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1 October 2024
(Tuesday) - -Pulling A Sickie
I
slept like a log for five whole hours, then went to the loo and spent the
rest of the night coughing. Last night I’d been messaging with one of the
bosses who’d suggested I pull a sickie today, and overnight another of the
bosses messaged to say that the rules say that I have to be off sick for five
days after testing positive for the rona. Which
meant I couldn’t go into work today anyway. I can go in as planned on Friday…
if I’m feeling well enough. Will I be? I thought I was chirping up yesterday
but clearly I wasn’t. I’m assuming “er indoors TM” has
the same disease. She went down with it last Wednesday and seems to be on the
mend so maybe I’ll be in to work on Friday. We shall see. I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do.
For the last two weeks we were away with a group of decent people. Living in
close proximity for pretty much the entire time that we weren’t asleep, there
wasn’t a single word of argument or disagreement. People can get along if
they try. However look at the Internet this morning. People were bitterly
arguing about the time signal pips which go off every hour on Radio Four. Can
you think of anything more trivial about which to bicker? And then my lap-top suggested that I might like to
use a proper official branded power cable from the supplier. What was that
all about? It’s been quite happy with the power cable it came with up till
now. I then phoned the bank. Having had a look at my
accounts the other day I saw I had been charged interest on my credit card.
Not much. A piddling amount really. But having paid off the account in full
every month there shouldn’t have been any interest at all. Apparently I was charged interest because I’d bought
all those dollars in August, and you have to pay interest when you get cash
on your credit card. And they charge interest for a few months afterwards
even if you pay off the balance in full. Or so I was told. I explained to the chap in a slow and patient way
that having sent me hundred dollar bills (which were no use to me) I
had to waste half a day finding anywhere that could change them. And then the
bank had the audacity to bill me for that. I’ve whinged
about my bank before. They are very good at saying sorry… but having asked
friends I’ve formed the distinct impression that the banks are all the same. Being very aware of the dogs looking hopefully at me
and finding myself going stir crazy sitting on the sofa I thought I might
relieve the boredom by taking the dogs for a walk. We only went round the
block; a very short walk. I then fixed the power to the shed (a fuse had
blown), fed the dogs and did a little washing up. That was all. And I was
dripping sweat, breathless and all-in. I went back to the sofa. I wrote
up a little CPD (after all I’m not on holiday any more), and
then saw I had another dubious
friend request on Facebook. On her Facebook page Raven tells the
world she is a “professional dominate mistress”. Facebook does give me a lot – unlimited photo
storage, instant access to what friends, colleagues and acquaintances are up
to all over the world… but it isn’t perfect. It will immediately veto any
post containing words it doesn’t like (try posting the word t-w-a-t and
see what happens!), but you can ask for a review of an advert of a
prostitute’s unmoral services only to be told that advertising porn doesn’t
breach their community standards. As I fought
with a geo-puzzle so the doorbell rang. My Lego advent calendar had
arrived. Every year since 2010 I’ve out a little advent adventure on
Facebook. Every year I get the Lego advent calendar and make a point of
not opening it until December, and then only opening it one window at a time.
It isn’t me that makes up the adventures I write; it really is the strange
voices in my head, and (quite frankly) no one is more amazed than me
with what I come up with. I really should open the advent calendar now and
work out the story in advance, but I’m not going to. Still feeling grim I got the ironing board out and
attacked the ironing whilst watching episodes of “Four in a Bed”. This
afternoon’s episodes featured an opinionated idiot who would not shut up
about healthy living and the quality of food (claiming to be a trained
chef). However the breakfasts he offered consisted of a shop-bought
yogurt and a banana, and he wasn’t at all happy to be caught chain smoking,
and on questioning he admitted that he’d had no formal training as a chef but
was entirely self-taught. He went on to take serious offence that he was
being judged against others who were far better at what they did than he was
at what he did. He felt he should be judged for what he did in isolation and
consequently bearing in mind that he does exactly what he claims to do, he
felt he should have scored full marks on everything Despite the rain “er indoors TM” went
off to this evening’s geo-meet. I would have liked to have gone along but
bearing in mind I was off sick and a walk round the block had worm me out
earlier I thought better of it. I slobbed in front of the
telly under dogs until she came home. She came home with fish and chips. They ain’t cheap these
days… |
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2 October 2024
(Wednesday) - Still Feeling Grim
I
slept well last night. Not quite so much coughing, but as I scoffed toast I
did feel that I was running a temperature. The internet was much the same as ever. Squabbles
and trivia abounded as they do. But I had an email. Geocaching HQ have given
me a Community Celebration Event – the ability to run a special event next
year. I had one once before when we ran a Wherigo event. I wonder what I can
do with this one? I’ve a vague idea to hire a village hall and have an
afternoon of pub games. The obvious location for this would be in a room in a
pub somewhere, but that would get rather expensive. It’s at times like this
that being a scout leader was useful in that I had access to a scout hut. I munzed, I got Wordle in
three goes. Bearing in mind the dogs hadn’t had a decent walk in four days I
took them up to the woods. That was a mistake. We walked for two miles; at
the end I was sweating, clammy and breathless. As we walked we had a minor episode. As we came to a
crossroads so we saw some chap hysterically screaming. We watched as a small
labrador slinked toward him, but on seeing us ran to us. My three dogs ran up
to the dog and all said hello. This didn’t go down well with Mr. Shouty who
started bellowing even more. I whistled to call my three. They came to me,
and after a moment his dog followed. I told the dog he had to go to Mr.
Shouty. Dogs understand (they really do) and reluctantly the dog
walked back. We carried on walking, but in less that
a minute Mr. Shouty was bellowing again. All the dogs were playing together
nicely and he didn’t like it. So I called my three with a whistling sound (which
worked) and he called his with hysterical screaming (which didn’t).
He then started ranting about how he was having problems because his dog was
attracted to the sound of the whistling which I use to call my three. I
suggested he tried a different sound to attract his dog as hysterical
screaming clearly wasn’t working. Eventually he got his dog on a lead and
marched off in the direction of the car park. It was the way we were going
anyway. I couldn’t see why the dogs couldn’t walk together as that was the
way that we were going but he clearly wasn’t having any of it. On any other
day we would have walked off in a different direction but I was feeling
all-in so we gave him a few minutes and then followed slowly. As we drove home my piss boiled. The pundits on the
radio were talking about the case of Lucy Letby; the nurse who
has gone to prison having been found guilty of murdering several babies at
the Countess of Chester hospital. Apparently new evidence has come to light,
not the least of which was the fact that she wasn’t even on duty (or
anywhere near the hospital) on the day when one of the babies died. There
was some expert being interviewed who implied that the babies who died were
so ill they should have been in a specialist paediatric
hospital (and not where they were) and also implied that Ms. Letby was
a scapegoat for the failings of a system which wasn’t up to the job. There are calls for a re-trial… but will that get to
the truth of the matter? It’s been my (admittedly limited) experience
that legal types seem to enjoy debating and posturing and trying to make
themselves look good rather than actually getting to the truth. On the one
occasion I found myself in court I defended myself, and the prosecuting
barrister openly told me I wasn’t making a good job of defending myself, and
then made a very eloquent and posturing speech on my behalf totally
contradicting what she’d just said herself. What we as a society need is legal types paid to get
to the truth. At the moment they are paid to either bang someone up and/or
get someone off. A subtle difference. British justice, eh? Mind you, the BBC deserve being called out too.
Bearing in mind they once ran a prime time show painting
Ms Letby as the devil incarnate, it’s a tad ironic
that they should now have a complete about-face and claim she’s an innocent
victim. We came home. I scrubbed the mud off of dogs’
bellies then collapsed on the sofa. I’d certainly overdone it with this
morning’s walk. With the weather having seriously chirped up and loads of
stuff I might be getting on with outside, I just sat and struggled with some
fiendishly difficult geo-puzzles. Mind you I say “fiendishly difficult”;
the puzzles aren’t *that* hard once you spot the theme of the puzzle.
The trick is spotting the theme. The chap who set them is a friend of mine,
and I’ve been first to find on four of his puzzles. So they are solvable if
you can spot what they are all about. With a concerted effort I solved one that I’d been
struggling with since July. Flushed with success I then spent two fruitless
hours fighting with another. If
only I knew who the people in the pictures were… Google image search told me
some of them, but by no means all. “er indoors TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst
watching the most recent season of “Bake off: The Professionals”. It
was rather good. I then spent a little while fighting with the puzzle
featuring the piccie above. I think I’ve identified
about half of them now. Many still elude me though… In theory I should be feeling a bit better now. In
practice it ain’t happening… |
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3 October 2024
(Thursday) - And Still Feeling Grim
I
slept rather well. I made toast and peered into the Internet, As I did I
suddenly had a coughing fit, my temperature went through the roof and I came
over incredibly sweaty. The first time I had COVID I can remember thinking
the thing was something of a disappointment; I only knew I was ill as at the
time work insisted we did tests twice a week. Such a shame I couldn’t have
had that variety of COVID this time. Facebook was rather quiet this morning. I had a munz from the comfort of the sofa. Today marked the start
of this month’s Clan War. And then I got Worldle.
Eventually. Bearing in mind I wasn’t well I should have stayed
home. But it was a bright sunny morning so I took the dogs out. Bearing in
mind I was supposed to be back at work tomorrow I should have been up for a
dog walk? Shouldn’t I? We drove to Longbeech Woods
for a change. We walked a rather short walk and at the end I was cold,
clammy, breathless and dripping sweat. I phoned work and the boss agreed I
should take tomorrow and Saturday off sick. Whilst this is obviously the
sensible thing to do, part of me isn’t happy about this. Admittedly it isn’t
that long since I had two weeks off sick following my nasal re-bore. But
apart from that I can’t remember the last time I took sick leave. But it is
because I don’t remember things like this that I write this diary. I had a
week off sick last November when I had COVID last time, and then a week in
April 2022 when I had a week off with COVID for the first time. And a week in
January 2022 when I had my nose done last time. I don’t think that’s a bad sick record really. I can
remember back in the day when I was a manager having to have words with quite
a few people who had taken at least one day off sick every week for more than
a year. But I still feel bad about it. “er indoors TM” said goodbye and went off to see “Daddies’ Little Angel TM”. They
were doing birthday things for grandson. I would have loved to have gone
along, but it wouldn’t be fair for me to be breathing disease over everyone
so I stayed home. I had another look at the geo-puzzle with which I
was fighting yesterday. And after ten minutes gave up. Instead I slobbed on the sofa with the dogs and watched a film on
You-Tube. Just recently all the Star Trek related Facebook pages have been
raving about the release of “Farragut Forward”;
the latest fan-made Star Trek thing on You-Tube. Like all fan-made Star Trek
things it was something of a disappointment. Filled with endless references
to all the Star Trek series and films it didn’t actually feature anything new
or original. After this was the seemingly obligatory episodes of
“Four in a Bed” in which everyone tries to justify that whatever it is
with which they are finding fault is a serious misdemeanor when done by
someone else, but actually perfectly acceptable when they do it themselves. As I watched so my new digital thermometer arrived.
