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1 September 2021
(Wednesday) - Bit Dull
After a better night’s sleep
I opened up a new razor (new month -new razor blade). As I scraped I wondered if I might get razor blades cheaper
on-line. Those things ain’t cheap. I made toast as my COVID test incubated and
scoffed it whilst watching another episode of “The Chair”, then
sparked up my lap-top to register yet another negative test result. Facebook
was much the same as ever this morning, but I was amazed by a distant cousin
who was posting about having finally moved in to her
new house. With no urgency to vacate the old place or get in
to the new place she'd decided to save on moving expenses and to move
herself. She claimed she'd finally moved the last bit of stuff into her new
home having done fifty-two car trips. Fifty-two. I'd pay a removal firm and
think that was money well spent. And some Australian chap was posting on some
group or other about how he had planned to move to the UK but since Brexit
his Australian HGV licence is no longer valid in the UK. However
he claimed he could move to France and drive a French lorry into the UK on
his Australian HGV licence. Can he? It would go a long way to explain the
shortage of drivers at the moment if it were true. I swapped a few messages with Gordon who was
planning to walk my geo-series in Kings Wood today, then got ready for the
off. As I drove up the motorway the pundits on the
radio were talking about how some new-age hippies from the Extinction
Rebellion movement had occupied
the offices of old-age hippies of the World Wildlife Fund. I did chuckle
- some things never change. I can remember back thirty-five years ago when
our old landlady (who ran the first vegetarian restaurant in Dover)
was a leading light in “Save The Whales” and seemed to spend far more
time arguing and squabbling with other charities than she ever did on
cetacean well-being. There was also a lot of talk about the future
of Afghanistan. With the allied forces now having walked away from the place,
all sorts of politicians and do-gooders were talking about how the western
governments will force the new management there to dance to the western tune.
None of them seemed to realise that evacuating all the western presence has
effectively removed all western influence. But when have politicians and
do-gooders ever listened to reality? Work was work. I did spend a bit of time
peering out of the window though. Today was supposed to have been a rostered
day off for me, but seeing that we looked a tad
short-handed I offered to come in instead. Ten years (and a bit) ago I worked
somewhere else. If that workplace was on fire I wouldn't piss on it, but I am
very happy to help out where I now work. It is
amazing the difference having a manager who isn't nasty makes. But I was still glad when home time came
around. Today had been rather busy. I came home to an empty house. “er indoors
TM” had taken Pogo and Treacle out. I pootled about until they
came home trying to sort out the documents on my lap-top.
I really could do with being a tad more organised. I wonder what’s for dinner… |
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2 September 2021
(Thursday) - Before The Night Shift
Treacle spent much of the night jumping off
the bed then crying to be helped back up. When she finally settled (at
half past four) so “er indoors TM” started snoring. I’d
finally managed to nod off when “er indoors TM”’s alarm
went off. Leaving everyone else asleep I made toast and
peered into the Internet. There was a post one of the local geocaching pages
telling everyone to play nicely after yesterday’s spat. There had been a good
spat on there yesterday afternoon in which someone
had the arse because someone else had reported him
to Geo-HQ for some trivial infringement of the rules. The infringement was
very trivial, and had been blown out of all
proportion. I know what side of the spat I would have been on, but (amazingly)
someone taking the opposing viewpoint had posted about how we shouldn’t be
nasty to each other. This was the very same person who made a rather bitter,
nasty, and utterly unprovoked personal attack at me on one of the national
geocaching Facebook pages a few months ago. Yesterday I mentioned how the
noble pursuit of hunting Tupperware is dying on its arse;
internecine squabbling isn’t helping. I sent out a couple of birthday wishes to
people I’ve not seen for years then took the dogs down to Orlestone
woods for a walk. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking to a
surgeon who has turned down the chance of being evacuated from Afghanistan. Instead the chap is going to remain in his clinic where he
fits prosthetic artificial limbs to people who have lost them during the
various conflicts. He remarked on how so many of his patients suddenly
realise just how petty and trivial their religious and political differences
are once their leg has been blown off. We got to the woods which were rather busy
today. We met six other people walking dogs. Six!! That’s unheard of. There
was a little woofing but the walk passed off with no
“episodes”. We came home, I set the washing machine loose
on some grubby clothes then mowed the lawn. Only a week since I last had a go
at it, and the cuttings half-filled a dustbin. I hung the scrubbed washing
out to dry, put dentist and optician dates into the diary, and then saw I had
some emails. From both the people who administer my professional registration
and from my professional body. I had to re-register with the first lot, and in
doing so I had to agree to two things. Firstly was I
keeping up to date with current trends in the world of testing blood? Well, yes I am. I
write a blog to document what I do. Secondly I
had to agree that I had professional indemnity insurance. Which I have
through my professional body. Having said yes to both, I then had a look to
see what my professional body wanted. They had written to say they were
stopping the professional indemnity insurance from the end of this month. That’s a bit of a nuisance. I then spent a few minutes solving a
geo-puzzle. I might go looking for it when I am next heading off in that
direction in a couple of months’ time. And suddenly the morning had just gone and it was bed time. I went to bed to find Treacle had beaten me
there. I stayed in bed for four hours; probably sleeping for three of them.
