM” I took my three dogs round to Dog Club. Grandson had been keen to see Dog
Club, and he seemed quite impressed with what was going on. We had a decent
turn-out of pups and the usual mayhem ensued. Mind you when I say “mayhem”
it was all good-natured mayhem. Loads of charging about and playing and
dog-piggybacks (!) “er indoors TM” and the rest of
the tribe soon arrived, and “Darcie Waa Waa TM” had
a great time alternately chanting “dog dog dog” at the assorted throng and snogging any dog
which was daft enough to get too close. Pogo was well-behaved and seemed to
enjoy himself. Treacle had a first – she played with another dog at Dog Club. Admittedly it was her brother Pogo, but it
was something of a result. Ideally I would have stayed a little later at
Dog Club – there was to be a meeting of… I suppose “leaders” or “organisers”
isn’t really the right word. But apparently there was an “episode” at
one of the later sessions of last week’s Dog Club in which someone brought
his newly rescued dog along and then pissed off
leaving it unattended. But what do you do when that happens? When the chap
who started the club isn’t at the early session I
suppose I am seen as “in charge” for the simple reason that I hold the
key to the gate. But most people arrive after I’ve opened and wouldn’t know
that. At the early session everyone keeps an eye on their own dog, everyone
seems to know what dogs are like, any “episodes” are nipped in the bud
(most of the time by Morgan having a time-out) and it all seems to
work. I suppose having smaller dogs makes it easier?
But with having family along and with having yet another one-day weekend I
wanted to make the most of the day. So I sent my
apologies to the little meeting with the observation tat
I think the early session is running OK, and we cracked on with our day. The girls and Pogo got into
the “er indoors TM”-mobile, “Stormageddon
– Bringer of Destruction TM”, the dogs and I into mine
and we drove down to Rye Harbour for a bit of a walk. We followed the path
from the car park to the river’s estuary and back again. After our little walk “er indoors TM” and
“Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM” went
into the visitor centre to get a cuppa for us all.
“Daddy’s Little Angel TM” stayed outside with “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” and the dogs
whilst I sulked. I’d suggested that we went to Rye Harbour in the hope of
seeing seals, but we hadn’t seen any. No one else seemed rather bothered, but
I was sulking. And then we saw one swimming about. I shouted to the most
recent fruit of my loin and she took a photo of it.
Several passing normal people heard my shout and came hurrying over, But they were too slow, and were not at all amused when “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM” loudly announced “Bollox – it’s gone”.
The look of shock on the faces of the normal people gave me quite a fit of
the giggles. But
just as “er indoors TM” came back with our
drinks, so the seal came back, and we watched him (or her?) swimming
about for five minutes whilst we had a cuppa. If
ever you visit Rye Harbour I’m told that the visitor
centre is a good place to see the seals whilst relaxing with a cuppa. Mind
you for all that the cuppa was rather good, a cuppa and a bit of cake all
round came to over thirty quid; they don’t give it away. I
took a few photos of our little family adventure. It was rather
good, but (it has to be said) the photos of
the seal really don’t do it justice. We
said our goodbyes; “er indoors TM” took the kids
back to Folkestone. I came home as I’m on yet another one-day weekend and had
stuff to do in the garden. As
I drove I realised the car was quiet. I’d turned the
radio off to talk with grandson… and I then realised I’d missed one of the
highlights of the week; Steve doing the Mystery Year contest. We
came home. The dogs were all soon fast asleep. I rolled out the pond hose and
cleaned out the pond filter. As I pootled I realised
that the aerating mini-fountain in the pond wasn’t there. After a bit of
fiddling about I found it. Laying on its side on the bottom of the pond. Had
a fish knocked it over? I
made a cuppa, and as I watched another episode of “Alice in Borderland”
I felt a tad peckish. There was quite a bit of KFC left over from last
night’s tea. Warmed up chicken is good, but yesterday’s chips? I then had a (quite frankly) stroke of
genius. With far too many left over chips to chuck,
I thought they might make the basis of a curry. I put a pan of water on,
ripped up all the leftover chips and chicken and popped them in together with
some ketchup, an oxo cube and all sorts of this and that which I found in the
fridge and left it simmering until “er indoors TM” came
home. It went rather well with some rice and a bottle of Piesporter. |
|
15 October 2023
(Sunday) - Poorly Pup
I
heard Morgan jumping off of the bed at three o'clock
so I hurried after him. He was a good boy and waited by the back door to be
let out. I trusted him to do his thing and he soon came back inside and we were all soon back in bed. He
jumped up again at quarter to four. And at quarter past four. And shortly
after that… Just before five o'clock he didn't make it to the back door and
there was quite a bit of blood-stained sick and he was bringing up
coffee-ground-like bits too. that's never a good sign (it's semi-digested
blood - yuk!) After
this he settled, but by this time I'd been up with him seven times so I didn't bother going back to bed. I made brekkie
and watched a bit more of "Allice in Borderland" whilst
listening for the sound of a small dog coming down the stairs. Sure enough he soon came down again. I left “er indoors TM” with
strict instructions to take him to the vet, and I set off to work on a very
dark and cold morning. As I drove I listened to a
frankly ridiculous program on the radio which seemed to be taking the line
that any religious or superstitious old tosh (no matter how patently
absurd) could become factually correct *if* it was put to music.
Which is why people in church sing hymns (apparently). The presenter
then went on to claim that someone has made a musical called "Yahweh
vs Allah" which will supposedly sort out religious wars once and for
all (!) Amazingly
this program was called "Something Understood". There
was then the usual farming program in which the presenters were visiting a
farm in Devon which has been nominated for "Farm of the Year",
where the presenters were rather surprised to find it was being run as a
business rather than as a shambles. Apart
from the usual road racers who infest the A262, the roads were rather quiet
this morning and I made good time to Pembury. I had enough time to go look
for a geocache. Having spent a little while puzzle solving yesterday evening I was hopeful... I found a location which matched
the description of where I thought I should be... but no cache. I
went in to work and had a rather busy day. Usually when I’m working at the weekends I grumble about what the weather is doing, but I
had no idea what the weather was like today; I really didn’t stop. But
as I scoffed a bit of dinner I had a look at the
Internet through my phone. Again we completely
forgot about Hastings bonfire which happened last night. Back in the day I
used to organise mass outings to the bonfire parades... these days people
just go in smaller groups on their own. We
probably wouldn't have gone last night, but it would be nice to have been
reminded that it was on. As I worked “er indoors TM” sent
updates on Morgan. She showed the vet photos of what he'd sicked up and the
vet seemed to agree with my diagnosis; hopefully just a rather bad bout of
gastroenteritis but possibly an ulcer or damage caused by something that the
daft dog might have eaten. He was given medicine and instructions to return
if there's no improvement in five days. “er indoors TM” took him and
his furry associates for a walk; apparently you wouldn’t have realised he was
poorly. I came home to find three sleeping dogs; “er
indoors TM” had gone to visit the in-laws. I put the
telly on, put on more “Alice in Borderland” and was soon sleeping
myself. I wonder when “er indoors TM” will
be home? |
|
16 October 2023
(Monday) - Bird Fights
Morgan
jumped off of the bed with a crash at half past three.