The thing claims my temperature is fine. It probably is, and if it is (which
it probably is) can only be a step in the right direction. I made some toast for tea, and as I scoffed it I
watched a film on Netflix. “Uglies” was rather
good. In some ways it featured ideas which were already old fifty years ago
when they formed the premise of “Logan’s Run”, but with a twist. Apparently it was based on a book… wonder if I can
get that on the Kindle? |
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4 October 2024
(Friday) - Wedding Anniversary
When
I’m on the early shift at Pembury (like I was supposed to be today) I
like to set off about six o’clock so as to give myself time to get through
the sets of temporary traffic lights that plague that journey. Having already
phoned in sick I eventually woke up this morning about an hour after I would
have started working. I did another COVID test; I’ve got an appointment
with the dental hygienist on Monday. They say that if I’m feeling OK and
testing negative then I can go ahead with the appointment. I’m testing
negative, and I think I’m on the mend. I’ve still got a little way to go, but
I’m certainly better than I was. I made toast and had a look at the Internet just in
case I’d missed anything. There was a bit of a squabble about electric cars
taking place on one of the Facebook pages I follow. It would seem the price
of them is coming down, and having bought one, very few people them go back
to a petrol or diesel car. I must admit I’d love an electric car. But… The
things have a range of about two hundred miles (about!). Which is
about (!) three trips to work. Bearing in mind that in the works car
park there are spaces for two thousand cars and chargers for two cars. And
also bearing in mind that I rarely get to park outside the house, an electric
car remains impractical. Despite feeling rather iffy I still took the dogs to
the woods. They get fractious if not given a walk. We went to Longbeech where again a huge foreign camper van was
taking up most of the car park. I’ve been told that this car park features on
an on-line list of places where you can park a camper van for free, and
that’s why there’s so often huge camper vans taking the piss. Apart from Bailey rolling in fox poo the walk passed
off rather well. For all that I was a gasping sweating mess when we got to
the end of the walk, I was nowhere near as bad as I had been yesterday. We came home, washed off the fox poo, hung out the
washing, and I cracked on with geo-puzzling. After some herculean brain
straining I eventually got the thumbs-up from the geo-checker on the puzzle
with which I’ve been fighting for the last three days. If I’m feeling better
that might make for a little mission over the weekend. Or it might not. I then started on some more geo-puzzles in the
Romney Marsh area. These ones are dead simple… in theory. The puzzle gives
you a photo of a location on the Romney Marsh. All you have to do is find
where that location is. Then once you’ve found where it is the puzzle tells
you how far from that spot the actual geocache is, and in what direction. You
can use a website (geocaching toolbox) to work out the final location
given the photographed location, distance and direction. All you have to do
is work out where the photograph was taken. And that’s easy enough. Google
Street View will show you that. There’s eight puzzles of this sort. I took screen
shots of all eight final locations, and after an hour driving my lap-top
round the Romney Marsh using Google Street View I hadn’t found any. “er indoors TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner this evening which we washed
down with a bottle of plonk as we watched more “Bake Off: The
Professionals”. Sometimes I wonder if I’d paid more attention
to “Boss” from my days at the Harbour Restaurant might I
have ended up as a professional chef? And in closing, today is my thirty-eighth wedding
anniversary. |
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5 October 2024
(Saturday) - More Sick Leave
I
had a whole lot less coughing last night. It was a shame that Treacle had to
have a snarling fit in the small hours because the little ones wanted to be
on the bed as well as her. Treacle is odd; when we are out and about and meet
other dogs she is invariably terrified and hides and clearly looks to Morgan
and Bailey to protect her (not that there’s ever any protecting to be done).
But when at home she can be quite mean to the littluns. I wish she wouldn’t. I made toast and had a look at the Internet. This
morning I was presented with adverts for Crumb pet tags. These are being
marketed quite forcefully at the moment. The idea is that you attach the tag
to the dog’s collar. If the dog goes walkabout, anyone finding them scans the
bar code on the collar with an app on their phone and the dog owner’s contact
details pop up. Whilst the tags are free, there’s a monthly subscription. And
the whole thing hinges on whoever finds the missing dogs having the proper
app on their phone, and having internet connectivity where they are. Which I
rarely have when in the woods. I don’t see any advantage of this over having
my mobile phone number on the dogs’ tags, which is what I’ve already go in
place. Having said that, I can imagine that many people
would spend out on a monthly subscription on this purely because they can. Being Saturday we went to Dog Club. Part of me felt
a tad guilty about going having phoned in sick to work, but as “er
indoors TM” said to one of our friends, there’s a
world of difference between standing in a paddock for half an hour whilst
feeling grim, and being expected to crack on with a full day’s work whilst
feeling grim. Sadly again Morgan was a bit of an idiot. He gets on fine with
most of the other dogs, but there are two there which he doesn’t like. He
spent the session on his lead. Dog club went rather well. We came home and I nipped
to the corner shop for an almond croissant and a pecan plat which we had with
a cuppa. As I sat down to the cuppa
I realized I was sweating and breathless. I was right to have pulled another
sickie. I sat on the sofa and as I scoffed coffee and
croissant I carried on with the geo-puzzles that I started looking at
yesterday. Given some photos taken on the Romney Marsh all I had to do was to
take a virtual drive round the area until I found the places where the photos
were taken. Simple enough? I started virtually driving round… and woke up two
hours later. Bearing in mind what an idiot Morgan had been at Dog
Club and also bearing in mind the utter failure of the muzzle we’d tried on
him in the past we went on a little shopping mission to get him a firmer
muzzle. We got one from Bybrook Barn which seems to
fit him quite well. As we drove I was amazed at how busy the local roads
were. I suppose you’d expect Saturday afternoon to be a peak time… I rarely
drive about then. We came home and Morgan had a trial run on his
muzzle. He went to sleep wearing it, so that’s got to be a good sign. I must
admit I’m not at all happy about him needing a muzzle, but if he will be an
idiot and nip at other dogs then he has no choice. To be fair to him there’s
only a couple of dogs that rile him, and watching the other dogs playing this
morning at Dog Club he’s not *that* much worse than the others.
There’s a lot of rough-and-tumble going on, but Morgan just goes that little
bit too far with certain other dogs. As idiot-chops dozed in his muzzle I set about the
dishwasher. Things haven’t been coming out of the dishie
quite as clean as they might have done lately. So I took the washer arm
things as apart as they would go and blasted them through with water from the
shower hose. Water seemed to be flowing a bit better than it had been… So as
a trial run I stuck in a load of all the stuff it had failed on overnight. Whist the dishie cracked
on we plumbed in the new DVD player. I say “new”; the thing has been
sitting on the table in its box for several months. We plugged it all in,
sparked it all up, and after a *lot* of farting about the thing went
back in the box. Once plugged in it displayed all the menus it should, but it
simply wouldn’t play any DVDs. Clearly it was talking to the telly because we
can see the menus, but when we pressed “play”, everything stopped
happening. I have a vague recollection that the HDMI cable we have gave us
grief in the past so we’ve got a new one on order. By the time we’d finished farting about the dishie had done its thing. It was better than it had
been, but still not perfect. I shall try topping up the salt and the
rinse-aid before lugging it to the tip. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching
more “Bake Off: The Professionals”. I think I was right to have taken today off… I might
just be beginning to feel if not better, certainly on the mend. |
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6 October 2024
(Sunday) - Basil (?)
I
had a good nine hours asleep last night. That was something of a result. I
set the washing machine going, made toast and had my usual look at the
Internet. It was much the same as ever. Today’s petty squabble was about the
efficiency of home-made pond filters. On the one side were people with rather
good home-made pond filters who were being rather smug. On the other were
people who’d (like me) spent a lot of money buying far less efficient
filters, and were rather jealous. I left them to it – it has to be said that
you can’t beat a garden pond if you want something to argue about. There was an interesting post on the Facebook page
of an author
I follow. I follow her as I like what she writes, but she does have
rather strong opinions which alienate quite a lot of her potential
readership. She’s been rather vocal in her postings about American politics
recently, and it would seem that those with whom she has disagreed have taken
to writing their messages on golf balls which are being flung into her garden
together with broken glass. I had a little Munz from the sofa. And got Wordle on
the third attempt. I was rather pleased about that. I hung out the washing, pruned the pond plants,
and “er indoors TM” and I took the dogs out. We drove down to the Romney Marsh to find the finals
of the puzzle geocaches I’d been struggling with in the week, and we also
picked up one or two other caches that were on our way. One of them looked to
be rather old skool. The designated parking spot
was half a mile from the actual cache location, and the cache itself hadn’t
been found for over a year. If nothing else it would be a good walk for the
dogs. We walked out and searched high and low.
Eventually “er indoors TM” found it in the
very first place that I had looked. We came home. I had hoped to crack on in the garden,
but the drizzle which was mentioned in yesterday’s weather forecast had
started. Interestingly there was no mention of drizzle in today’s weather
forecast before it actually started… As the afternoon wore on so the drizzle got heavier. I got the washing in and hung it on the clothes
horse. “er indoors TM” boiled up bacon
sarnies and then we had another look at the DVD player. Yesterday the thing
had totally failed to work. But in the meantime we’d got a new HDMI cable
from Amazon so we plugged it all in and the thing worked fine. To test it
we’d stuck in the first DVD that came to hand, and seeing it worked we’d left
it playing. I can remember “An
Audience with Victoria Wood” being hilarious when it first came out.
But that was in 1988, and it hasn’t really stood the test of time. Some of it
was still funny, but much of it referred to a time which has long since
passed. This then gave way to a Lee Mack DVD. And a Jason
Manford DVD. I wonder if this is the way forward – now we’ve
plumbed in the DVD player will we be watching endless DVDs? Dare I suggest
that with hundreds of DVDs in the house (probably not quite a thousand)
I doubt if I could watch all of them before I croak. And so consequently
downgrading our Sky package might be a good idea? As we DVD-ed I wrote up a little CPD. While
I quite like the arrangement of working part-time, having to still carry on
doing continuing professional development is something of a pain in the glass
(to coin a phrase). “er indoors TM” boiled up gammon with basil. Have you ever scoffed anything with
basil? At the risk of appearing ungrateful I can’t say I’m keen to do so
again. |
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7 October 2024
(Monday) - On the Mend (?)
I
slept well, which was a result. I made toast and had a look at the Internet.
Facebook wondered if I might like to subscribe to the “Thunderbirds”
page. From what I could see, clicking the “subscribe” button wouldn’t
get me anything that clicking the “like” button would achieve other
than that I’d have to pay money. I decided against it. There wasn’t much else happening on social media so
I had a look at my emails. Several new geocaches had gone live near work; all
needing a canoe to get at them. And I had a load of “DNF” logs on my
geocaches. “DNF” means “did not find” and obviously this is
what you log if you can’t find a specific film pot under a log. However more
and more people are using this sort of log because they couldn’t solve the
puzzle, or because they ran out of time, or because their mum had phoned and
said their tea was ready. Sadly “DNF” logs trigger the geo-feds
who then disable my caches for my attention (and sometimes even archive
them) when there’s not actually anything wrong with the caches. And I had one or two (quite a few) whinging emails about soggy log sheets and full log
sheets on some of my caches as well. I popped down the road to the dentist as I had an
appointment with the hygienist today. As I sat and waited so half a dozen
people all swarmed in together. Mum, dad and several assorted teenagers. They
went to the counter, signed in, and sat down. The receptionist then called
and asked them who was next. This request was greeted with blank stares. The
receptionist asked again. Again blank stares. The receptionist then told it
like it was. Six had walked in; only one had registered for their
appointment. It turned out that only one had an appointment, but the entire
tribe had to come along. Even though the one that was having the appointment
was nineteen years old. It transpired that in their world no one ever did
anything on their own. I got called in. The hygienist rummaged round inside
my gob. There was a lot of hosing and vibrating. I
have no idea whether my cake hole was good or bad. I’m presuming good as the
only thing she said to me was to make another appointment for next March. I came home, collected the dogs and took them to the
woods. As we walked down the field from the car park so there was a woman
standing by a hedge. With make-up trowelled on, she was clearly dressed more
for the catwalk than the woods. Morgan and Bailey ran past her into the hedge
and started barking. Another immaculately dressed woman came running out of
the hedge… well, to be precise she came waddling out of the hedge in some
disarray, but was immaculately dressed once she’d pulled up the skin-tight designer
jeans. It has to be said that the undercrackers she was sporting were far
more suited to nudey-sauce-romps than they were to
a walk round the woods. But I suppose that when you consider that the only
other pair of undercrackers we’ve ever seen in the woods had
been shitted, everything is relative. The two glamour-pusses then minced
off in the direction of the car park. We went the other way. We walked perhaps further than we might have done
today. Having had emails whinging about my geocaches
having full logs and wet logs I checked up on a few only to find that the
supposedly wet logs weren’t wet, and the supposedly full logs weren’t full.
And to add insult to injury, the supposedly missing ones were exactly where
they were supposed to be. We came home. My plan had been to crack on in the
garden. But whilst we’d been walking round the woods with blue skies and
glorious sunshine, “er indoors TM” told me
that we’d had torrential rain at home. Massively different weather in places
only five miles apart. Determined to do something in the garden I cleaned
out the pond filter. Back in the days of the gravity-fed green box, cleaning
the pond filter was a messy smelly back-breaking job that took over an hour.