Hopefully “er indoors TM” will boil up some dinner soon,
and then I will start my standard “going to the night shift” routine.
I will drive up the motorway singing along to my strange choice of music. I
will go to Sainsburys where I will get a bottle of wine, shower gel, jam and marmalade to bring home and a sandwich, bar of
crisps and four huge biccies for overnight. I will
then drive to the works car park and park up in the spot closest to the
hospital’s back door where I will drink a bottle of “Shaken Udder”
salted caramel flavoured milk shake. I will then do the night shift, come out
and wish I’d parked close to the car park exit as it will take an age to get
through all the cars swarming round the car park. I’m something of a creature of habit… |
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3 September 2021
(Friday) - Bit Tired
As I drove home after one of the busier night shifts the pundits on the radio were talking about
how English law is changing. Stealing a dog is now a criminal offence. As
it should be. I came home and went to bed where I slept for
an hour or so until the dogs went berserk. My next batch of COVID tests had
been delivered and the dogs certainly let me know. As I tried to get back to sleep
so they kicked off again at the postman delivering some letters. I was wide
awake by then so gave up and made some toast. As I scoffed it I
peered into the Internet. A friend had shared (on Facebook) the album
of photos I’d taken when we went out to see the sea forts. Was that
really three years ago today? How time flies. We had such a good day going
out to log finds on two geocaches out at the sea forts in the Thames estuary.
But one of the things which sticks in my mind over that outing was the people
who didn’t go. There were twelve spaces on the boat trip that I organised. I
knew that if I did my usual trick of asking the world and his wife then the outing
would be massively over-subscribed, so the trip was by invitation only. But
word of the trip spread (as it does). Before we went out I had no end of messages from people I didn’t know who
told me that they were coming and wanted to know who they should pay. After
the event I had loads of messages from people who hadn’t seen the trip
advertised and told me how I should have organised the advertising. I was
asked (a few times) why I thought that it was up to me to decide who
went and who didn’t. I gave all of these the same
reply. I gave them the details of the boat on which we sailed and told them
that they too could charter the boat and organise their own trip. Looking at the logs on the geocaches we went
to, not one of those people has done so… There wasn’t a lot else happening in cyber-space so I set the dishwasher going and took the dogs out. We went to Orlestone
woods again and arrived to find an empty car park. We started our walk, and
after five minutes Pogo suddenly started barking. I couldn’t work out what
had upset him, but after a couple of minutes I saw there was some odd-looking
chap lurking in the undergrowth. I called out a cheery “hello” and got
glared at before the chap carried on with what he was doing. He was
photographing something low-down that I couldn’t see. Was it a strange
orchid, unusual insects, or a nudey lady without
any clothes on? We’ve seen people photographing all of those there before. With walk walked we came home and I got the
ironing board out and ironed like a thing possessed whilst binge-watching
episodes of “Privates”;
a TV show from the BBC set in 1960 which follows the antics of eight privates
who are part of the last intake of National Service. I thought it was a new
thing; it was eight years old and starred him out of “The Office”. It
took me two hours to realise it was him out of The Office” and not him
out of “Waiting for God”. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whist watching more episodes of “House
of Games” without falling asleep. Not falling asleep was rather amazing
after a night shift and only an hour asleep. I’m going to bed now as I’ve an early start
tomorrow… |
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4 September 2021
(Saturday) - Early Shift
I woke in the small hours to find that Pogo
was laying across the bed at right angles to me, and consequently taking up
far too much space. I tried shoving him, but he is quite the lump to shove.