I hurried after him to find him waiting by the back door. He went out, and
after a few minutes came back in again. I wasn't going out with him; it was a
tad chilly. We all went back to bed and (thankfully) unlike yesterday
that was it for being up in the night. Over a bit of toast I
watched another episode of "Alice in Wonderland"; for a
post-apocalyptic series set in a world in which pretty much everyone but a
very small number of people have died, there seems to be an awful lot of
survivors cropping up. I suppose the writers suddenly realised
that with a cast of a precious few, wantonly mowing people down with machine
guns on a regular basis soon eats through your available characters. I got dressed... then got dressed again properly.
I'd no idea just how uncomfortable it would be to have pants on
back-to-front. And then I set off... and realised
that it was officially winter. "Official Winter" starts when
the car is covered in ice for the first time since summer, and I had to do
some vigorous scraping this morning. I had a quick Munzee session in which I capped a
dozen (rather dull) points of interest and a Space Manatee (which
was also on the dull side) then set off up the motorway. Today I was
working at Maidstone; it’s a much easier journey. As I drove the pundits on the radio were
interviewing the deputy leader of the Scottish Nationalist party who ranted
that pretty much all the failings of the Scottish Nationalist government in
Scotland are down to the actions of of the English.
And there was also an interview with the Israeli ambassador to the UK who
answered ever suggestion that the Israelis are being heavy-handed in Gaza
with the rant that the UK fought a war eighty years ago
so we were in no position to take the moral high ground. There was quite a bit of ranting on the radio this
morning; being English certainly wasn’t seen as being a good thing by some
parts of the rest of the world. It was also pointed out that sixty years ago today
the Lava
lamp was invented, and a hundred years ago today the Disney
corporation was founded. Don’t say I never learn you nuffink! I got to work a tad early
so I made a cuppa and used my phone to tune in to
my morning Facebook fix. A friend had been taken ill yesterday; he's now on
the mend. I've not seen him for some time; if he didn't live sixty miles away I'd see him more often. I find this more and more.
Back in the day I was much more outgoing and sociable and spent so much time
with so many people. These days I rarely see anyone outside of family. I
really should do something about that. Work was much the same as ever. Unlike yesterday I
did spend some time looking out of the window today. As the day went on so a
flock of starlings and a flock of goldfinches were having an ongoing battle
for who would have the top of the biggest tree outside our window. At first
it was the starlings who chased off the goldfinches. But the finches came
back with reinforcements… and so the battle ebbed and flowed. It was all a
rather gentle spat, but entertaining nonetheless. With
work done I came home. Coming home down the motorway is much easier than
coming home cross-country. We fed the dogs and gave Morgan his medicine; he
was well enough to put up a fight about that. “er
indoors TM” boiled up
dinner and then went off bowling. I put more “Alice in Borderland” on
the telly and ironed shirts. I hope Morgan sleeps better tonight… I need a decent
night’s sleep. |
|
17 October 2023
(Tuesday) - Retirement, Cauliflower Cheese
Morgan
slept through last night which was a result. He was a bit fidgety at three
o'clock, but isn't everyone? I
got up whilst it was still cold, and as I shaved I
had the bathroom fan heater running. The nice builder who quoted for a new
bathroom said we can't have a fan heater in a rebuilt bathroom as that's
against the building regulations. Stuff that - for quite a bit of the year
the room is too cold not to have one. I
made toast and watched more "Alice in Borderland" in which
the leading characters took all their kits off in a prelude to "doing
the dirty deed" but decided against it at the last minute. Usually
when on telly the dirty deed is (supposedly) done whilst fully
clothed. Not that I'm advocating unmorality (!)
but you'd think the program writers would make their minds up, wouldn't you? I
set off to work. As I went I had a little Munzee
session. Among other things I captured two Vorpal swords (as one does)
and was rewarded with ten Zeds. Zeds are the crypto-currency
used in Munzee; ten Zeds is a shade over seven and a half pence. Suitably
rewarded I headed off west-wards. As I drove the
pundits on the radio were talking with some squash player or other (apparently
whoever it was is famous?) about how squash is to be an Olympic event in
the future. As is cricket. There
was also an interview with the leading light of some exam board who have
announced that GCSEs will be done on-line
in future, starting with Italian and Polish next year. In theory a
brilliant announcement; in practice not at all
thought out. Schools will need to buy dozens of laptops, and at exam time pogger each one so that it can access the exams, but not
access Google so that that the kids can’t cheat. And then un-pogger them all again afterwards so that the laptops can
be used properly. That will take some time... There
was also a lot of air-time about how President Biden
is heading off to the Middle East to try to stop everyone killing each
other. He's not the first to try this, and sadly he probably won't be
the last. Interestingly since it all kicked off in Gaza last week, no
one has mentioned Ukraine on the radio... Am I being cynical in wondering if
the Ukrainian situation is now (quite literally) yesterday's news? I
got to work; I did my bit. I had a chat with the pension advisers. The
process for retirement seems quite straightforward and simple. I've got a
meeting on Thursday with the boss to thrash out the details... Having left home in the dark and arrived at work in
daylight, I left work in daylight and got home in the dark. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of cauliflower cheese which we washed down with a bottle of plonk. I
quite like cauliflower cheese. And in closing spare a though for Kirsty Smitten;
a pretty-much
unknown genius who has quite probably saved the human race. With
antibiotic resistance becoming so prevalent, it is forecast that more people
will die from septicaemia than cancer by the year
2050, with untreatable infections causing ten million deaths per year (one
death every three seconds). However Ms Smitten has developed nanotechnology that will do for
bacteria just like penicillin did for them a hundred years ago. But
Ms Smitten died last week. Aged only twenty-nine. |
|
18 October 2023
(Wednesday) - Rainy Day
I woke feeling rather grim this morning, but cracked on with the day
in the hope that I might perk up a little. Leaving “er indoors TM” and
the dogs snoring I went downstairs, had a shave and scoffed toast as I
watched telly. "Alice in Borderland" is now getting a bit
silly. Given that you are part of a gang of six (all of whom have rather
lethal guns) and you are facing one evil baddie, what do you do? Shoot
him from a safe distance, then once he’s down shoot him between the eyes at
close range? That's what I'd do. But our half-dozen heroes all charged the
evil baddie, dropped their weapons and took it in
turns to have a fist fight with him. And all acted surprised when they all
lost. And then despite all of the gang of six
getting multiple stabbings and gunshots to the gut and the head, all of them
survived to do it all again in the next episode. I got dressed. As I got dressed I was a tad
miffed to find that “er indoors TM” and the
dogs had all stopped snoring. It's a shame they can't do their snoring once
I've gone to work rather than when I'm trying to get a bit of kip... I walked seemingly miles to find my car. When
I came home last night there were no parking spaces to be had. This morning I
walked past a dozen. I drove up the motorway (Maidstone again
today) through miles of coned-off-only-two-lanes with
not a single road work actually being done. As I
drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how a hospital in Gaza has
been bombed. Both sides blamed the other; the Arab leaders have all refused
to meet with the American President in protest, things go from bad to worse…
and the poor people on the streets remain shat upon.