These days with the pressure filter it is all done in less than quarter of an
hour. The drizzle then started, so like I do far too often
I settled in front of the telly and watched episodes of “Four in a Bed”
in which the people running a B&B for tradesmen in the Midlands paid what
they considered to be their going rate to upmarket hotels in prime tourist
areas. And in doing so brought out the worst in an already rather vindictive
harridan. I do like that show when they all get nasty with
each other. “er indoors TM” boiled up dinner then went bowling. Finding myself home alone with a
working DVD player I put on the first episode of the box set of “Brideshead
Revisited”, and having seen this so many times over the last forty
years, tonight for the first time I realized that the chap who played the
part of cousin Jasper was the same chap who played Marvin the Paranoid
Android in the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A day when you learn nothing is a day wasted… I think I might finally be on the mend… I hope so.
I’m off to work tomorrow. |
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8 October 2024
(Tuesday) - Back to Work
I
had another restless night. I gave up trying to sleep, got up and watched
more "Brideshead Revisited". Yesterday I mentioned that the
actor who had been Marvin in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had played
cousin Jasper. This morning I was reminded that the actor who'd played Lord
Brideshead had also been in The Guide - he'd played Arthur Dent. I watched
every actor like a hawk in the hope of spotting more crossovers. As “er indoors TM” and
the dogs staged a rather impressive snoring contest I got ready for work and
set off through a rather dark morning. It was over three weeks since I'd last
shown my face there, and in the meantime the mornings have got noticeably
darker. As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting what they spout.
Wars still raged, politicians still pontificated... all paled into
insignificance given the revelation that some poor chap had had a
tug with such ferocity that he'd ripped his aorta open. It strikes me that you've have to have quite a
serious joddrell to give yourself an aortic
dissection. I suppose that, if nothing else, here's another reason for
having a cold shower. Being rather unimpressed with the sweetie selection
we'd had in Uzbekistan I thought I'd take some sweeties into work from
Sainsbury's. So I went to the Aylesford branch where yet again there wasn't a
single manned checkout. Instead members of staff stood glaring at the people
struggling with the self-service tills, and occasionally making pointed
comments. One of my fellow shoppers was challenged by the supermarket staff;
they wanted to check the contents of his shopping bag against his receipt. He
told them to get knotted; if they didn't trust him then they shouldn't have
forced him to use a self-service checkout. I thought about applauding. I got to work. Apparently yesterday we'd had a
visitor. One of my trainees from twenty years ago had come for an interview
for a senior position. Fortunately he didn't get it. I spent much of the day thinking about the chap. I
can always remember him going from argument to argument. His grandfather died
and left him a legacy which at the time he was squandering by moving house at
least once every year seemingly constantly falling out with neighbours. There was one episode where he had a fist
fight with a neighbour over who was allowed to park
where on the local streets. I can remember being his manager and having my
manager wanting to know what the problem at work was; this chap had
approached my manager in tears because everyone hated him and everyone was
picking on him. Neither I nor any of my staff knew anything about what the
issue was, nor did we ever find out. When he left he organised
his own leaving party to which he made a point of inviting secretaries and
people from adjoining departments, but none of the people with whom he
actually worked. He came off Facebook years ago - I'd often wondered
what happened to him. Apparently he's spent the last few years moving across
the country... still going from squabble to squabble. When I got home I spent a few minutes looking
at my
LinkedIn account. I don’t know why really. Of all the various
social media, LinkedIn is far and away the most lame. Social media is
supposed to be fun… LinkedIn is for people who really don’t have anything in
their lives but work. Sadly there’s a lot of people like that. It speaks volumes that I’ve formally verified my
LinkedIn account for free, but Facebook wants a tenner a month… |
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9 October 2024
(Wednesday) - Bit Dull
Again
I found myself wide awake far too early in the morning so I got up, made
toast and watched more telly. You can't beat a bit of "Brideshead
Revisited”. I do like that show. What with this and my love
for Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey I suspect I have nostalgia for an
era that never actually happened. As I watched telly so “er indoors TM” came
downstairs and went to the loo. And as always when she gets up in the night
she was accompanied by the entire pack of dogs. When I get up in the night
they just roll over into the warm space that I've left. With telly watched I set off tough another dark
morning to work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how eBay is banning
sales of e-bikes and their batteries. Apparently there are several
brands on the market which are just as likely to explode as to do what you
might expect of them, and so sensibly sales are being halted until assurances
can be given that people won't be paying good money just to get an explosion. And today Twitter returns to
Brazil. Apparently Twitter (or "X" as it is now known)
has been banned there for the last month since it turned out that the social
media there was a hotbed of fake news and misinformation. It would seem the
Brazilian authorities are allowing tweeting to return now that the lies have
stopped. Heaven forbid social media should be held
accountable for the nonsense it spews, eh? I got to work, and had a surprisingly busy morning
and a dull afternoon. But starting early meant that I finished early. Leaving
me with a pizza, “er indoors TM” went off
out with her mates. I watched more "Brideshead Revisited” from
underneath a pile of dogs. I’ve done two days at work and I’m worn out. With no
alarm set for tomorrow I wonder if I’ll get a better night’s sleep tonight? |
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10 October 2024
(Thursday) - Rather Busy
With no alarm set I slept through until the dogs
woke me when then started a rather vigorous play-fight at about half-past
seven. To be sure that their play-fighting had woken me they all then set
about licking my head, and once they were confident that I was awake they all
went back to sleep. I made toast and had a look at the Internet. There was quite a bit of
talk about how the BBC’s weather app has gone dinlo overnight and was
forecasting wind speeds of over fifteen thousand miles per hour. Apparently
the BBC were
well aware there was an issue with their forecasts, but some idiot
was posting to local Facebook groups claiming it was all a cyber-attack by
the Russians. Oh dear… “er indoors TM” set off to the office; I took the dogs up to the woods. As we
drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing Terry Deary, the author of
the children’s books “Horrible Histories”. He’s apparently writing
adult history books now. We got to the woods and had a rather uneventful walk, which was
probably for the best. We walked three and a half miles; we saw one or two
other dog walkers. All the encounters passed off without episode. They
usually do when it is just me and the dogs. It was a shame that all three dogs rolled in something foul as we
walked, but that’s what dogs do. We came home. The dogs had a bath, and I mowed the lawn. The lawn was
probably too wet to have been mowed, but it was so long it wasn’t going to
dry out any time soon. And with lawn mowed I got
out the pressure washer and had a go at the area just outside the back door.
It had got rather grubby over the last few months. I popped over the road to the Polish shop to get some ingredients, and
spent the afternoon alternately watching episodes of “Brideshead Revisited”
and making plov Mk I. Plov is an Usbek dish which we had when on holiday a couple of weeks
ago. We had it a couple of times, and it was rather good. Mind you in
Uzbekistan it wasn’t up against much competition. Over there raw whole
tomatoes and raw whole cucumbers count as haute cuisine. “er indoors TM” came home and I dished up scran. I’m rather pleased with how it came
out. MkII will include peppers. I’ve had a rather busy day today… I had hoped to get the ironing done
as well… And the BBC weather forecast is still wrong. |
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11 October 2024
(Friday) - Currency Conversions
I was rather later to bed last night than I might
have been. There was talk all over social media last night about the Northern
Lights being visible in the South East so I went out into the garden, and
they were. I took
a few photos. This morning loads of people had posted photos of
what they’d seen last night. At the risk of appearing to be an old
misery-guts I don’t know what I was expecting from the Northern Lights, but I
was expecting more than what I saw. Having often considered going on one of
these trips specifically to see the aurora I’m glad I didn’t spend hundreds
of pounds. Perhaps they are more impressive closer to the pole? I suppose
having been waiting for over fifty years to see the lights, they were never
going to live up to my expectations. It would seem that no one had done much else other
than look at the northern lights overnight as there was very little else on
social media this morning. Mind you I still had seemingly endless adverts for
escorted holidays on my Facebook feed. Since we went away a couple of weeks
ago I’m being bombarded with adverts for holidays. One
caught my eye; an overland tour round Africa. Pretty much all of Africa.
Starting at the end of this month you can tour all round from Morocco to
Egypt via Cape Town. It is billed as a “singles” holiday with a target
age range of eighteen to eighty and is a tour lasting forty-seven weeks. It
only costs ten thousand pounds. I would ask who could go on holiday for a
year, but I suppose enough people must do that sort of thing to make it worth
the company’s while running them. I Munzed, got Wordle on
the sixth attempt, and took the dogs to the woods. As we walked we met
several dogs in the depths of the woods still on their leads. One chap
commented that my dogs weren’t on leads. I replied that he was correct and
that they weren’t. He then told me that my dogs were running loose. I pointed
out that the reason for that was that they weren’t on their leads. As this
bloke glared at me I whistled and walked off with all three dogs following
me. We came home. Surprisingly all three dogs were
clean. No muck or mud. No need for a bath. So, leaving the dogs with “er
indoors TM”, I set off to Canterbury. Having taken far
too much money with us to Uzbekistan I had quite a few American dollars to
change up. I could have changed it up in any one of several places but having
changed it into pounds I wanted to put those pounds into my bank account. And
seeing how forward-thinking and switched-on my bank is (!), I had to
go to the Canterbury branch to do that. At first sight I was rather miffed at
how much commission they were charging, but from what I could see on-line,
pretty much everyone doing currency conversions was wanting a comparable
bung. With dollars converted and in my account I then
asked about the Uzbek money I’ve got left over. The nice bank man asked his
boss… it turns out that my bank doesn’t deal in Uzbek Soms, but they said
that the bureau de change in the High Street might. I couldn’t get there though – the High Street was cordoned off. Apparently
there had
been a murder. Instead, I went to the Post Office where (sadly)
all the competent staff had gone for a break and left the village idiot in
command. In a rather condescending tone she asked what I wanted. I explained
that I wanted to exchange Uzbek soms for pounds
sterling. She arrogantly announced that she could easily do that, and
snatched my wad of soms with a flourish. She then
looked at them. And looked again. And asked what they were supposed to be. I
told her that, to the best of my knowledge, they were supposed to be Uzbek soms. She asked where they came from. I replied
Uzbekistan (leaving off the “dur!”). She fiddled with her computer,
and again asked where they came from. We went through this four times, after which she
told me (rather arrogantly) that she’d been through the “H”
section on her computer four times, and there is no such country as
Uzbekistan. I took my wad of soms back and told her
that I would take my custom to somewhere that can spell “Uzbekistan”. Sadly it turns out that there isn’t anywhere that I
can really take my custom (and soms). I’ve
found a couple of places that will change them to pounds, but they want
ridiculous amounts of commission. I’ve got about twenty quid’s worth of soms; if any of my loyal readers are going on holiday,
let me know… From Canterbury I drove out to Staple. This weekend
sees international EarthCache Day. Anyone logging
an Earthcache gets a special souvenir. To the uninitiated, an Earthcache is effectively an
unholy combination of a geocache and your geology homework, and having found
over a hundred of the things, there’s not many unfound ones left within
spitting distance. In fact when I checked the geo-map there was only one
within twenty miles of home. Fortunately that one was in the general
direction of Canterbury. Now that I’ve logged that one, my closest unfound EarthCache is in the general vicinity of “er
indoors TM” grandmother’s old house near Bexhill. With EarthCaching done I
got out the pressure washer again and had another blat at the area just
outside the back door. Really I should do it more often than I do. Little and
often, rather than waiting till it gets amazingly filthy and then having to
seriously scrub. After all, that pressure washer does generate quite a lot of
really dirty water, and I always make the schoolboy error of using the
pressure washer to unblock the drain… which sprays muck everywhere. I then bionically burned
the garden path. I must admit I’m quite pleased with that bionic burner.