Especially when he has made himself comfortable and doesn't want to shift. I
gave up shoving and made the most of the small amount of bed that I had. Over toast I watched the last episode of
"The Chair". Having started watching it I felt I had to see
the thing through. I won't bother with the second season though (if there
is one). It had been billed as a comedy-drama. There was precious little
comedy and not much drama. It was more of a vehicle through which the writer
could push their personal political agenda. Had I known it was one of those
programs which is constantly shouting on about minority rights I wouldn't
have bothered with it. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for equal rights for
everyone but I'm not personally responsible for the state of the world and
get a tad tired of the looney leftie scriptwriters who try to make me feel
guilty about stuff which is not my fault. Perhaps if the leading character was more
human and less akin to a plank of wood I might have
warmed to the show more. I set off to work a few minutes early and
stopped off in Godinton where I capped a few Munzees in the desperate hope of getting a qrate (as some people do). I got two which was
something of a result, then I set off up the motorway listening to the pundits
on the radio who were interviewing a raspberry farmer who had lost all his
workforce. Rather than letting his crop rot, this chap has offered the
raspberries free to anyone who can be bothered to go and pick them. Why was
he giving them away? Because he can't get anyone to pick them for him. In the
past there were no end of immigrant Eastern European workers who were happy
to work for peanuts to harvest his crops, but now that "we have taken
back control", in this post-Brexit world the ex-workers know where
they are not welcome and have all gone home. It was claimed that fruit
picking is something of a skilled job - the average person can't pick more
than ten punnets of raspberries an hour, and selling
them picked at that rate brings in less money than it costs to pay someone (and
that's paying at minimum wage!) The farmer said he's advertised for more
workers but got no applicants. Not one. He said he'd contacted his MP and was
told that he should never have been dependent on an underpaid immigrant
workforce in the first place. The obvious answer is to run a "pick
your own" scheme and not be dependent on paying your workers such a
pittance... but what do I know? I went to get petrol before work. I've had a
few little episodes there recently with one of the card readers at the tills
not working. When I came to pay this morning I was
called up to the card reader that doesn't work, and again it didn't work. I
suggested we try the other card reader and all was
fine there. I remarked to the woman behind the till that this is a regular
occurrence, that her colleagues have told me before that the card reader
doesn't work, and we all had a good laugh. As I walked out I
saw the supervisor come running over hissing about not telling the customers
that the card reader doesn't work. Had I got them into trouble? Should I have
said something? Not my circus... not my monkeys. Work was work. It was rather good today; we
had cake. And with work done and cake scoffed I came home and set up the
event shelter in the garden. “My Boy TM” and Cheryl (and
Ro-Ro) came round for a rather good al-fresco bit of dinner. Rather good
– but rather cold. Perhaps we won’t be doing that again this year… |
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5 September 2021
(Sunday) - A Rather Sunny Day
I spent much of the night in a loosing battle trying to wrest some of the bed space from
the dogs. They aren’t big dogs but can spread themselves out quite
impressively when asleep. In a novel break with tradition “er
indoors TM” got up first this morning. She’d arranged to
collect a load of shopping from Asda. Asda, like many supermarkets, have this
thing where you go on-line, tell them what you want, and they provide you
with some stuff which is almost (but not entirely) utterly unlike that
which you ordered. With “er indoors TM”
returned with a whole load of God-only-knows-what I made toast,
registered another negative COVID test and had a look at the internet. My piss immediately boiled as I opened Facebook. Some time
ago a friend started up a mindfulness page on which various people post all
sorts of twee memes. There is nothing more annoying than being told that “when
life gives you lemons, make lemonade” from people who have life served up
on silver platters. There was an interesting post on a Facebook
page that I help moderate. There have never been any audio books of Julian
May’s “The Many Coloured Land” series of books, and people were