Sadly in that part of the world, twas
ever thus and probably ever will be. Even though it doesn’t have to be. Meanwhile it was announced that Oxford
university will be the international headquarters for the “Breakthrough
Listen Initiative”; an astronomical programme searching for “technosignatures” - of past or present technology
that would signal the presence of life in other parts of the universe. After
ten minutes of the interviewers having no embarrassment of their ignorance,
the chap being interviewed was quite open that they hadn’t found any aliens
to the total surprise of the interviewer. His “Dur!” at the rather
simplistic interviewer was quite apparent in his tone. Needing petrol I
stopped off at the Sainsbury’s petrol station in Aylesford. The staff on the
till were quite openly talking about the attitude of the staff in the main
supermarket. I’ve blogged about how rude they are before (many times);
this morning the people in the petrol station were egging customers on to
make formal complaints and telling everyone the name of the old harridan to
mention in the formal complaints. That store must be a delightful place in
which to work… I got to work. Today was a rather good day in
that it rained, and when it rains a puddle forms on
the flat roof outside our window and the goldfinches come for a bath in it. I
have seen more goldfinches before, but they are fun to watch. Mind you the same rain made getting home
something of a nightmare… I felt grim when I got up… I still feel grim
now… |
|
19 October 2023
(Thursday) - Late Shift
I
slept through until nearly eight o’clock this morning which was a major
result. I had a shave and bearing in mind the weather wasn’t good and
forecast to get worse I thought I’d get our walk in as quickly as possible. I
took the dogs up to the park and back through the drizzle. Morgan pulled a
bit, but nowhere near as much as he has done in the past, and we didn’t bark
at anyone or anything despite some provocation. I understand that not
everyone likes dogs, but when walking past dogs just walk past them. If you
don’t like them, don’t shy away in terror as this scares them. I think my
three were rather good in not reacting like so many passers-by did this
morning. I
was rather late looking at Facebook this morning. It told me that as a
paid-up Munzer I’d been given a little prezzie. I’d got a bung of one hundred
and twenty five Zeds. That’s ninety-four pence. And
I saw something which made me think… One day in 1975 I asked a friend to come
to Boys Brigade with me. The Boys Brigade is a very
religious organisation and makes no secret it is all about getting
children into church. That friend and I stayed in the Boys Brigade for years…
eventually I saw through the brainwashing but my old
mate lapped it up and a few years ago packed up a very well paid job and is
now a Baptist minister down in the West Country. Every morning someone from
his church does a webinar “Prayers at Ten”. Today it was my old
mucker. The chap who for many years was my best mate was on my lap-top screen
so earnestly preaching utterly stark staring nonsense which didn’t stand up
to any reasoning or thought whatsoever. I can’t help but feel responsible
that the chap is clearly living in a fantasy world. “er
indoors TM” says he’s
clearly happy enough. He probably is… but he seems utterly mad. I suppose
that’s religion for you. I’m told that those who escape religion become very
anti-religious… perhaps I am. Bearing in mind we’d gone out for our walk earlier because
the rain was supposed to be getting worse as the day went on, I was rather
miffed to see sunshine as I set off west-wards to
the late shift. As I drove, the "From Our Own Correspondent"
show on the radio was talking about how religious leaders in Senegal adopt no
end of children and then send them out on the streets as
professional beggars. The government won't do anything about this as
professional begging is too lucrative and those adopting/employing the
children have become too powerful a pressure group. I suppose I should be
grateful that my old mate hasn't jumped on this bandwagon. There was also a rather humungous lorry bunging up
the tight corner by the church in Goudhurst; there
often is. We filled in all the forms and now we just have to wait to see what the first obstacle to
semi-retirement will be. I'm sure there will be some problem or other
cropping up. I would be very surprised if there wasn't. I can't pretend I don't like my job, but I'm rather excited
at the thought of having quite a bit more spare time
next year... It has to be said that working five
days a week is a tad dull. |
|
20 October 2023
(Friday) - Wondering
I
woke feeling particularly grim this morning, but that's nothing unusual these
days. I got up, farted around, then made toast.
Needing something new to watch on telly I started on the second season of
"Foundation" on Apple TV. Despite being based on Asimov's
famous series of books and despite being produced by Asimov's daughter, apart
from the names of the main characters the show bears pretty much no relation
whatsoever to the books. However, like so many other TV series, having
watched the first season I really feel I need to see it through to the bitter
end. With
telly tellied I set off to work. As I walked up the
road I picked my way round the discarded emptied
bins scattered across the pavement, walked past the bin men who were
bellowing across the street at each other, and into the corner shop where
there was quite the anti-bin men tirade going on. |I wasn't the only one
who'd had to negotiate a rather tortuous route round the emptied bins they'd
just flung. The local bin men aren't going to win any popularity contests. I
set off west-wards to work listening to the radio as
I went. There was a lot of talk about the two by-elections yesterday in which
the Conservatives had their arses handed to them on a plate as Labour won
both in landslide victories. Mind
you it would seem this isn't any damning of government policy or glowing
endorsement for the Labour party. The so-called expert who was wheeled on to
discuss the matter seemed to think that the Labour victory was all about how
the electorate fancy Sir Kier Starmer more than they fancy Rishi Sunak. And
the observation was made that if that idiot Boris Johnson was still in power
the Conservatives wouldn't have lost. For all that the bloke has been caught
out in lie after lie,
the masses love him There
was talk about President Biden's trip to Israel and how he's trying to milk
Congress for billions of dollars to give to the Israelis. And how faced with
a new war in the Middle East, interest in the war in Ukraine is rapidly
dwindling. Is war *really* something just to entertain the Western
world? From what was said on this morning's radio it would seem so. And
then the fatuous windbag on the morning's "Thought For
The Day" said not to really worry too much about what is going on in
Gaza as God will sort it all out... one way or another. Like God has
demonstrably sorted out so much else? As
I drove I was very conscious of the idiot who was
not five yards from my rear bumper for pretty much the length of the A262. I
also saw that the two cars which had gone through the hedges near
Sissinghurst last night had been extricated, but the one which had come off
the road just outside Biddenden last week was still
in the hedge there. This made me wonder... And
I spent much of the day wondering. Do
I really want to keep making this journey? And is the trip to Maidstone *that*
much easier? - on Monday I had to take a five-mile diversion to avoid the
carnage at junction five of the motorway. I
left home this morning at seven o’clock and got home this evening at seven o'clock.And then parked three
streets away as there wasn’t anywhere closer to park. When
I retire I might just knock hospital work on the
head entirely. There must be something else I could do... something
that doesn't involve round trips of sixty miles every day and not getting
home so late and not working nights and weekends. I
wonder what… |
|
21 October 2023
(Saturday) - It Rained. A Lot...
The
alarm woke me this morning at half past seven. That was something of a
result. I made toast and had a look at Facebook like I so often do. My friends list was eight people shorter than when I’d last
looked. Eight people who were once Facebook friends aren’t any more. I wonder
what I did to offend them? And I wonder which (ex)
friends they were? I’ve identified one of them and sent a message. For all
that Facebook claims it doesn’t randomly delete people from your friends
list, I’ve had people asking me why I’ve defriended them when I haven’t. I
also had a message via geocaching dot com. Last weekend a couple of people
from Bournemouth had stayed locally overnight to do all my Kings Wood
geocaches. They had had a good time and enjoyed the woods. I was rather
pleased about that. There
wasn’t much else happening in cyber space so despite the rain we went to Dog
Club. Today was probably the lowest attendance we’ve ever had at Dog Club
with more people (ten) than dogs (nine) but as always a great time was had by all. Treacle proudly
carried a ball around. Morgan and Bailey played with the bigger dogs and
Morgan got told off a few times. And (unusually) today wasn’t endless
treats all round. As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year on
the radio. The Laughing Gnome… I got it right away… and then “er
indoors TM” got me doubting myself. But when Steve
said that the films released that year included “Live and Let Die” I
realized I was right all along. “er
indoors TM” dropped me off
three streets from home where I’d parked my car last night and I then drove
round to B&Q for a new light switch. The one in the living room was a
dimmer switch which must have been in place for over thirty years. The
dimming bit hasn’t worked for years, and recently we’ve had issues with the
LED lights constantly flickering. It says on the internet (so it must be
true) that old dimmer switches make LED lights flicker. I spent fifteen minutes marching round B&Q.