Provided I remember to wave it round once every few weeks it is making a far
better job of controlling the weeds than getting on my hands and knees and
pulling ever did. “er indoors TM” boiled up fish and chips and we scoffed it whilst watching the final
of “Bake Off: The Professionals”. That series was rather
good, but I was rather distracted by one of the presenters whose skull
appeared to be one size too big for her head. I wonder what we’ll watch next… |
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12 October 2024
(Saturday) - Dog Club, Pond, Games Night
I woke, put a load of washing in to scrub,
made toast and had a fight with my lap-top. It didn’t want to look at the
Internet this morning. I turned it off and on again, and all was fine. I can
remember years ago having similar issues with a video recorder. We called out
the nice man who’d only the day before put up an arial on the roof for us. He
pulled out the plug, counted to ten and plugged it back in again and all was
fine. He didn’t charge us as we’d already spent a lot of money with him that
week, but he said that about a quarter of his call-outs involved pulling the
plug, counting to ten, and charging twenty quid. And back then twenty quid
was a lot more money than it is now. Mind you, back then people would come
out to your house to fix your video recorder. These days Sky just sent out a
new box and throw the old one away. I eventually got at the Internet and found it much the same as it ever
is. I munzed as I do, and amazed myself by getting
Wordle right on only the second attempt. Being Saturday we set off to Dog Club. Even though it was raining. I
must admit I wasn’t keen on going; there’s one dog who started recently who
Morgan seriously doesn’t like and has taken to nipping. Last weekend we got
him a muzzle, and he wore it today. Together with his coat. All three wore
coats today. With the muzzle on, Dog Club passed off rather well. Several people
felt sorry for poor Morgan, and whilst the muzzle stopped him nipping, it
certainly didn’t stop him getting treats. “er indoors TM” went off to craft club. I took the dogs home. As we drove I caught the
end of Steve doing the Mystery Year on the radio. I thought it was 1974, and
I sent in my answer. And then “Annie’s Song” came over the
airwaves which told me I was right. I can remember it coming out. In 1974. That was a tune I once learned on the piano about twenty-five years
ago when I was taking piano lessons. We got home. I hung up wet coats and gave the dogs a once-over. They
were dry and clean under their coats, and were soon fast asleep. I went into
the garden and cleaned the small pond’s filter. I did want to do more
outside. I had plans for what I wanted to do, but the rain was still
persisting down. So instead as I listened to Steve on the radio I made a cuppa and counted up the Dog Club money instead. I count
it every couple of weeks, pocket it and transfer the same amount from my
account to the Repton Centre’s account… there’s not as much in the pot these
days as there used to be. Either people are paying their money to the Repton
people directly or people aren’t stumping up. Should I be worrying? I don’t
see why I should… for all that we enjoy Dog Club I’m still not sure how I’ve
ended up being the go-to chap for it? I suppose it’s a case of the old adage
“if you want a job done, do it yourself”. With money counted I then strained my brain on a geo-puzzle. Despite the name it
isn’t actually about cabbages… or so I am reliably informed. Once Steve’s radio show finished I still hadn’t solved the puzzle, but
the rain had stopped. So I went into the garden and made a start on the next
phase of the pond. A
couple of months ago I sawed up sleepers in readiness for replacing
the bog filter with a bigger one. The job is simple enough:
I naively thought I might get it all done in a couple of days. After
two hours I’d dragged out the top tub, shifted maybe half of the rockery and
a quarter of the shingle. I stopped at that point. Rather than cracking on
and physically knacking myself, this might be a
project best done in smaller sittings. I stopped and had a little rest. It wasn’t long before Chris arrived
with the Infinity table, and very soon after Steve and Sarah were with us. We
had a very good evening playing Game of Life, Sorry, and Ticket to Ride. I do like our games evenings; must have another soon… |
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13 October 2024
(Sunday) - A Walk, More Pond
I
slept for nine hours last night. Something of a result. I got up, and as I do
most mornings, made toast and peered into the Internet. Apparently last night
was Hastings Bonfire Parade. I should have known that, and we wouldn’t have
gone anyway, but I felt rather miffed that I’d missed it. Glossing over endless adverts for lengthy holidays
in far-away places there wasn’t much else happening on-line, so I went and
fetched the car from where I’d parked it after Dog Club yesterday. It started
bleating about low tyre pressures; it claimed all four tyres
needed a bit of air. So I got the pump out. They all did. This has left me wondering – I’ve never had a car
that tells me about tyre pressures before. Had I been driving round with low
tyre pressures for years? I’ll never know. And with tyres pumped I
went into the garden and spent half an hour shifting shingle for the current
ongoing pond project. After half an hour we got the dogs onto their leads
and drove down to Ham Street. I’d suggested a little walk to “er
indoors TM”, and “My Boy TM”,
Cheryl and Ro-Ro wanted to come along too. As always when looking for a little walk I’d looked
at the geocache map and spotted a multi-cache near Ham Street garden centre.
This involved going to the given location and solving a little puzzle to find
the final location of the geocache. Looking at the map it was pretty obvious
that the cache would be on the footpath along the military canal, and
whichever way we went would put us near a second geocache… so there was our
walk laid out for us. We all met up in a lay-by near Ham Street; I solved
the puzzle and sure enough we had a final location a quarter of a mile down
the canal. After a quick(ish) find we
carried on to a notice board about the construction of the canal. The second
cache was a puzzle based on this notice board. We got the information we
needed and we carried on walking as I solved the puzzle. It didn’t take me
long to realise we’d walked past the cache. So we
carried along the canal as far as the railway line then turned back. The
second cache was soon found. It was… I won’t give spoilers, but the
non-hunters-of-Tupperware in our group were rather impressed. I was impressed too. Again a silly little hobby had
given us a rather good walk along a rather pretty canal where we wouldn’t
otherwise have gone. As we came along the canal we saw herons and egrets,
swans and cygnets, and even a hawk. We saw some people fishing, and one other
group of walkers, but other than that we had the world to ourselves.
Geocaching takes us to some rather good places. With walk walked we drove up the road to Ham Street
garden centre. The place has rebuilt its car park. We had a nosey round, then
on seeing the café was dog-friendly we had a cuppa.
I suspect that when they said “dog friendly” they weren’t expecting us
to bring in four, but they were amazingly well behaved. A cuppa
and a slice of lemon drizzle cake went down very well. We said our goodbyes and came home. I went out to
the garden and cracked on shifting shingle, then lifted the weed-proof
membranes and dug out the basic shape for my new bog filter. As I dug I
realized that two of the garden slabs which had been underneath the old
garden tub were exactly the right size to line the hole I’d dug. But getting
them level would take some doing. That can be tomorrow’s project… I came in for coffee and cake (oh yus!) and sent an email to AllPondSolutions
– I need a new input thingy for the pressure filter. The existing one seems
to have a crack and is dripping. “er indoors TM” boiled up a rather good curry which we scoffed whilst watching the
first episode of the fifth season of “Lego Masters: Australia”. In
this season they’ve brought back winners and runners-up from the first four
seasons to have a “Grand Masters” contest. It’s a shame they’ve brought back the opinionated
and arrogant idiot from the first season; hope he loses. (is that wrong of me?) |
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14 October 2024
(Monday) - A Wet and Rainy Day
Amongst
other things outside I had planned a walk round the woods this morning and
then I wanted to get slabs into the bottom of the area I was digging out
yesterday. I was a bit miffed to wake to find heavy rain. Ho hum… I contended myself with making toast and my usual
look at the Internet. It was still there, and there wasn’t a lot happening in
there. Mind you I did learn something today. The monkey from the 1960s TV
show “Lost In Space” apparently had
its teeth removed as it kept biting people. There’s a sign of the
times, eh? Could you imagine that happening today? Biting people would be the
monkey’s inalienable right, wouldn’t it? I munzed, got Wordle at
the fourth attempt, and seeing the rain was showing no sign of letting up I
put some washing in, and cracked
on with CPD. As I did so my piss boiled. Lord Darzi has reviewed the NHS
and found quite a bit of fault, and my professional body have published
their response to his review. Is the NHS going to have radical change? Is my
professional lot going to change massively? Short answer – I doubt it. Long answer… I’m reminded of my grandmother
listening to a cousin jabbering on at great length loudly and noisily about
the equally pretentious proclamations of the committee of the local fishing
club, whilst actually doing nothing himself other than sitting on his bum and
finding fault. Gran listened patiently to his ranting then announced “fine
words butter no parsnips”. And this is true of both what Lord Darzi has found
and the IBMS’s response. Lord Darzi’s report highlights the rising number of
people living with multiple long-term conditions and the strain this places
on hospitals. To address these challenges he says that immediate action and a
strengthened diagnostic infrastructure are needed to ensure early detection,
continuous monitoring, and better management of chronic diseases. Can’t disagree there. He goes on to say that a shift in the NHS’s focus
from hospitals to community-based care is essential, and claims that
expanding the reach of diagnostics into community settings will enable
earlier interventions and reduce pressure on hospitals. We can’t argue with that in theory, can we? But in practice? Lord Darzi has done reviews of the
NHS before. He feels (probably rightly) that the NHS is too big and
would work better in smaller units. However at the time of his last review of
the NHS pathology services were reviewed by Lord Carter of Coles and he said
“big is better”, and successive governments spent twenty years working
along those lines. I’m breaching no confidences by saying this; it is a
matter of public record. Just read the newspapers or watch the news. If Lord Darzi wants diagnostic testing out in the
community with a massive increase in point of care testing he needs to staff
it. So he can either de-skill the workforce, and we all saw how that went (on national TV!),
or he can recruit a *lot* more biomedical scientists. And he can only
do that by making the job more attractive. And that will cost. And that’s just the part of the NHS about which I’ve
got more than a passing acquaintance. The same is probably true everywhere in
healthcare. On reflection I can’t help but wonder if Lord Darzi
has missed the point. The whole point of a hospital is that it is a centre of
excellence. If you’re a tad poorly you go ask the pharmacist for some jollop.
If his jollop don’t work you go see your GP. If whatever is wrong with you is
beyond him, you go to the hospital. And if your ailment is particularly out
of the ordinary your local hospital will send you to a tertiary referral
centre. The whole point here is that health care ain’t
cheap, and there are massive economies of scale by centralising.
It is far more cost effective (and practical) to have a single team of
surgeons and the entire operating theatre kit and kaboodle at one central
location rather than having one at each of a dozen (or more) GP
surgeries in every town. Having said (ranted) that, personally I’m
taking whatever Lord Darzi has to say with a pinch of salt. Whatever he says
simply won’t happen. At the risk of appearing to be an old reactionary, I
really have seen it all before. Many times. There will be all sorts of meetings at the
Department of Health. Meetings, meetings about meetings that have happened.
Meetings about meetings that are to happen. Eventually NHS Trusts will get
orders from these meetings… and at the very point where something might
actually happen, Lord Darzi’s ideas will be superceded
by the next great NHS shake-up. Look at what Lord Darzi is suggesting… he feels that
(effectively) those in community-based care will call the shots in the
NHS. That’s been done before (at least twice) and abandoned both times
because of political ideology rather than any tangible evidence. What the NHS needs is a load more money to recruit
and train staff. And having recruited and trained staff it needs to be left
alone for whatever is the current review and shake-up to take effect.
Realistically this will take a few years. Then this current review and shake-up needs to be
formally reviewed and assessed, and fine-tuned on the strength of verifiable
objective data, not the whim of whatever politician is in vogue at the time.
As happens all the time. The Prime Minister claims to have a ten-year plan.
Perhaps he has. Perhaps he will review and reform the NHS properly.
Personally I hope he does and I wish him every success. But a ten-year vision
from a politician is a brave thing. I try not to blog about work, but sometimes… |
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15 October 2024
(Tuesday) - Late Shift
I
slept well. Apparently “er indoors TM” didn’t.
She was in and out with Treacle several times during the night. I made toast and had my usual rummage round the
Internet. There was a major rant happening on one of the local Facebook
groups about a local GP surgery. They open their phone lines at eight o’clock
for an hour, but say they might close them early if all the appointments go.
Apparently this morning the phone lines closed at five past eight. Thinking back to yesterday’s rant it is quite clear
that the GPs can’t cope, so why on Earth does Lord Darzi want to burden them
with more work…? I munzed, I failed at
Wordle, and took the dogs for a walk. Not having as long as we usually have,
we just walked to the park and back. As we walked we saw “OrangeHead”
whose head today was a vivid russet. Back in the day when I used to take
Fudge to the park we would regularly meet “OrangeHead” and a gang of
her mates. I laughingly called the mates “OrangeHead’s
posse” and the membership of the posse would ebb and flow. From time to
time I’d see her going in one direction and some of her posse going in
another. Chatting with them they would all be falling out with each other all
the time. It would seem that in the years since we regularly walked round the
park she’s still got a posse. I wonder if they still quarrel. I also saw something that boiled my piss. There’s
some relatively new houses that have been built near the park overlooking the
river, It would take over six years wages of the average UK citizen to buy
one of them. Alternatively you could get one by taking out a mortgage over
twenty-five years and paying back over a thousand quid a month. Sitting on
the other side of the river from these houses is a tent in which some poor
homeless sod had set up. This isn’t the future I was promised… We came home. Because we’ve got a home to come to.