talking about the possibility of creating some. Nothing will come of the
discussion, but (as always) the chat was good-natured and friendly. If
only the rest of Facebook was so amiable. My Facebook feed was filled with adverts for
garden waterfalls this morning – I looked at those on eBay last night. Big
Brother certainly is watching me. I sent out birthday wishes and then got ready
for the off. The original plan for today was to go down to
Walmer to join in with a tidying the beach session
that had been planned for today by some of the geo-gang. But for all sorts of
reasons we didn’t really want to be too far from
home today, so we met up with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and started
provisional planning for a possible new series of geocaches. I won’t say
where we went; I realise just how pathetic this sounds but there really are
those people who will be looking at the photos I took today trying to work
out where we walked, and then trying to find today’s route desperately
rummaging round hoping to locate any geocaches we put out today. For some the
need to be the first one to say they found it is a rather powerful addiction. Wherever it was that we went we had a really good walk. The dogs chased pheasants, we saw no end
of joggers, and we even got to see some very small baby cows too. After a couple of hours
we were back where we started and having started by a pub we thought we’d
have a pint or two. As everyone else changed their boots for more comfortable
shoes so Charlotte and I went into the bee garden to bag a table. In doing so
we upset the normal people. We sat at a large table under a tree, and as we
were giving the dogs a drink so the chap who was at the next table when we
arrived announced to his mate (very loudly) that he wanted to sit at
the table in the shade under the tree, and then glared at me. Well… why
didn’t he then? The table was empty when we arrived and saw him sitting at
his table. Fortunately him and his mates
didn’t stay long. We had a few pints and some rather good pizza before
wending our way home. I
took a few photos as we walked. It don’t take
Sherlock Holmes to work out where we went. We came home and put away the event shelter
that we’d had out yesterday evening. As we had a cuppa
so we realised that new Munzees were appearing
outside. A friend was in the area having a cheeky deploy so we sent a message and she came in for a cuppa. It was good to catch
up. “er indoors TM” and Cheryl set off
to see some drag queens and I settled down in front of the telly with the
dogs. They slept the entire evening; showing no interest
in having any dinner. I wonder what that’s all about… |
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6 September 2021
(Monday) - London Calling
I woke with a seriously stiff neck. That was
handy for today ! Over some toast I watched an episode of “Drifters”,
sent out some birthday wishes, and got ready for the off. Having completely
missed that there was a geo-Mega event in London last week I thought I might
pop up to the wicked city on my day off and do the temporary Adventure Lab
caches before they get archived next week. I got the train to Waterloo from where (after
a quick solo virtual) I wandered down to the Jubilee Gardens by the
London Eye (it is HUGE!!) where I soon met Pam and Brian and we set
off on a little walk along the Thames. Before long we were joined by Richard
and Millie and together we had a rather good (if
tiring) day walking over thirteen miles. Our route was laid out by the four series of
Adventure Lab caches, and as geocaching so often does, we were taken to the
oddities. The weird and wonderful places and things that the tourist guides
never mention. I had no idea that there are sand beaches along the Thames.
What was that amazing
boat/ship thing near the Golden Hinde? The artwork in the underpasses was
amazing. We found several hidden gardens and statues that most people would
walk past without even seeing. We found rather odd chicken footprints across
the pavements not far from Tower Bridge. I found the actual Savage Garden. I
took photos of Mary Poppins and of Darth Vader. I got a selfie in the Iron
Throne (from Game of Thrones) and a selfie with Mr Bean. And I’d never
had a walk round the docklands developments before
today. We took in a lot of the regular tourist stuff
too. We walked across Tower Bridge and round the Tower of London. We walked
past (but not up) the Monument. We saw the balloons in Chinatown. We
walked across Horse Guards Parade. We peered up Downing Street. We stared in
admiration at St Pauls and the Shard. We rather upset the security at the
Bank of England who didn’t like us looking at the engravings on their door.