You’d think they’d have put the light switches in the lighting section,
wouldn’t you? Once
home it took longer to clear all the rubbish out of the way of the mains
power switch than to change the light switch. The thing is now installed, and
it is rather nice to sit in the living room without constantly flickering
lights. And
with light switch replaced there was so much I could have done. The lawn
doesn’t mow itself. The temporary fix on the outflow from the pond’s bog
filter needs reviewing. The shed needs a tidy-up and the rubbish taking to
the tip. But the drizzle we’d tolerated at Dog Club had become a full-on
downpour. So I looked at filling in the paperwork
for my retirement. I’d had a glance at it last night
and had despaired. So many questions asking things that I don’t understand,
let alone know the answers. My plan was to go through the twelve
page document and come up with a list of what I need to find out, and
send that list back to the pension people asking “WTF?” I wasted three
quarters of an hour compiling a quite comprehensive list of what I didn’t
understand before realising all I needed to fill out was my personal details,
and someone else would fill in the tricky stuff. The
sun came out. But by the time I’d turned off the lap-top and decided what
garden jobs to do, so the rain started again. Even harder than it had been. “er indoors TM” set off to Folkestone
whilst I ironed shirts, then sat on the sofa with the dogs watching episodes
of “Foundation” until she returned with “Darcie Waa Waa TM” who is having a
sleepover with us. We spent a pleasant afternoon dog-snogging and singing
various versions of various songs until littlun became just a little too
fractious. The
girls are up in the top bedroom making quite a bit of racket. The dogs are
impatiently waiting by the living room door, occasionally squeaking. The
moment I open the door, all three will fly to the top bedroom too. I shall
give it another hour until I’m sure littlun is fast asleep before letting the
dogs up… I shall watch another episode of “Foundation”…
for all that I have been rather critical of it, they’ve got the young Hober
Mallow spot on… |
|
22 October 2023
(Sunday) - Family Day
I had a rather bad night. Wanting to ensure that “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” was asleep so
as not to disturb her when I came up with the dogs, I waited for the “all-clear”
from “er indoors TM” which came at half past
eleven. I went up at midnight. As did the dogs who made a bee-line
to the top bedroom, weren’t impressed to find the door (deliberately)
closed and all started whinging. I gathered the
dogs, marched them to my bedroom, closed the door and formally ordered
silence. At
two o’clock I was changing the bedding as one of them (possibly Bailey)
had a “potty emergency” and couldn’t get to the lino-ed area by the
back door. We then stomped and paced and thrashed about until I gave up,
marched them all downstairs and I watched an episode of “Foundation”
until it got light outside. I
hung the washed bedspread on the line, then peered into the Internet. There
was talk of a pub crawl round London with some old friends on one of the
Facebook Groups I follow… ten selected pubs over five miles… Sadly in London
and at London prices, by the time you’d got the train there and thrown in a
kebab there wouldn’t be much change out of a hundred quid and nothing but a
few photos and a headache to show for the day. Mind you if it goes ahead I shall be there. I sent out a couple of birthday wishes, then on
hearing “Darcie Waa Waa TM” shouting
“Dog Dog Dog” I
turned off the laptop and prepared for the onslaught. The morning went rather painlessly. We had a brekkie
of Tesco’s Choco Hoops. We both had a bowl of the things. I scoffed all of
mine myself, littlun threw quite a few of hers at the dogs. Whilst “er
indoors TM” got dressed, I sang the wrong words to
various Lube-Tube (!) songs to littlun’s amusement, then I drove us
all down to Rye Harbour where we met father-in-law
and we went for a little walk out to the estuary and back again. Rye Harbour
is a pretty place to walk around, but with today being low tide there wasn’t
any chance of seeing seals. And the place does heave with normal people. Half
of the normal people had dogs off of the leads which
were marching up to everyone, and all of these people were rather shocked
when Treacle firmly told all of their dogs off. The other half of the normal
people had small children on bicycles… Have you ever seen a small child on a bicycle? There
are two schools of thought about small children on bicycles. Either you
demand that they cycle at walking pace and pretend to be surprised when they
keep falling off. Or you stick stabilizers on the bike, keep shouting at the
child and watch (with a stupid expression on your face) as the child
who is staring back at you cycles straight into oncoming pedestrians. Time
and time again. Just as we came toward the end of our walk so
Treacle jumped into belly-deep stagnant mud and looked at me clearly very
pleased with herself… We said goodbye to father-in-law, and as we loaded
up the dogs and littlun into the car we had a few people asking if we were
going. The free car park at Rye Harbour fills up rather quickly; we could
probably have sold our parking space for hard cash today. If ever you fancy a
walk at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, I’d suggest getting there no later than
half past ten in the morning. “Darcie Waa Waa TM” fell
asleep half-way to Folkestone, and was still snoring
when we dropped her with “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” who
had had over twelve hours sleep herself. I would have liked to have stayed
with them for a bit, but Treacle was seriously stinking the car out. There
was only one place she was going when she left the car’s boot, and that was
into the bath. “er
indoors TM” and I came home. Treacle got a serious scrub
which shifted most (but not all) of the stench. “er
indoors TM” cracked on with
painting the back bedroom. I was still feeling a tad grim (I’ve not felt
right for a few days) so I sat on the sofa with dogs and pretended not to
notice the foul whiffs emanating from Treacle as I dozed through episodes of
“Four in a Bed” in which a vindictive harridan from Yorkshire was fool
enough to allow the television cameras to record just how filthy her hotel
was, and then tried to lambast people whose bed and breakfast establishments
were demonstrably far cleaner than hers. Over
a rather good bit of scoff we watched the last episode of “Detectorists”…
or the last that is on Netflix. There was a Christmas special last year. I
wonder where I can find that one… Having
had a complete weekend off is something of a rarity in my world. It’s been a
rather good one. I
am reliably informed that Treacle will be doused with air freshener before bed time. |
|
23 October 2023 (Monday) - Whinging
I had a rather good sleep last night - when the
dogs are peaceful, so is everyone else. I made toast and watched more "Foundation"
then had a quick look on-line. Periodically all those memes about "I'm
here for you" and "if anyone needs a friend" appear
on Facebook; quite often posted by those people who turned their backs when
others really did need a friend. I'm afraid my piss
boiled with a couple of them, and I had to stop myself embarking on a little
name-and-shame session this morning. Am I being cynical in thinking that
there is far more kudos to be had from appearing to be a friend than actually being one? Probably. No one seemed to be having a birthday this
morning, and with no emails of note I got myself organised and set off to
work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking
about how shoplifting locally is
on the increase. This made me think. Shoplifting has always been a thing
in the south east. In the late 1970s most of class
4B at school would take sweetie orders during the mornings and at lunchtime
go to the local shop and nick that for which they had orders. After
lunchtimes the local shop looked like the locusts had passed through. I can remember
that after a week of this the headmaster announced that the local shops were
out of bounds. I can remember this very distinctly; our total snob of a
headmaster wasn't upset by the shoplifting but by the damage to the school's
reputation. And when “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”
used to run a shop in Margate a few years back she and all the shops in the
area used to close up at school chuck-out time
because of the amount of stuff that would get pilfered. It would
seem that after forty years of this being commonplace the
authorities have finally decided to do something about it. As well they
should. There was loads of other
drivel on the radio too; over-runs of budgets on HS2, bombings the the middle east, George Harrison. I didn't really pay
that much attention to the radio. I was concentrating on staying alive. With
the motorway mostly three lanes from Ashford to Maidstone I'd sadly managed
to coincide going up the motorway with the emptying of one of the ferries.