The dogs had brekkie, and on seeing a new geocache had gone live not a
million miles from work I set off early in the hope of getting a First to
Find. I didn’t get it. I went on to work where as well as having a rather
busy afternoon I also had both my COVID and flu injections, and came home
through the rain. Mind you not getting to be First to Find, being busy
and having injections pales into insignificance compared to that poor sod in
his tent in Viccie Park in the rain. |
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16 October 2024
(Wednesday) - This n That
As I do on the morning after most vaccinations, I
woke feeling vaguely cheated. So many people claim to have such terrible
after-effects from injections. I’m sure it’s all in the mind. I blame the
people giving the jab. If they were to say that this was a new vaccine and
you might just possibly come out in a bright red rash then quite a few people
would be reaching for the felt-tipped pens just to be sure they didn’t miss
out. I can remember our
BCG vaccines at school. We were told that our arms might be sore for
a day or so and half our class were supposedly in agony for a week. One lad
in particular would go hysterical screaming “mind my BCG!!!” if anyone
came within two yards of him for the rest of the year. I made toast and scoffed it whilst peering into the
Internet. It was still there. Nothing much had changed really. People were
squabbling over trivia as people do. But I had a pang of guilt. Many years ago (forty-nine) I took a friend
along to Boys Brigade. This chap’s father had died when he was very young,
and he latched onto every man who came into his life; obviously craving a
father figure. Through me, my old mate met the Boys Brigade leader who was a
religious nut. And because of that my old mate became a religious nut
himself. He’s now the pastor of a big Baptist church in the west country and
his church regularly posts up videos of him preaching. One of his videos was
on Facebook this morning. In these videos he spouts stark staring nonsense and
has a bible quote for absolutely every single thing that happens. Going to
McDonalds, having a pee, watching “Bake Off”, taking the dogs out… he
has a verse for everything. All of which seems perfectly sensible to him and
all of which are clearly ridiculous and don’t stand up to any reasoned
thought whatsoever. Sometimes when watching his videos I fear for his
sanity…and it’s all my fault that he got religion. I Munzed, then got ready
for the day. I put washing in to scrub then took the dogs up to Kings Wood. I
had “did not find” logs on two of my geocaches. One was there, one
wasn’t. I replaced the missing one. As we walked we met other dog walkers;
every meeting passed off without incident. It usually does when there is no
one to see the dogs behaving themselves. We came home. I had a cuppa
then cracked on with the current pond project. I (sort of) levelled up
the area at the top of the pond which I had dug out over the weekend, lined
the sleeper at the top of the pond, got weed-proof membranes in place and put
the sleepers for the bog filter roughly in place. Thirty seconds to type;
over three hours to do. As I worked I spirit-levelled every bit individually,
but with it all (sort of) together it looked more pissed than a pissed
thing. Oh well… if all goes to plan it will all be hidden by rocks and plants
anyway. The plan is that tomorrow I shall attach all the
bits of wood together. I wonder if I will. I came in, had a cuppa and
realized I could hardly move. I had a look at my bank account, did some CPD, and suddenly
remembered that I’d put some washing on the line earlier. I got that lot in,
then slobbed about on the telly sleeping through
some utter twaddle on the “Blaze” channel about how the Americans
stole atom bombs form aliens during the second world war. “er indoors TM” boiled up a rather good dinner which we scoffed whilst watching
more “Lego Masters: Australia” as a thunderstorm started. It was as
well we’ve no end of stuff recorded on the Sky-Q box as the rain was so heavy
it poggered the TV satellite signal. Let’s hope it comes back. |
|
17 October 2024
(Thursday) - Home Alone
This morning’s petty squabble on Facebook was about
the national
Town Criers’ Championship which took place recently in Rye. No? – it
passed off pretty much unnoticed, didn’t it? Traditionally it has been held
in Hastings but over the last couple of years it has moved to Rye as Hastings
Town Council say they can’t afford it any more. Those who like town crier
competitions are up in arms about this. Those who don’t were pointing out
that council-funded town crier competitions attract dozens of people whereas
self-funding events (like the bonfire parade and Jack in the Green)
attract tens of thousands. Time for a change in the way the thing is funded,
perhaps? It strikes me that town crier competitions are the Radio Three of
public entertainment; only there because someone else is paying for it. I
wonder how long Rye town council will carry on shelling out for this event? “er indoors TM” was having an office day today so she set off leaving me with
the dogs. Yesterday Treacle had a dodgy leg, but this morning it seemed
better. We went to the woods and I thought that if her leg was playing up we
might cut the walk short and come home. We walked four miles; she seemed
fine. Sadly as we walked we had an “episode”. Some
child was toddling along with its father, and on seeing Bailey went
absolutely hysterical. I could understand it if Bailey was the size of other
dogs, but she is XS of the dog world. With walk walked we came home; I was expecting the
dogs to be filthy; their bellies needed hosing off but they weren’t that
grubby at all considering the overnight rain. And seeing how their backs were
dry I did the monthly flea treatments. In a novel break with tradition
Treacle didn’t run away. All three were as good as gold for a drop on the
back of the neck. My plan for today was to screw together all the
wooden sleepers of the bog filter. I had a look in the shed and saw I didn’t
have quite enough screws. And (to be honest) my drill bit isn’t what
it once was. So I ordered up some more from Amazon, and whilst I was at it I
ordered some new wellies too. My ones sprung a leak a week or so ago, and
they let quite a bit of water in whilst we were up the woods earlier. With plans poggered I
cracked on with the ironing whilst watching a DVD. “Quadrophenia”
was nowhere near as good as I remembered it. Once it had finished I got up.
Treacle leapt up thinking she was missing something and she hobbled after me.
Having seemingly been fine whilst in the woods she was certainly struggling
this afternoon. I sat on the sofa rubbing her leg for much of the afternoon. As I massaged I watched more episodes of “Four in
a Bed” in which the proprietors of four bed and breakfast establishments
competed to see who was best. The loser had the right arse
about losing; amazingly he didn’t seem to realise
that his establishment’s gimmick (they didn’t actually do a breakfast)
would count against him. “er indoors TM” came home. I fed her Plov Mk II. It was an improvement on what
I’d boiled
up a week ago. Having said that, it has still got a way to go. Mk III
won’t have carrots, and korma might be a better flavour
than tikka was. As we scoffed we watched the most recent episode of
“Lego Masters: Australia”. I won’t give the game away, but I will say
that in this episode the weakest team were eliminated, and I smiled. Oh – and Pigsy died today.
He was an
absolute hero back in the day. Sandy died from heart issues four
years ago, and Tripitaka died of leukaemia nearly
forty years ago. When you bear in mind that him who played the horse died
seven years ago, there’s only Monkey left. They don’t make TV shows like that any more. |
|
18 October 2024
(Friday) - Early Shift
I was wide awake and raring to go far too early this morning. I got up
and as I scoffed my brekkie I watched some utter drivel on Netflix about
some West Indian family living in London in the 1980s. I doubt I shall watch
any more. I got dressed in the dark and went off to find my car. Having no idea
where I'd left it yesterday I was rather pleased to find it right outside the
house. I set off, and immediately did the first of the many emergency stops I
did this morning. Back in the day when I cycled to work (which I did for about
fifteen years) I had lights on the front and back of my bike, and I wore
a bright yellow hi-vis vest. An hour before dawn this morning I lost count of
the amount of half-wits on bikes that I nearly ran over. Not one had any
lights on their bikes, all were clad entirely in black, and all had those
stupid ear buds in preventing them from hearing anything; least of all me
shouting at them. As I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing one of the head
honchos at Netflix who was talking about the popularity of one of their subscription packages. If
you take this deal you don't get bombarded with adverts. Apparently they've
done research and found that the general public doesn't like adverts and tend
to fast-forward through them. If the public can’t fast-forward through them
then they go to toilet during the adverts or make a cup of tea, and it turns
out that if the public are forced to watch an advert for a particular product
then they are more likely to buy whatever it is from a competing company. How long had it taken them to realise this? And there was news from the Middle East. The Israelis have killed the
boss of Hamas but intend to continue
the war anyway. I can remember an interview on the radio about the
situation in Gaza about five years ago. People from all sides of the conflict
were harping on about grievances that happened twenty years before any of
them were born. All admitted that no one was prepared to give an inch, and
all admitted the fighting would continue indefinitely. The people being
interviewed at the time all but admitted the hatred they had for each other
was so strong that they really would rather have war than peace. And (as
always) it is the little people that suffer. I would say that five years later nothing has changed, but today's
interview on the matter was with someone whose accent was so think I couldn't
make out a word he was saying. I wish Radio Four would sort out their phone
interviews. They always go one of three ways. The phone line keeps dropping out. The interviewee mumbles and stutters. The interviewee barely speaks English. I got to work and did my bit. Today was rather busy. I don’t dislike
work, but it is seriously getting in my way. I spent much of today looking
out the window at rather good weather thinking about what I might be doing in
my garden. But an early start meant for an early finish. I came home, and saw my
screws and drill bits and new wellies had arrived. I was rather pleased about
that. I then took the dogs out to the garden to do the “feed the fish”
ceremony. Treacle particularly likes “feed the fish”; she gets very
over-excited about it. As I feed the fish I give the dogs some fish food. Are
a few dried rice flakes really that good? The dogs certainly seem to think
so. Mind you, Treacle was limping a bit… perhaps she needs to take it
easy? She’s getting rather old. And grey. “er indoors TM” sorted some ribs for dinner which we scoffed whilst watching The
Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin on Apple TV. It was
rather good; yet another show which seems to have slipped past most people.
But what with Sky and Amazon Prime and Apple TV there’s far too many channels
to watch. “er indoors TM” said I could scoff a box of choccies she had for her birthday.
Last year. Their best before date was a year ago, but I scoffed them anyway. I feel rather sick now. |
|
19 October 2024
(Saturday) - Dog Club, CITO, Geo-Meet, Dinner
The
dogs took up an amazing amount of bed space last night. Eventually I got some
space when they all followed “er indoors TM” to
the loo in the small hours, but when they came back there was an altercation
about why Bailey was so smelly. For a very small cute dog she can be quite
disgusting sometimes. I got a little more kip, but not much. I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was
still there, and much the same as ever. More and more I’m seeing utter drivel
of no interest to me on my Facebook feed, and less and less of that which is
actually interesting. I munzed, and have now
done all that I need to for this month’s Munzee Clan War – it is now down to
everyone else. There was a little consternation on one of the other clans in
that someone who needs to Munz daily hasn’t been on-line in ten days. But as
long as it isn’t out clan, all is well. And I got Wordle on the fifth attempt when I finally
realized to use the American spelling. Being Saturday we set off to Dog Cub. Yesterday when
working the weather was glorious. This morning we had rain. Not as heavy as
it might have been, but heavier than I would have liked. We arrived at Dog
Club where I’d decided that we’d open up and if the weather was that bad we’d
come home. But having arrived expecting the worst we had a rather good
session. Despite the rain we had a dozen dogs along. Morgan played nicely to
begin with. He did get rather excited so we popped his muzzle on as a
precaution and all was well. The dog we thought he’d been trying to nip came
up to him several times and (with play-bows) invited him to play. As we came home we listened to Steve on the radio.
The mystery year was easy – Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”
was in 1981… or so I was convinced. It was actually 1988… It is strange how
your memory plays tricks on you; I can distinctly remember listening to this
when still living at my mum’s. Another reason why it is worth my while
writing a diary. Clearly I remember wrong. We got home and dried off. I put on dry trousers and
looked out my waterproof leggings, then scared up a couple of prizes for
later. With the rain finally looking as though it was
clearing up we drove up to Badlesmere where I was
staging today’s geo-meet. We started off on a litter-pick around Badlesmere Village Green. There wasn’t a lot of litter to
be had, but what there was we had. Prizes were awarded for most litter
collected (quite a bit) and most unusual litter (perfectly useable
garden fork). Mind you it has to be said that for all we collected
some litter, we left some. Treacle’s lead went missing whilst we were there. And with litter gathered we retreated to the Red
Lion for a pint and a chat. Bearing in mind the frankly dreadful weather
forecast I was very pleased with the amount of people who came – there must
have been twenty people along to the event today. Some people were old hands
at the geo-meet game; others had their first meet-up today. As always the
event passed off rather well. And just as it began to get a tad nippy so
people went their various ways, and together with Karl and Tracy we came
inside and had a rather good bit of dinner. I took a
few photos of our day. We came home, and we both had a little sleep. But
not as much as the dogs did. It’s three hours past dog-dinner-time and they
are still snoring. |
|
20 October 2024 (Sunday) - Rainy Day
I
slept for ten hours last night. I sleep so much better when I have no alarm
set. I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do every morning. It
was there. Again no one really had seemed to have done very much. Some days
it seems that either no one does anything with their lives, or if they do
they don’t plaster it all over the Internet, or if they do my lap-top chooses
not to tell me. Which is a shame for a very nosey person. I munzed, got Wordle
eventually, and then the dogs came downstairs. After a night in my pit I am
desperate for a wazz. But the dogs are different.