You can always tell; there are miles of slow moving
lorries in the motorway's slow lane and miles of lorries going about one mile
per hour faster in the middle lane. Once I'd managed to get onto the motorway
(the lorries don't like letting you on!) I had the choice of
travelling in the slow lane at just under forty miles an hour, or in the fast
lane with idiots only yards from the back bumper flashing their lights in
their impatience no matter how fast I went. Work was work; I got my pension form signed and
witnessed and returned to management and then had a rather good day. And
being on the early shift I got out early. I drove home with good intentions of taking the
dogs to Orlestone, but as I came down the motorway so the drizzle started. And then the tyre low
pressure warning came on for all four tyres. Coming on for all four tyres
isn’t as bad as just one coming on. If it is just one, then there’s probably
a nail through it. All four going at the same time is just air slowly
escaping over time (I hope!). I got home, pumped up all four tyres, and ended
up filthy. Back in the day I used to get equally grubby hands when tightening
the chain on my motorbike, and back in the day I always had a tub of Swarfega
in the house for the clean-up. Apparently the stuff
is still going; I thought they went bust years ago. I shall have to get some;
soap and a nail brush doesn’t come close to what the green stuff used to do. Once I’d finally got my hands reasonably clean
the drizzle had become full-on rain. The dogs weren’t overly keen on feeding
the fish, so I quietly cancelled the walk round Orlestone
with a clear conscience. I wonder what’s for dinner? |
|
24 October 2023
(Tuesday) - Not on the Night Shift
When
I woke after a reasonable night's sleep I noticed
something. Treacle was at the foot of the bed (not in anyone's way) and
both Morgan and Bailey were lined up with me and “er indoors TM”.
With all of us orientated the same way there was a lot more space on the bed.
I'm sure this was far more through random chance than judgement, but it was
something of a result nonetheless. I
got up, made toast and watched more "Foundation"
which wasn't that bad really, then had a little look at the Internet. It was
still there. However it was relatively
peaceful this morning. Apart from some petty sarcasm on the home-made Daleks
Facebook page (there's some obscure stuff there if you look for it!)
there wasn't anything kicking off for once. Mind you there was bad news... I
say "bad news"... Chambers Bar in Folkestone is up for sale.
Chambers Bar is always a "must visit" place on any pub crawl
round Folkestone. The place usually has five decent ales on, and for many
years the Easter beer festival was one of the highlights of the year.
Apparently after twenty-five years the people who own it have had enough. I
suspect running something like that is hard work, but with pubs closing left,
right and centre, will they be able to sell the place as a going concern? I
hope so. I
sent off birthday wishes to the one friend who was having a birthday today
and got ready for work. The
original plan for today had me doing the night shift but a colleague has
asked if she could do the night as it would make her child
care arrangements much easier. I was quite happy to get out of the
night shift but this did mean doing day shifts today
and tomorrow at Pembury. So I drove off west-wards
through a very dark and rainy morning. As
I drove along the lanes I listened to the radio as I do. Much of the talk
this morning was about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East in which
everyone interviewed differed in the specifics of their opinion, but everyone
interviewed agreed that the conflict has been going on for years and will
continue to do so. In between the doom and gloom were a couple of interesting
snippets. Apparently
the Earth's core has
sprung a leak. I wonder if it will deflate? And
a recently run simulation of the creation and subsequent evolution of the
universe has shown that current
cosmology theories are wrong. However the
professor being interviewed was rather pleased about this... all the
time science needs a better theory, the chap still has a job. And
then it was time for "Thought for the Day". If you have a
minute, see if you can call it up on the i-player.
Some fatuous vicar was banging on about how the frankly dire situation in the
Middle East proves how wonderful and loving his god is. To me, all he did was
prove that right is wrong and black is white, but what do I know? Work
was work… it wasn’t a bad day but I’ve had better.
To be honest I always say I love working at Pembury but hate going there. I
hate the coming home as well. As I drove in to work through the dark this
morning and came home through the dark this evening probably a quarter of the
ongoing vehicles had their light on high beam and had no intention of dipping
them. I
did get home safely, but it can only be a matter of time before I’m driven
into a ditch by a boy racer or because I was blinded by the lights. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a
very good bit of dinner. It was good to be scoffing it at home and not being
at work tonight. I wonder how many more night shifts I can swap out of… |
|
25 October 2023
(Wednesday) - A Visitor
Finding
myself wide awake far too early I gave up trying to sleep, made brekkie and
watched the last episode of “Foundation” on Apple TV. Now I’ve seen it
all (so far…) I’m still not sure what to make of it. The show is based
on a series of short stories that Isaac Asimov wrote about seventy years ago.
The stories follow the collapse of an empire and the growth of its successor
over hundreds of years. The stories were rather good. The TV show sort-of
takes some of these stories and sort-of uses them in a rather disjointed sort
of way. Watching the TV show I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking “that’s
not supposed to happen” or “those characters lived a hundred years
apart”. I also spent far too long concerned that a colony living in
prefabricated huts was still living in those same huts a hundred years later
when the writers would have us believe they were well on the way to empire
themselves. But my biggest gripe with the show was that I had a vague idea
what was going on because I’d read the books. Anyone who’d not read them (or
had forgotten them) would have been all at sea. Just like what happened
when the “Harry Potter” books were made into films. Now
that’s watched I wonder what will be occupying me in the early morning
tomorrow? I
had a little look at the Internet as I do most mornings. It was still there.