They get up and pootle about. They have to be
chased into the garden and even then they fiddle about before eventually
doing anything. I wish I had the same lack of urgency first thing in the
morning – I’d stay in my pit longer. I got dressed, put some washing in to scrub… and
sulked. The forecast rain had started. Mind you I was very pleased that the
rain didn’t come yesterday. We were very lucky with the weather for the CITO
event and the geo-meet. I pootled on-line, wrote up some CPD, and
pondered my next geocaching Adventure Lab cache series. I’ve been given
another five ad-labs. The idea is you find somewhere of local interest with
five specific locations. At each location you set up a question to answer –
the name on a sign, the distance on a milestone, something along those lines.
You take GPS co-ordinates, and set it all up on-line, and it makes a little
adventure for someone else to do. I’ve set up five of these already. One up
the main street in Great Chart finding points of interest, one sight-seeing
around Singleton Lake… I’ve got another series of five, but I was rather at
a loose end for where I might set them, and what I might have as a theme.
Wherever it is needs Internet connection. I did have a plan for Kings Wood,
but the mobile data up there is patchy at best. … and then I had a stroke of genius. But I didn’t
have time for it… Despite the rain we took the dogs to the garden
centre. We couldn’t spend all day stuck indoors; I’d go stir crazy. So we
went to the pet section at Bybrook Barn garden
centre to see if we could get Treacle a new lead. We lost hers yesterday
whilst having a litter pick-up. Sadly we couldn’t find anything but we got a
decent fruit cake. We thought we might come home via Pets At Home to
see if they had any decent leads. They didn’t, but we got some dog treats. And we took a minor diversion on the way home to
implement stage I of my stroke of genius. One home we had a cuppa,
and I carried out stages II and III my stroke of genius. Starting from up the
road near the station you can walk down Beaver Road, along Denmark Road and
into Torrington Road. A fifteen-minute walk passing the sites of five
now-closed-and gone pubs; at each of which you answer a simple question. That was stage II. Having answered those simple questions at each stage
you get given the location of a bonus geocache… that you’ve just walked past. That was Stage III (Hiding it earlier was stage I) Writing the cache
page and ad-lab
pages kept me quiet for a couple of hours. It’s now down to the
geo-feds. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst
watching tonight’s episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. Both were
rather good… Hope this rain lets up soon… |
|
21 October 2024
(Monday) - Still Raining
One
of this morning’s petty squabble on the internet was over a meme posted to
Facebook about how medical care is given out free of charge in “Star Trek”.
Non-Americans commenting pointed out that they don’t pay for healthcare (at
the point of care). The Americans commenting fell into two groups. One
group were saying what a wonderful idea free health care would be; seemingly
oblivious to the fact that healthcare is given out free of charge in most of
the world except America. The other group felt that free health care would be
a terrible thing and that there was some merit in paying for it. The other squabble was about a twee meme posted by
some celebrity (from way back when) about how much nurses make. It was
claimed that nurses make people better and make people smile, and you can’t
put a price on that. I thought about pointing out the stupidity from the
pandemic when everyone stood on the doorsteps and clapped the NHS. At the
time I tried paying for my shopping (in Sainsburys) by clapping but
they weren’t having that. Perhaps if we in the UK adopted the American health
care model then healthcare workers in te NHS might
get better pay? I also saw that ELO are going to play their
last ever gig in Hyde Park next June. Do I want to go? I wouldn’t
mind, but with tickets starting at about a hundred quid a go (or so the
expert opinion reckons) it’s a lot of money to shell out. Despite the rain I took the dogs to the woods. Sadly
my idiot enthusiasm didn’t triumph over common sense today; the rain didn’t
ease up until we were in the car on the way home. But the dogs seemed to like
the walk. As we walked we saw a few other dog walkers braving the elements. I
think a couple of them were professional dog walkers. They had a very random
assortment of dogs, and we did see two vans in the car park bearing dog
walker livery. I wonder how lucrative professional dog walking is? We came home where we saw not-so-nice-next-door taking
a bag of rubbish to the public bin up the street. As she walked back she
glared at me like I was the shit on her shoe. Treacle snarled at her; Treacle
*really* doesn’t like her. The dogs had a bath. No one had rolled in anything
foul, but they were wet and muddy. A hot shower to warm up and shift mud was
in order. And once showered, the dogs were all soon asleep. I loaded up an assortment of old tat into the car
and set off to the tip. The tip was quiet today – only two other cars were
there. I unloaded, and got chatting with the chap at the tip about how much
useful stuff gets dinged out. I mentioned the little shop at the tip in
Hastings; the nice man said that pretty much every council-run tip in the
country has little shops where they sell useable stuff… except those in Kent. I came home to an email. The geo-feds had given me
the thumbs-up for my adventure lab idea, and had scheduled it to go live
tomorrow. So flushed with success I spent the afternoon preparing four more
of the same sorts of thing. And once “er indoors TM” had
gone bowling I looked at four more for my old stomping ground in Hastings. I’m really hoping this rain will stop soon. |
|
22 October 2024
(Tuesday) - Finally Stopped Raining
As I scoffed my toast my phone bleeped. The
geocache I’d hidden on Sunday had gone live, so I set the associated
Adventure Lab series live as well. And with that live I set about my next one
and met total disaster. In order to set an ad-lab live you need an ad-lab credit. I’d read
on-line that you can just ask for one, but the place where you ask tells
me that I have to wait until next January before they will give me another
credit. It turns out that you have to wait ninety days between creating
ad-labs so that people like me don’t go churning them out like a thing
possessed. Which rather pisses on my chips bearing in mind I did all the
leg-work for four more yesterday afternoon, and was planning to churn them
out like a thing possessed. Mind you a group of hunters of Tupperware logged the new ad-lab only
thirty-six minutes after it went live and wrote rather nice things about it
in their written logs. So my efforts are appreciated. “er indoors TM” set off out. Her work was doing some volunteering day thingy today. I
set a load of washing going and took the dogs up to the woods. The rain had
finally stopped and unlike yesterday, today was glorious. We did our usual
circuit of Kings Wood. We met several other groups of dog walkers and every
meet passed off without incident. Mind you we did meet one idiot. She wasn’t
paying attention and was on us before she realized. She started shouting “ohmygod
ohmygod” and made a complete mess of trying
to get her dog leads from round her neck. When she finally got them free she
was almost hysterical; apologizing to me that the dogs were fighting and that
she was so sorry. Eventually she calmed down and looked at what was actually
happening. One of her dogs had sat down with Treacle and both were watching
Morgan, Bailey and her other dog. Those three were playing a game in which
two chased the third for fifty yards at which point one of the two chasers
became the chased, and they all then ran off in another direction for another
fifty yards before again swapping chasers and chased. They were having a
great time. I had to explain to this woman that dogs playing chase *wasn’t*
fighting, and that it was actually playing. After four miles we were back at the car park and we came home. Once
home I gave the dogs a scrub. Tummies get grubby in the woods. I hung out the washing and put the undercrackers in to scrub, then
popped over the shop and got the makings of dinner. As I scoffed a bit of
lunch I watched telly. “Everyone Else
Burns” is about a family who are members of a puritanical crackpot
religious sect. It was both hilarious, and bittersweet in that it reminded me
of a lot of the people from my religious days. With telly watched I went into the garden. A little while ago I
started the groundwork for the pond’s new bog filter and got everything
vaguely into place. Rain stopped play for a week, but today I got on with it.
I got done what I wanted to do; I screwed it all together. There was a minor
(major) hiccup in that when I opened the new box of long screws I’d
bought from Amazon specifically for this job I saw they didn’t have the
traditional hole in the end where the screwdriver goes. These were “stick
fit drive system” and with no way to screwdriver them, they were (as
my brother once described a rather useless item) “sod all use to man
nor beast”. I swore a bit, and rummaged in the shed. I found I had just enough
proper screws (screws as God intended) to do the job, so I got busy. I
got all the sleepers together. The next job is to line the thing, but I shall
wait until “er indoors TM” is home. It is
the sort of job where you need help. I tidied up. Just as I was picking up the stick fit drive system
screws to send back to Amazon I saw something, and actually read the
instructions on the box. Apparently they came with the bit that you need to
attach to the electric screwdriver for screwing them in place. So I had a
proper look. The tool was in the box. They do come with that fitting. Ho hum… By the time I’d tidied up and started dinner and sorted the
tumble-dried undercrackers “er indoors TM” was
home. She made a cuppa; I felt I deserved it. I
thought about dragooning her into helping line the bog filter, but that will
keep for a day or so. Instead I cracked on with dinner. Plov MkIII
was just chicken, apple and rice with half a bottle of red wine and Thai
seasoning. I quite liked it, but “er indoors TM” wasn’t
keen. The next version will be korma flavoured. Now we’ve got a DVD player we played a DVD. We’ve been meaning to
watch “Wonka”
for some time. Despite an all-star cast I wasn’t impressed. Perhaps I’d been looking forward to it so much it was never going to
live up to expectations. |
|
23 October
2024 (Wednesday) - Late Shift
There was some bitter squabbling on one of the
Facebook Lego pages I follow this morning. Someone was hoping to go on eBay
to get a Lego set which they had as a child, and was asking for help in
getting its set number. A reasonable request? Sadly all this chap could
remember was that the set was from about forty years ago and had a house and
a car in it. That narrowed it down to one out of thousands, and the keyboard
warriors were out in force dripping their sarcasm. And an old schoolfriend of mine (who runs ghost walks in Rye)
was posting on Facebook about a ghost detecting app. I downloaded one which gave me the option to upgrade (for a price)
to be able to ask ghosts questions and to see more ghosts. Presumably the
amount of ghosts it detected was dependent on how much I was prepared to pay?
I tried it; it just tried to play Candy Crush. I deleted it and tried another
ghost detecting app. That one said there was a ghost not far away. Judging by
the ghost radar I think it was in not-so-nice-next-door’s living
room. Mind you, the people who used to live on the other side of not-so-nice-next-door were
convinced their house was haunted for years until the morning of their
wedding when they are adamant they heard it clomp down the stairs, slam the
door behind it, and they never had any ghost experiences since... Or so they said. What with not having as much time as usual I took the dogs to the park
this morning. We got there and had a little mooch about. We met a few other
dogs, and walked past them with no issues. One young mother (in her pyjamas)
told me that I was living her dream in that I had a pack of small dogs
whereas she only had one. Some elderly Nepalese people were picking fallen chestnuts out of the
mud. When I told them there are still a few chestnuts on the trees in Kings
Wood they smiled politely and hurried off as fast as they could; almost as
though I’d threatened them with physical violence. What was that all about? We came home and the dogs all went straight to sleep. As they snored I
realized they hadn’t had their brekkie. Dogs are strange. In the evenings
Treacle particularly is constantly begging for more biscuits. But in the
morning they quite happily skip brekkie and don’t have it until mid-day. As I set off to work I saw not-so-nice-next-door coming out of her
house. I've been hoping to speak to her about the front fence for some time,
and with no dogs to bother her I tried my luck. She was amazingly
co-operative. To be honest the way things are between us, simply not saying
f... off fatso is realistically amazingly co-operative. She tried to make out
that the fence collapsed because I hadn't painted it. I politely pointed out
that I had. She pointed out (quite rightly) that I hadn't painted her
side of it. I smiled. I didn't like to say that I didn't dare go on her side
of the fence. But she says she's happy for me to fix it. I see that as a
result. I drove off up the motorway as I do. With the motorway again closed
between junctions six and five I took a detour in through Aylesford, and
stopped off for a crafty geocache whilst I was at it. I also stopped off for petrol. That stuff has dropped in price - today
I paid the same price that I was paying three
years ago. I saw that as a result as well. With a tank full of petrol I drove up to work... and sat in the car in
the car park as the torrential rain crashed down. I took the opportunity to
test out my ghost detecting app. There were no ghosts to be seen in the works
car park, and later the works tea room proved devoid of spirits as well. I had a go in the laboratory where it detected something... I think it
got confused with everyone wearing white lab coats. I know I do… |
|
24
October 2024 (Thursday) - Making Progress
Every morning I make toast and scoff it as I peer into the Internet.
Occasionally there might be something interesting or inspiring. But usually
it is just people quarrelling. It seems there was a particularly vicious
squabble in real life at a local angling lake last night. Last night the
owners got into an argument with someone who was night fishing, and the chap
had the hump and went home. Straight
through the locked gate. I then took a deep breath and asked for advice on the Skoda Fabia
Facebook page. My phone connects to my car by Bluetooth. I can make
hands-free calls fine, and see text messages on the car’s screen. But there’s
a problem with my phone’s sat-nav in that when I use the phone’s sat-nav in
the car, the spoken directions don’t happen. If I turn off Bluetooth then the
phone tells me where to turn. With Bluetooth on – nothing. Presumably the spoken instructions are going to the car somewhere. I put a load of washing in to scrub then took the dogs up to the woods
where we had a good walk. As we walked a deer ran across the path. By the
time I realized I wanted to take a photo of it, it was gone. Treacle and
Bailey didn’t see it, but Morgan did and gave chase. I wish he wouldn’t. We walked round the woods in peace, but there was some parent and
toddler event going on just past the bottom of the slope leading from the car
park. And there were loads of people there, and walking down from the car
park, all carrying cups of coffee. Unless they’d boiled it up in the car park
it would have been stone cold by the time they’d driven it to the woods. We came home. I hung out the washing then mowed the lawn. As I mowed I
remembered the nutty chap who used to live next door. No matter what the time
of year, the time of day, or the weather, he would always insist that I
shouldn’t be mowing my lawn. He always had the most absurd and ridiculous
reason why I should have mowed the lawn the day before, and from the way he
used to speak it was as though he really did think I could go back a day to
mow the lawn. I often wonder what happened to him. And with lawn mowed I voomed
round with the garden vacuum cleaner. “er indoors TM” stopped for lunch so I put her to use. Together we got the liner into
the bog filter, cut it roughly to shape. Then in a rather extreme act of
faith I turned the pumps on. The bog filter filled with water, and the
waterfall thingy worked and the rest of it didn’t overflow. Flushed with
success I then spent an hour shifting rocks about the rockery. But only an
hour. I deliberately stopped because I knew that if I carried on I wouldn’t
be able to move for several days. I took a few photos and added them to the
pond album. I’ve got to sort the liner where it meets the main pond,
rearrange the rockery and sort the plants, but I can start on that tomorrow. I made us both a cuppa and had a look at the
internet. This morning I’d asked on Facebook about getting my phone’s sat-nav
to talk through the car. Someone had given me instructions on how to do it. I
went out to the car, called up the audio menu… and the menu screen the chap
was talking about wasn’t there. Ho hum… I had a look on Google and that had some suggestions which didn’t work
ether… “er indoors TM” boiled a decent bit of dinner which we watched the first episode of
the latest series of “Taskmaster”. Unusually I’d heard of
two of the five contestants. I ache a bit… hope I chirp up overnight. There’s quite a bit of work
to do in the garden tomorrow… |
|
25
October 2024 (Friday) - Another Busy Day
As I scoffed my toast
I saw a new geocache had gone live near Lydd. Set by someone who sets
fiendish puzzles I thought I’d just have a look. I immediately saw what this
puzzle was all about, solved it, scoffed my toast, and leaving “er
indoors TM” and the dogs in their pits I flew off in
the hopes of a First to Find. I didn’t get it. I had a serious sulk… As I drove home “Desert Island Discs” was on the radio. Today’s
castaway was someone I’d never heard of. Shirley Collins is
a folk singer who was a significant contributor to the British
Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s (or so it says on Wikipedia).
It turned out she was born in Hastings (where my mother was born) six
months after my mother was born. Her early life sounded just like mum and dad
described theirs - dodging bombs and being evacuated. But then this woman
chose her music. Oh dear… I collected the dogs and carried on to the woods still listening to “Desert
Island Discs”. This woman’s choice of music was so bad I felt I had to
keep listening to hear what came next. You’ve never heard such a dreadful
collection of caterwauled dirges. We got to the woods; we walked our four miles. Once away from the car
park we didn’t see anyone at all. It was only a shame that Bailey had to roll
in quite so much fox poo. As we drove home I saw the 666 bus from Ashford to Faversham come
past. I always chuckle at the number – and there’s a picture of a devil on
the back of the bus. Mind you the bus is rarely busy. The local bus
company runs
an hourly service. This morning’s one didn’t have anyone at all on it as
it came past us. Give it a year of so and the locals will be
up in arms when the service gets cancelled because no one uses it. Like what
happened with the Eurostar. The dogs had a bath – some got scrubbed more than others. I made a cuppa and had a look at the Internet later than I usually
do. I sent out birthday wishes, Munzed, got Wordle
on the fifth attempt, then got on with the bog filter project. So simple to type… I re-plumbed the pressure filter’s output. That took half an hour. I
then put some of the plants from the old bog filter into the new one. But
only some – they had rather grown over the summer. I then upended the water
and shingle out of the old filter tub. That made a mess so I ran out the hose
pipe to wash away the mess. That made more mess. Eventually I managed to wash away the worst of the muck, I got the
excess pond plants to the green recycle bin, pressure-washed the old filter
tub and the old splash pool. I looked at the dustbin full of the top soil I’d
dug out a week or so ago to make space for this new filter, and took a deep
breath. I eventually managed to heave it to the other end of the garden. As I fiddled about so a squirrel trotted down the fence and quite
happily walked across the garden. So much for ever vigilant dogs, eh? After a couple of hours of heavy lifting and garden effort I was all
in. There’s still some topsoil to shift and the rockery to rearrange
properly, but they will keep for another day. I spent a few minutes looking at the monthly accounts. Eventually I
got them to balance, and seeing I was unusually flush we got “My
Boy TM” and Cheryl to come round for a games and
kebab evening. Games aren’t too pricey, but kebab isn’t the cheap option it
once was… I *really* ache. The weather forecast for tomorrow is rain. A
day not being able to do heavy lifting in the garden probably wouldn’t be a
bad thing. |
|
26
October 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Shopping, Gardening
No geocaches went
live as I scoffed my toast this morning, so I didn’t go charging out on
another wasted journey. But I had a message via the messaging service on
geocaching dot com. Someone had specifically created a geocaching account to
send me a message. The message was “I'd like to know more about your work
on the river stour especially if you have any wildlife survey data in the
fields behind Kingsnorth Surgery or flow data at the riverside Inn location.
It’s a bit urgent as we have to respond to the EA regarding Kingsnorth Green
WWTW discharge permit application.” This was deliberately intended for me
as it came with one or two little snippets about me so that the sender could
be sure he was messaging the right person. What was that all about? I peered into Facebook as I do. Yet another person had asked for
recommendations for a good vet in the area. This question comes up at least
once a week, and every surgery for miles around gets an equal amount of
praise and criticism. There wasn’t much else on Facebook this morning… other
than a myriad of adverts about things in which I had no interest whatsoever.
I reported half a dozen as spam, and clicked the box to find out why I was
being sent utter drivel. Apparently advertisers only need to specify a target
audience that uses English and is over eighteen before being able to harass
the masses.. I suppose that if only one person in a hundred thousand buys the
rubbish they are peddling then they’ve made their money back. Being Saturday we went to Dog Club. There was a rather good turn-out
today – about fifteen dogs. It was difficult to count as they kept moving
about. Morgan was surprisingly well behaved. He did get a little
over-excited, but no need for any time-out and no need for his muzzle at all. Again we were rather late out of Dog Club; as we drove off so Steve
was on the radio announcing what the Mystery Year had been. We came home and had a cuppa, then I set off
on a little mission. The pond liner covering the bit of the sleeper near the
waterfall doesn’t look quite what it might. What I needed was some of those
strips of stones glued to some sort of backing material. I went to Bybrook Barn garden centre who
didn’t have any. The nice lady in Wickes said I might try Amazon. I tried
B&M Bargains as I remembered seeing them in there (when I didn’t need
them). There was no-one to ask. The only staff they had were on the tills
looking harassed with queues seemingly half a mile long and growing. In
desperation I tried B&Q. They’ve been difficult in the past, and today
summed up what I’ve come to expect from them. As I walked in there was some
chap strutting about the entrance as though he owned the place. I started to
ask him … and he shut me up and said that if I wanted anything I should go
ask one of the staff. I stared at his staff badge on the lanyard round his
neck. He stared at me as though I was the shit on his shoe. I asked if he
worked there. That confused him… he said he did. I told him I’d take my money
elsewhere. I came home and seeing the forecast rain hadn’t happened I cracked on
in the garden. I rearranged rocks, pressure-washered
our Neptune statue and pressure-washered paving
slabs until both the pressure-washer’s batteries went flat. As I fiddled about in the garden I kept looking over the back to the
house at the end of the drive at the end of our garden. I’d got chatting to
the bloke who lives there and he says he’s selling up. Do we want to move
there? The house looks
nice enough, but I’ve put so much time and effort into our back garden. I
don’t want to start again from scratch. The bloke was asking if he could have
some of my spare topsoil to bung up the holes in his garden through which the
foxes get in. If foxes can get in, dogs could get out. Moving would be a major upheaval… maybe I’ll pass on this one? I came inside for a cuppa just as the rain
started… and woke up two hours later and found I could hardly move. And after
dinner and having put two loads into the washing machine it still hurts to
move about. “er indoors TM” is watching “Celebrity Weakest Link” in which
several actors from TV soaps are bending over backwards to show how proud
they are of their ignorance. Why do they do that? |
|
27
October 2024 (Sunday) - Late Shift
I had a rather good night’s sleep I suppose, but I did wake in a cold
sweat in the small hours. My poor brain had concocted a nightmare in
which Mark Lenard (the
Star Trek actor) had sponsored one of my ex-cubs on a sponsored walk and
hadn’t paid the two quid that was owed. For some reason it was up to me to
reclaim the money, and the facts that he’d lived in America and had died
nearly thirty years ago were utterly irrelevant. If I didn’t get the money I
would go to prison. I got up and zoomed round the house putting the clocks to the right
time. Last night we had the stupidity of the clocks going back an hour. I’ve
heard all sorts of reasons why this happens… It is claimed that it safer for
schoolchildren to walk to school, and that it saves energy. Seriously? We
have the same amount of daylight. Moving when we call midday changes nothing.
Children walking to school in daylight walk home in the dark. Light bulbs not
turned on in the mornings just get turned on in the evening. Most of the world doesn’t
bother with changing the clocks twice a year. I made toast and had my usual rummage round the Internet. I sent out
birthday wishes, reported spamming adverts and rolled my eyes at the
inspirational memes. People who tell you that when life hands you lemons you
should make lemonade boil my piss. They have clearly never been handed a
lemon by life. There was an interesting rant on The Original Hastings Nightlife
Facebook group bemoaning the loss of all the night clubs in the area, and
asking what young people do on Saturday nights. No end of people were
chipping in about how there’s nowhere for the young to go out on the beer in
Hastings; all of whom were ignoring the posts from doormen and taxi drivers
who were saying that there are loads of places open until two or three
o’clock in the morning and the town centre is as busy at night as it ever was.
Some people just want to moan. Bit like me, really. There was a post on Facebook about people
up our road moaning. It would seem that someone’s children are practicing
musical instruments at all hours. Not-so-nice-next-door clangs
her piano periodically, but it’s not really an issue. A noisy neighbour can be a two-edged sword in that having
one means you can make as much noise as you like and they can’t
complain. The biggest issue
we ever had with noise was the bloke next door over twenty years ago who
regularly came home drunk and noisy at two o’clock in the morning. Eventually
I banged on his door at five o’clock and told him that if he wakes me in the
small hours I would wake him a couple of hours later. He swore and ranted,
and when he was finished I told him that what he had to say was irrelevant –
every time from then on if he came home making noise in the small hours he
would be woken a couple of hours later. We never heard
anything more from him… I did have a vague plan to take the dogs out this morning, but unless
it’s a quick once round the park there’s never enough time before work. And
being the weekend the normal people would have been out in force. And once
dog brekkie was scoffed all three were soon snoring. I had a little pootle in the garden. I
gathered dog turds, voomed round with the Bionic
Burner, and then got out the lawn feeding jollop. The yellow patches on the
lawn where dog tiddle killed the grass seem to have cleared up. I sulked as I set off to work. It's been rather wet recently.