This morning there was quite a lot of talk about how more animated episodes
of “Doctor Who” are to be made from the original audio footage. I’ve
got some of these myself; they are rather good. There were also quite a few
photos of people who’ve been out picking pumpkins. At first
I thought it odd that people would be doing that mid-week, but (apparently)
all the schools are on half-term this week? I’ve rather got out of touch with
that sort of thing. I
sent out birthday wishes to the one friend who is having a birthday today,
then got ready for work. Having
swapped out of doing last night's night shift, as I set off to work I found myself wishing I'd done that night shift. If
I had, I wouldn't have been driving through a dark wet miserable morning to
work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were banging on about how many
amateur rugby games are being cancelled at the moment because clubs can't
get enough members to field a team to play the games. And
professional rugby teams are concerned that with amateur teams struggling,
they too will struggle to get players coming through the system, and rugby
fans are worried for the future of their passion. But (so it would seem)
not worried enough to go scrum down themselves. For myself I can't see the
attraction of watching sport. For me sport is done, not watched. But look at
the popularity of it - entire TV channels devoted to the stuff. I would seem
to be in the minority on this one... Mind you, I wouldn't mind playing a game
of rugby; I'm certainly up for it, if not up to it. And
there was loads of talk on the radio about the
ongoing conflict in Gaza... specifically talk about the talk about the
situation in Gaza. Both Sir
Kier Starmer and the Secretary
General of the United Nations would seem to have either said too
much or not said enough and have caused all sorts of upset and offence. Isn't
it frankly amazing that what someone or other has to say about the news is considered to be more interesting than the news itself? Work was dull. At tea break I had a message; “er
indoors TM” has taken to putting out sunflower seeds
on the lock-ups outside the kitchen window at home
so she can watch the birds as she works, This morning a squirrel came down
for some elevensies. And three dogs who (without
fail) go ballistic about squirrels in the woods apparently slept through
the entire squirrine visit. I came home where “er indoors TM” boiled
up a very good bit of dinner whilst the washing machine sorted out the
undercrackers, and I had a look at the monthly accounts. Not too shabby
really… they would be a whole lot better if I didn’t keep squandering good
money on crap which I neither need nor want. I wonder how they will hold up to retirement? |
|
26 October 2023 (Thursday)
- Banners Flying (Apparently)
I
woke up at three o'clock this morning in need of a tiddle, rolled over and
then slept through until quarter top six when I was seriously in need of a
tiddle. But sleeping probably two hours more than yesterday was something of
a result. I got up, had that tiddle, made toast and started on the seventh
season of "Big Mouth" (which was quite entertaining) as
I sorted the undercrackers which had tumble-dried. And
with telly watched I had my usual root around the Internet. The Facebook page
for people who went to my old school was having something of a retrospective
on one of the old maths teachers this morning. "Fred Bread"
taught us maths for a year whilst I was at secondary school... Mind you when
I say "taught us maths", I need to
point out that our maths class was immediately after the morning break.
Immediately before the morning break "Fred Bread" was
teaching at the Priory Road school on the other side of town (our school
had two branches), and immediately after the break he was supposed to be
teaching us some three miles away. The chap flatly refused to travel during
the break time and so consequently arrived twenty-five minutes late for every
lesson with us. He would then spend most of the remaining lesson time
grumbling about how he shouldn't be expected to travel in break time. Through
his "expert tuition" I managed a twenty per cent score in
the end of year exams, and much of the next year was spent with the next
maths teacher amazed at how little we'd learned in the previous year. I
can remember a "Brains Trust" quiz competition as a fund
raiser at school in which "Fred Bread" publicly asked "If
you had a third hand, where would you put it?" and another teacher (who
went on to become a vicar) replying (equally publicly) "punched
down your throat" with quite some venom. However
most people offering an opinion this morning seemed to think that "Fred
Bread" was perhaps the most able teacher of mathematics who ever
lived. It is strange how people's recollections differ. Pausing
only briefly to be awarded the Munzee "Banners Flying"
e-badge (what was that all about?) I set off through the rain up the
motorway to Maidstone. As I set off my piss boiled
somewhat. There was a lot of talk about how university students are running
up such massive debts to pay their tuition and accommodation fees. I can't
help but think that perhaps we (as a nation) might revisit higher
education. What is it all about? Why do people run up massive debts studying
the most random of subjects? Why not go down the old "apprenticeship"
scheme and get degrees and qualifications which are relevant to your work and
obtained as you work, the costs of which being paid as part of your wages?
Like I did when I had six years working four days a week and going to various
colleges on the fifth? I can remember conversations of years ago with friends
who'd got degrees they weren't going to use, and with massive debts... who at
the time were starting jobs effectively three years behind where they might
have been. There
was a lot of other stuff on the radio this morning too, mostly about the
ongoing war in Gaza. There was brief mention about developments in cosmology
theories, but this was quite clearly considered (by those resenting the
news) nowhere near as important as the latest antics of Ant & Dec. I
didn't really pay that much attention to the radio; I must admit that most of
my attention was on staying alive; driving up the dark motorway in the rain
can be something of a challenge. Work
was work; I had a rather good day, but was still
glad when home time came. Having got to work rather early in the hope of
avoiding traffic light hold-ups I was stuck in the thick of them on the way
home. I’ve grumbled about the mentality of people who organise the county’s
traffic before, but you really would think that having one way to the
hospital being blocked up would be enough, wouldn’t you? Do you *really*
need road works on the other ways too? I got home and fed the hounds, then “er
indoors TM” arrived with “Darcie Waa Waa TM”. “Daddy’s Little
Angel TM” has gone down with the rona,
and seriously needed a good night’s sleep. Much
as I do like having littlun to stay, she is hard work… |
|
27 October 2023
(Friday) - Viruses, Petrol, Stuff...
With “er indoors TM” and
“Darcie Waa Waa TM” spending
the night in the attic room, all the dogs wanted to be up there too. “er indoors TM” had said "NO!"
on Saturday night and the dogs had just whinged all
night long, so last night she relented and (if nothing else) I got a
good night's kip. I have a vague recollection of them all stomping downstairs
in the small hours, but that might have been a dream. I
made toast, watched an episode of "Big Mouth", and then
turned the telly off and put the remote control where favourite smallest
granddaughter wouldn't be able to reach it. Last night she was quite
aggressively pointing at it and demanding "Give it!” Letting her
loose on it would be a recipe for disaster. With
a few minutes spare I had a little look at the Internet and rolled my eyes at
Facebook. This morning there was quite the argument kicking off on one of the
Star Trek related pages I follow. Someone who obviously hasn't watched much
Star Trek was asking who would win in a fight between one load of fictional
aliens and another. Loads of people were weighing in with various opinions;
all seemingly oblivious that this hypothetical fight had formed the basis of
the entire third season of "Star Trek: Picard". It never
fails to amaze me how so many people get into so many bitter fights over that
about which they know absolutely nothing. And
then my phone asked for a virus scan, and whilst it was at it, it checked out
my Internet connection which is “fast”. Or so it claims. Is it? I have
no idea. I
got dressed. With everyone else up in the attic room I could get dressed in
the bedroom with the light on. There is something strangely satisfying in
knowing that your undercrackers are the right way round *before* you
pull them up. I
resisted the temptation to go upstairs to say goodbye to everyone,
and letting sleeping dogs (and llittluns)
lie I set off to work. I am reliably informed that “Darcie Waa Waa TM” eventually woke up some
three hours after I left. As
I set off so the bin lorry came up the road. I'd
heard their advance party shouting to each other earlier. I
drove up the motorway listening to the pundits on the radio who were talking
about the mass shooting in America where some maniac with a
gun has killed eighteen people, injured a dozen more, and is still
on the loose. The point was made that this isn't really news as this sort of
thing has already happened over
five hundred times in America this year. There have been a few calls
to ban guns, but no one is really listening to the "let's not kill
everyone" lobby; clearly those who make guns have quite a bit of
power over there. It
would also seem that the "let's not kill everyone" lobby is
doing equally badly in the Middle East with the Gaza situation going from bad
to worse, and the Americans now bombing
Iranian installations in Syria. When
I was a lad the future looked to bright... I despair
for what “Darcie Waa Waa TM” is
going to get when she grows up. As
I drove I kept looking at the car's dashboard. I'd
left home with the trip meter thingy telling me I'd driven four hundred and
sixty miles since I'd last got petrol. I thought I would probably be OK to
get to the filling station in Aylesford (and if I wasn't then that would
be an adventure for today's diary). The car gave quite a loud alarm five
miles up the motorway telling me that I had forty miles of petrol left, and
the gauge's needle seemed to be dropping fast as I found myself slowing
behind the stream of traffic. I
got to the petrol station without conking out though;
which was probably for the best. And from there I popped over to the
Sainsbury's supermarket for a sandwich and some sugar and stuff. That trip
also passed off without incident, which was a mild disappointment. The sour
faced battleaxe who works there who had been the
subject of bitter gossip in the filling station was nowhere to be seen this
morning. That was something of a shame; whenever I go into Sainsburys in the
mornings I've taken to smiling at her and asking innocuous questions just to
provoke her. You'd be amazed at the nasty and spiteful replies she gives to
the most innocent remarks. I have complained in the past (to no avail)
but winding her up is much more fun. I
got to work where I had something of a "glandular fever"
sort of day. I blame the kids getting bored during the half-term holidays. For
those of my loyal readers who aren't up on the intricacies of virology, the
virus which causes glandular fever is a rather weedy thing. It dies when out
of the human body for only a few minutes. It is spread by close contact; most easily by snogging. A few years ago I was telling the trainees about glandular fever. One
young lady trainee proudly announced that she'd had glandular fever. Another
looked her up and down with great contempt and announced "yeah... you
look the sort". They
didn't actually come to blows, but things were tense
for a while. And
talking of not being up on the intricacies of virology, “Daddy’s Little
Angel TM” remains diseased. To be fair to her, viruses
are rather small things so it is easy to lose sight
of the little blighters. But whilst she remains moribund
we get to keep hold of “Darcie Waa Waa TM” for
another night, which is far easier to write about than to actually do. It has to be said it would be a lot easier if she weren't
constantly trying to snog the dogs. Poor Bailey looks absolutely exhausted
with it all. As I write this “er indoors TM” is
doing bath time with “Darcie Waa Waa TM”.
All three dogs are in the bathroom too. I think they are gloating as they
probably see bath time as some sort of punishment; in their world it probably
is. The sounds emanating from the tub all sound rather traumatic, but I’m
enjoying a wonderful moment of peace and quiet. It won’t last long. |
|
28 October 2023
(Saturday) - Before the Late Shift
I
woke to the sound of littlun having a stress fit shortly before seven
o’clock. She had several of those yesterday. I thought I’d better get up and
have a shave before the onslaught, but by the time I’d had a scrape, all was
quiet again. I
made the most of it and had some toast and peered into the Internet. I was
bombarded with adverts for sets of first edition
coins – I could get a complete set of the first load of coins to
feature the new king,. That would be nice… A set of coins which comes to the
total value of three pounds eighty-eight pence would set me back thirty-three
quid. If I wanted I could pay sixty-six quid and get
duplicate coins so I could see both the front and the back of the coins. Or (if
I was important enough) I could shell out eighty-five quid on the limited
edition set. Presumably limited to as many as they can sell? If
anyone wants a set of these coins, I’ll sort you one out for twenty quid… I
was reminded of a friend of a friend who started a small business (many
years ago) in which he bought loads of plain plastic frisbees and lunch
boxes and rulers and the like. He printed off a load of Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles stickers, stuck them on his plastic tat and made a fortune. He took
the stickers off of those that didn’t sell and
replaced them with Spice Girls stickers and sold more. The last I heard he
was still coining it in, milking money from those who were wanting to jump on
whatever bandwagon is the latest craze. I
looked at the rain... and looked at the key to the field in which we have Dog
Club. If I wasn't the key holder I wouldn't have gone along this morning. I
chivvied the dogs downstairs and into their coats
and we drove through some rather awful rain to Dog Club. I opened
up, and within a couple of minutes Ralph (and his humans)
joined us, soon followed by Kai and Polly and their humans. The rain
slackened off to mild drizzle, and seven dogs and five humans made the most
of it. Some of the dogs were chasing after a ball being thrown, and with far
fewer dogs along than usual, Treacle made an attempt
to join in. I saw that as a major result. But
the drizzle soon gave way to heavier rain. We all said our goodbyes and
left... and then I had a little issue with Morgan who didn't want to go home,
and thought that if he stood in the middle of a rather deep puddle I wouldn't be able to get him. He
thought wrong. As
we drove home Steve was doing the mystery year on the radio which I thought
was 1978. As the questions went on I became more and
more confident... until he mentioned a television show on Channel Four.
Channel Four started in 1982. So much for my theory. Once
home the dogs had a hot shower to warm them all up (and shift the mud).
I had a complete change of clothes (even my pants were wringing wet),
and I went up to the attic room to wake “er indoors TM” and
“Darcie Waa Waa TM”. We
then had an entertaining hour or so in which “Darcie Waa Waa TM” and I alternately sang
along with Lube-Tube (!) songs (as she used Treacle as a pillow)
and went out to the garden to see the water dogs (fish) in the pond.
Favourite smallest granddaughter didn't care about the rain; when she pointed
to the back door, out we went. It
was raining particularly hard as I drove off to work, but the rain gave way
to glorious sunshine, then went back to rain, and then to sunshine again
every few minutes. As I drove a familiar car came past and pulled in front of
me. “My Boy TM” and his tribe were all off out
somewhere. I wonder where? I
got to work, had a bit of dinner, and cracked on with the late shift. As I worked I alternately smiled and sulked as the rain came
and went. I don't mind working when it rains, and there was
probably equal amounts of rain and shine this afternoon. As I worked “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM” sent me some photos - “Darcie Waa Waa TM” had gone home and was
far more pleased to see Pogo than her. Work
was rather hard work today; it probably didn’t help that as the afternoon
wore on I felt progressively more and more grotty.
Once I got home I did a ‘rona
test to see if I’d caught it from “Darcie Waa Waa TM”. I
hadn’t. It was negative. I suppose this is the new world order… every little
headache and sore throat from here on in will raise the suspicion of ‘rona. “er
indoors TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which
we scoffed whilst watching “Below
Deck”; a sort-of cross between “Big Brother” and “Carry on Cruising”.
Like all these reality-TV shows I can’t help but think that the characters in
it are all actors; are people *really* that stupid? Mind you, I’m completely hooked with this show… |
|
29 October 2023
(Sunday) - On The Dull Side
What
with a rather late night and (frankly ridiculous) daylight saving we
were rather late out of bed this morning. Usually I
resent wasting time in my pit, but the weather forecast for today wasn’t
good. Having been listening to the rain, hearing a lull I got the dogs into
the garden and they did what was expected of them. I
made toast, had a look at a frankly dull internet, then carried on trying to
solve a geo-puzzle. This one involves solving a series of on-line jigsaws
related to Bagpuss. I completed the one I’d started
a couple of nights ago; that one only took five hours in total and made a
start on the next. And then I took a deep breath and realised that I hate
jigsaw puzzles. I sent a message to the bloke who’d set the puzzle. He said
there were twelve in total, all getting increasingly more difficult. Bearing
in mind the ninth took five hours to do, I decided to stop at that point. Seeing a break in the weather I went on a little
outing. “er indoors TM” is
secretary of the scout group and they were having their AGM this afternoon.