Yesterday was a bit dull and overcast, and I cut short farting about in the
garden to avoid the rain. This morning I drove off to work through
glorious sunshine, and I spent much of the afternoon staring out the window
at a rather good day. I've often said that I don't mind working at the
weekend when it is dismal and raining. But I do mind working at the weekend
when it is sunny and bright. Work was work; I did my bit. But as always when on a late shift
the best part of the day is over and done with by mid-morning. And apart from
capping six bouncers in one of my works tree houses (I have two!)
today was on the dull side. I again spent quite a while thinking about buying that house over the
back of ours. It's a shame that “er indoors TM” isn't
keen... I know it isn't really practical, but I might just have a look when
it goes on the market. I knew having two puppies wasn't practical when I saw
Morgan and Bailey's pictures on the Internet two and a half years ago, and I
went to have a look at them... |
|
28 October 2024
(Monday) - Gardening, Lego, Frog
Other
than “er indoors TM” having a fight with
Morgan in the small hours I slept well. From time to time he licks
his paws for no reason, and was doing so quite noisily last night.
Apparently. I slept through any noise he might have been making. It was
someone else that woke me. I made toast, and had my usual root around the
Internet. Today there was an argument on the Kent Geocachers page. Someone
was whinging about why an ex-hunter of Tupperware
wasn’t doing cache maintenance any more. And that whinge summed up all that
is wrong with the noble and ancient art of hunting Tupperware. So many people
want to go looking for film pots under rocks. But so few are prepared to put
the things out themselves. It’s the old, old argument. It speaks volumes that
I for one really don’t want to put them out, and I’m the county’s second most
active hider. If people would like to put out a series there’s
plenty of space in the county. I’ve got cache locations of series I’ve
archived in Bethersden, Great Chart, Sevington and Witchling that
I’m willing to share. People wouldn’t have to work out routes to walk; all
they’d have to do would be to stick a film pot under a rock and tell the
geo-feds they’ve done it. I made the offer on-line. So far no one has taken me up on it. I took the dogs out. As we drove there was some dire
drivel on the radio about some woman who was once queen of France but jacked
it all in to become queen of Scotland. I suppose it could have been
interesting, but the presenter was determined to kill the subject stone dead.
I listened for a while; wondering why something so dull would be on national
radio. I eventually gave up and sang along to Ivor Biggun
as we drove up to the woods. The woods were rather busy today. We met nine other
groups with dogs, and every encounter passed off without episode. There was
one dog who I thought Morgan was playing rather aggressively with but that
dog wanted to walk with us and followed us as the rest of his group walked
off.. One group we met was a young mother with two small
children on bikes. And they were like every other group of young mothers with
two small children on bikes that I’ve ever seen. Young mothers always demand
that the children cycle at walking pace. It isn’t possible to cycle that
slowly, and the children constantly wobble all over the place and fall off.
If you are going to take small children out on bikes you either need to run
or have a bike yourself. It ain’t rocket science. We came home. I had a cuppa
and cracked on in the garden. I trimmed back more of not-so-nice-next-door’s
brambles, then cleaned out the pond’s filter and with that done had a general
tidy-up. And then we had a delivery. On Saturday I said “What
I needed was some of those strips of stones glued to some sort of backing
material”. I ordered some off of Amazon and they arrived today. It only
took me a few minutes to realise they were shite (and
that’s being generous). I opened the packaging to see that quite a few
stones had already fallen off of the backing. And the backing material was so
flimsy that it couldn’t hold its own weight, and whilst trying to put it into
place it stretched and bent itself entirely out of shape. Thankfully “er indoors TM” came
up with an idea to sort out what those strips of stones would be covering. I
ordered something else from Amazon, and hopefully I’ll get the current pond
project finished in a few days. I sat down with another cuppa
and wrote up some CPD,
then opened up my Lego plum blosson set and spent
an hour or so building it. What with the rain starting and then hossing down it wasn’t as though I could do much else. “er indoors TM” boiled up her version of plov, and we
scoffed it whilst watching “Lego Masters: Australia”. With that watched Bailey asked to go into the garden.
I went with her – she tends to play silly beggars in the dark. As I waved the
torch around I saw movement. We’ve got a frog in our small pond. |
|
29 October 2024
(Tuesday) - Munzee R.I.P.
I
didn't sleep very well last night; with an alarm set I was waking every
twenty minutes or so. I eventually gave up trying to sleep and got up. I made
toast and watched more of "Everyone Else Burns". It's a very
good show. Most people would see it as a rather funny comedy about religious
crackpots; I see the show as a documentary about my teenage years. In the
late 1970s some bunch of religious nuts decided that Hastings was a den of
iniquity and was ripe for missionaries. And like many of my mates at the time
I fell for their hype. Looking back, the religious fervour
I had at their rallies was much the same feeling that you get at a pop
concert or a football match, but I was young and didn't know. And again looking back, "Everyone Else Burns"
has got it spot on. I got dressed in the dark taking care not to
wake “er indoors TM” or the dogs. A tricky
thing to do; if I turn the light on I wake everyone; if I leave the light off
I might squish a dog as I put my socks on. Bailey particularly would be very
easily squished. I set off to work, and realising
I'd forgotten lunch I popped in to the co-op. Isn't it daft that what with
their meal deal, adding a bottle of pop to my lunch took twenty pence off the
total price, and brandishing my co-op car gave me fifty pence off of a
four-quid bill. But a small cheapo flimsy biodegradable carrier bag set me
back sixty pence? I drove up the dark motorway through pouring rain as
the pundits on the radio wittered on about
occasional passing showers. They also wittered on
about more pub closures. They were interviewing the head honcho of the pub
chain Greene King about the upcoming budget about which there are rumours of increases to taxes and to the minimum wage.
The chap being interviewed made the observation that the cost to a pub of
increases in staff wages and taxes can only be paid for out of pub takings (which
is true - where else can they come from?). He went on to say that the
profit margin on some pubs is so low that the rumoured
tax and wage increases will turn them from making a profit into making a
loss, and so they will close. There was a lot of bleeding heart whinging from other people being interviewed, but the
observation was made (correctly) that pubs are businesses, not
charities. Sad, but true. I like a pint from time to time, but with a pint
costing the thick end of a fiver the writing is on the wall for most, if not
all, pubs. The motorway was rather busy this morning. Traffic
was moving very slowly for the two miles between junctions seven and six on
the motorway, and the Running Horse Roundabout was horrendous. Quite a few
people were bellowing road rage at the more timid drivers, and in all honesty
I can't say I wasn't tempted to join in. Having left home in darkness I got to work in
daylight. A colleague was poorly and I'd been offered the early shift. I like
early shifts. Particularly at the moment. If you aren't past the Running
Horse roundabout by half past seven in the morning you are looking at sitting
in a traffic jam for over an hour. And then getting to work to find everyone
else has beaten you there and the car park is full to overflowing. So
on the days when I am working I get there silly early so as to avoid that
nonsense. Earlies suit me!! And having done my bit at work there was more road
nonsense on my way home. There’s been notices up about Bond Road being closed
overnight for some time now. And today when the closures are planned to
start, some idiot has decided to close Christchurch Road. For those who don’t
know the area this is akin to planning to deliberately close both the M2 and
M20 at the same time. Kent Highways have done some stupid things recently…
Personally I don’t blame whoever made the decision to do this. I blame
whoever put that person into a position or authority where they could do
this. And as I was typing this drivel so I’m (quite
possibly) finding myself in need of a new hobby. Munzee HQ in America has
announced that they are ending their reseller program. Up until now if I
wanted to buy any bar codes to stick onto lamp posts I could buy them from a
company in Lancashire who would send them on to me at second class post
rates. From now on I can print my own (tried that – didn’t work) or
have them posted from America at silly prices. So I can Munz until supplies run out… and then I
shall need another hobby. |
|
30 October 2024
(Wednesday) - Something for Nothing
I
had another restless night. I woke feeling refreshed and raring to go at
quarter past two, and then lay awake for the rest of the night. Over brekkie I watched another episode of “Everyone
Else Burns”. Again on the one hand it was very funny and entertaining,
and on the other hand I recognized a lot of characters from my past. I wonder
whatever happened to the religious crackpots of Hastings of the late 1970s.
Have they all (like me) seen the darkness? With telly watched I sparked up my lap-top. The
Munzee world was amazed at Munzee HQ’s announcement last night that you can
now only buy their stuff from the USA now. Or that is those in the parts of
the Munzee world outside the USA were amazed. Those in the USA were seemingly
amazed that there were parts of the world outside the USA. I got Wordle on my last attempt and got ready for
work. Again taking care not to wake or squish anyone. It was again dark as I set off to work, and again
after a couple of minutes driving through a dark morning I remembered I'd not
brought lunch. I stopped off at the co-op to get some and I met Martin who
was having a bit of a disaster. His milk had gone off and he needed more, and
so had gone shopping. Back in the day we'd have milk delivered by a milkman.
The bloke who used to live next door a few years ago had a milkman and paid a
lot more for his milk than I did. I had a little look at the Internet this
morning and saw that the local dairies would seem to have got cheaper since
I last
compared prices but when do they deliver? I can remember my gran's
milkman never showed up until mid-morning, and on the summer mornings the
milk had already turned before he'd delivered it. On the winter mornings the
stuff used to arrive frozen. I got my sandwich, told Martin he should get a co-op
card, and set off to work. As always I listened to the pundits on the radio
who today were in a speculative mood today. Who was going to win next week's
presidential elections in America? What would be announced in the budget
later today? Loads of guesswork this morning but absolutely no news at all. Work was work. At lunch time one of the trainees
came round with a load of Starbucks mugs that had been donated to us. A free
mug can’t be bad... and hot on her heels was the works' well-being team with
a free packet of vitamin tablets for anyone who wanted one. I had a mug and a
packet of tablets - something for nothing is always worth having even if both
will just sit in my locker never to see the light of day again. It was a shame no one was giving out cake... |
|
31 October 2024
(Thursday) - Not At Work
Back
in the day I used to work nine to five every Monday to Friday. The night and
weekend shifts I did were overtime. I would regularly work seventy hours in a
week, and there was one spell where I worked every weekend for six months. Yesterday I came home knackered having worked two
consecutive days and feeling that I needed a rest. As I emptied the dishwasher this morning I found a
pit of it had dropped off. Some rubber thingy. I emptied the dishwasher and
left the thingy on the side in the hopes that “er indoors TM” might
fix it. I set the washing machine going and as I scoffed
toast I peered into the Internet which told me that an old friend was having
a birthday today. We went to school together where he once put a drawing pin
on another child’s seat and I got the blame. Every Wednesday night we’d meet
at the chip shop and lip the nice lady behind the counter (one night she
set the chip shop dog on him). We’d go underage drinking regularly and
his singing his home-made ballads got us thrown out of quite a few pubs. When
aged fourteen we once found one of those inflatable sex dolls and he cycled
round Hastings for a fortnight with the thing strapped to his bike’s rack.
And we went to Boys Brigade and the associated church services together as
well. He’s sixty-one today. Where have the years gone? I got the dogs into the car and we set off to the
woods listening to the pundits on the radio as we went. They were talking
about yesterday’s budget in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been
incredibly clever. She’s kept the election pledges of not putting up taxes on
working people. However she’s putting up all sorts of taxes on businesses. So
the businesses have to find this money by either cutting their costs, cutting
staff wages and putting up their prices. And with no wage increases and higher
prices we will have just as much money in our pockets as we would have had if
income tax and VAT had gone up. But in putting up the taxes that she has, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer has made businesses appear to be the villains of
the piece and not the government. Sneaky, eh? We got to the woods and had a rather good walk. The
forecast had been for a misty morning and I’d hoped to see deer. The mist had
all but gone by the time we got there. We didn’t see any deer, but we did
hear a crashing in the trees that might have been them. Mind you there were a
load of squirrels about today. And an incredibly fat jogger. Even fatter than
me. He was gasping for air but attempted a cheery wave as he came past. We came home where I got the lawn mower out and gave
the lawn a haircut, then tidied away the last of the soil I’d dug out for the
new bog filter. As I worked I could hear our frog croaking, but couldn’t see
him anywhere. And then I cracked on with the ironing as I watched
a couple of films. I.D. is an old
favourite of mine but the sequel I.D.2 was a
tad lame. I made a cuppa, did some CPD and woke up
a few hours later. |