As she was feeling a tad under the weather I
delivered the paperwork that needed delivering. Back in the day a rather dull
scout group AGM would take a few minutes after a cubs or scouts meeting, and
you wouldn’t really notice the time it took. Nowadays you are expected to
give up an entire afternoon to the thing. I must have enjoyed some of my time
as a scout leader as I did it for long enough, but I can’t help but feel that
I am well out of it. Is that wrong of me? I came home via Pets at Home as we needed dog food
and fish food. The place was surprisingly busy, and for every customer that
was looking were they were going, there was a dozen who were just randomly
blundering about. I see this so often in so many places. So many people
really do blunder about; seemingly obvious that there are other people in the
vicinity into whom they are seemingly constantly crashing. Perhaps I might
take to doing that; if only for a bit of a laugh. As
I walked into Pets at Home it had been a glorious day with bright sunshine
and blue skies. As I walked out less than ten minutes later there was a
completely black sky and torrential rain. By the time I’d got the shopping
home we had a blue sky again. This was today in a nutshell;
beautiful sunshine alternating with torrential rain. Seeing the sun I took a chance and ran the dogs round the block. We
got round without getting soaked, and without incident too. But once home the rain started again. “er indoors TM” cracked open a pot
of guacamole dip and we scoffed it with mushroom flavoured
crisps (oh yes!!!) whilst watching an episode of “Taskmaster”.
Lucy Beaumont was in that show and was not doing very well… I remember her
husband John Richardson advising her against spearing in TV quiz shows as no
one ever notices who wins, but everyone does notice those who make complete
idiots of themselves. I went into the garden to have a quick measure-up of
the pond with a view to enlarge the bog filter. Part of that will involve
some serious ground work and sawing of sleepers. But
just as I got the tape measure out so the rain
started again. I effectively gave up on the afternoon at that point
and watched several episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which two
half-way decent B&B establishments were up against a canal boat which
offered (rather good) accommodation, and a complete sh*t-hole. I’m sorry - there was no other way to describe
it. The sh*t-hole was run by some woman who was
absolutely convinced that cheap was good, and cheaper was better, and she was
accompanied (but *not* assisted) by her husband who considered himself
to he a high-flying businessman but was actually a bit of a tit. One of their bathrooms was filmed
with toilet roll and soap dispensers being empty, tiles coming off the walls,
paint flaking in chucks the size of your hand, and this chap claimed that
this was nothing that should warrant any complaint. When challenged that half
the light bulbs in the place were missing (they were!) he replied by
asking how many light bulbs do people want? I do love that show. As
I laughed at the antics on the hoteliers, so Morgan and Bailey snuggled with
me. They’ve both been rather quiet today; I hope they aren’t sickening for
something. “er
indoors TM” then drove off
to Folkestone and came back with “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” and “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” (together with
Pogo) who all came up for Sunday dinner. I’m going back to work tomorrow for a bit of peace
and quiet… |
|
30 October 2023
(Monday) - Diseased
On
Saturday I mentioned that I’d I was feeling grim, but
had done a rona test and it was negative. I perked
up a bit yesterday, but as the evening wore on I
wasn’t feeing very good. I had an early night, but was coughing and headaching
and the throat was getting iffier. I got up for a wazz
at half past three, and whilst I was at it I did
another rona test. This
one was positive. I
immediately messaged the works WhatsApp group to say I wouldn’t be showing up
for the early shift, and was surprised at just how
many colleagues were awake that early. I
went back to bed, but didn’t sleep much. With “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM”, “Darcie Waa Waa TM” and
Pogo all in the attic room the dogs were all rather
excited at every sound that came from above. There was a particularly loud
crash just after half past four; I rather expected Pogo to be coming through
the ceiling. I
got up shortly before eight o’clock, had a very impressive coughing fit, and
made myself some brekkie whilst everyone else was fast asleep. There
was a picture of some children and a horse on one of the Facebook 1970s TV
shows pages, and quite a bitter argument was going on about whether the
picture was from “Follyfoot” or “Black
Beauty”. As if it really mattered. I
can remember every Sunday evening having to have the start of “Black
Beauty” on the telly. In the lead-up to the show my brother would be
shouting “Black Du-Du, Black Du-Du”. He would burst into
tears during the theme tune, and with the theme tune done we could turn the
telly off as he’d then lost interest. He used to do the same with episode of
“The Good Life” too. Happy
days. Not
much else was happening on Facebook really, so I had a look at my in-box. I
had an email from YouGov about the surveys I do for them (sometimes).
In September I did two surveys which was a response rate of only eight per
cent (apparently I ignored ninety-two per
cent of the emails they sent me) but I was still in the top thirty-six
per cent of respondents. I
phoned in to work to find out what the drill was… Apparently today is counted
as “Day Zero”; I have to be off until Day
Five… so that’s a week off work for me. Ironic really… there is so much I
could be doing, and I feel like death warmed up. Having
been awake for much of the night I then slept on the sofa (under a pile of
dogs) for two hours. “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” and
“Darcie Waa Waa TM” got
up five minutes before mid-day We
put “The
Phantom Tollbooth” on to Amazon Prime and slept through most of it,
then put several episodes of “South Park” onto Paramount Plus and
slept through those too. Usually
on an average day my watch tells me that I walk over six thousand steps a
day; and over twelve thousand on a dog walk day. Today by eight o’clock in
the evening I still hadn’t done five hundred steps. The
last time I had rona I must admit I wasn’t
impressed with it. At
the time I wrote “I must admit that I feel as though I’m testing
positive for COVID as opposed to actually having the thing, and I think it
fair to say that compared to thousands I seem to have got off very lightly”. This
time I can see what all the fuss is about… I feel rather grotty to say the
least…. |
|
31 October 2023
(Tuesday) - Dying to Death
There’s
no denying that I had a bad night. I dozed on and off until half past seven
in between coughing and sniffing fits before getting up and spending a couple
of hours on the sofa continuing to cough and sniff until my stomach hurt. I
must admit to being really hacked off with this COVID lark; the last time I
had it, I wasn’t ill at all. The rules said that I had to stay away from
everyone else all the time that I was infectious and so I effectively had a
bonus week’s holiday. When I was told yesterday that I can’t come in to work
for a week I thought I might get another. But
this time I’m ill. I
spent most of the day on the sofa watching all sorts of tripe. “Blue
Planet” and a documentary about snow leopards on the Eden channel,
something about a huge oil tanker, and more “Four In
A Bed” in which the woman who’d spent three episodes telling everyone how
clean her place was had dust thick enough in which to write your name. Once
she’d done her day’s work “er indoors TM” drove “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”, “Darcie Waa Waa TM” and Pogo home. As we’d
all gone down with disease it seemed sensible to suffer together, but with “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” seemingly on
the mend “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” thought it best to
go home. As
they went home I was charged with making our dinner.
I have a special recipe; I chop up all the leftovers from yesterday’s dinner
and bung it in a pot together with all the apples and bananas and pineapples
that “Darcie Waa Waa TM” hadn’t
finished. I then stick a little water into the brown sauce and ketchup
bottles that are almost (but not quite) empty and squirt that in the
pot, then have a rummage round the fridge and the cupboards to see what else
I can find. I let it all simmer for an hour or so before serving it all up
with rice. Bish bosh(!) As
I cooked I dug out the thermometer and measured my
temperature. It was thirty-eight degrees (Celsius) which is high
enough to
count as a fever. I
said I was poorly… Mind
you today’s step count was over a thousand… just. |