We got treated like dirt by the police pushing the proles out of the way so
that some politician or other could be driven out of the Houses of
Parliament. We had coffee at Bankside and overlooking
Trafalgar Square. Seeing the prices of food in the pubs (pie and a pint
for seventeen quid!) we had a lunch from a burger van at Tower Hill. I
took quite a few photos as we walked today. Over a hundred!! Amazingly for a day’s geocaching in London we
stayed very focussed on our target which was the Adventure Lab caches: it is
so easy to get geo-distracted in London. And after seven (and a bit)
hours, thirteen and a half miles, forty-eight geo-finds and two geo-souvenirs
we were back where we’d started and we said our goodbyes..
for this time. We will certainly be back. I’ve done trips like this to London before.
The trick to a day’s geocaching in London is to have a route and a plan, and
there are several geocaches and series of geocaches in London which lend
themselves to a day out. On 5 February 2016 thirteen of us travelled
all over London; on foot, on the tubes and on buses looking for the London
Rainbow caches including the zebra crossing at Abbey Road as we went. On 1 November 2016 a group of us went up the
monument and to the source of the great plague looking for the Catastrophe,
Calamity, Cataclysm series of caches. On 4 December 2017 a load of us took a rather
tortuous route from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace via all sorts of
places following the Central London Team Quests. On 20 February 2018 half a dozen of us went
in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper and finished off finding the last part of
a twelve-stage trip round London pubs. There’s other geocache missions still to do. There’s loads of Adventure Lab caches which lend
themselves to a day out. There’s a thirteen-stage multi which involves hunting
aliens which goes all over the place in London. But right now I’m
looking at a ten-stage multi going to various sites in London. Starting at
Tower Bridge the route goes through to the British Museum. I’m tentatively
thinking some time in November for that one, but right now I’m thinking about
how my legs ache, and whether I will be able to get off of
this sofa… |
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7 September 2021
(Tuesday) - Early Shift
I
don’t know whether “er indoors TM” and the dogs had any
spats during the night; I was out like a light for seven hours. As
I made toast so Treacle came trotting downstairs
closely followed by Pogo. I thought it rather sweet they were coming down to
be with me… then “er indoors TM” came through to the loo.
Both dogs followed her to the loo, then followed he back to bed. There is no
secret as to who their favourite is. As
I scoffed toast I watched another episode of “Drifters”
(in which our heroes had scabies) before peering into the Internet.
The photos I’d posted on-line last night had come in for quite a few
favourable comments. And there was a rather amazing squabble on one of the
Sparks-related Facebook pages. Someone else who has followed them for fifty
years was being accused of “Gatekeeping”.
I’d not heard of this one before and had to look it up – apparently having
been following a band or doing a hobby (or even have been alive)
longer than someone else is in some way patronising and offensive to the newcomer, and is (supposedly) valid grounds for
taking offence. Some
people would seem to descend to any level just to have an argument! As
I drove up the motorway I couldn't help but notice
how busy it was. I have seen it busier, but not often. Such a contract to the
trains and London yesterday which were the quietest they've ever been. As
I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the situation in
Afghanistan. Having withdrawn all the western forces, the Taliban have now
effectively re-taken control (despite some local opposition). The general consensus was that this was inevitable; the only way
to have kept the Taliban out of power was to have kept up the military
presence. And just how long can you keep that up? Longer than people will
cling to crackpot ideas? Hardly? I
got to work and did my bit. One of the things which makes my job different to
that of other people’s is the various hours I work. Today was effectively my
Monday morning. Traditionally everyone whinges about Monday mornings. And
having had a particularly good weekend involving a very good hike round the
countryside, an incredibly good session with friends over a pub lunch, and
then a frankly epic day in London yesterday there’s no denying that today was
something of an anti-climax. But today there was none of the “I really
can’t face going to work” feeling that plagued my life for years. And
with my bit done I left. Being on an early shift wasn’t such a good thing
today; the car’s thermometer said it was thirty degrees when I came to leave.
I thought about having an ice cream; someone has kindly paid for an ice cream
van to be in the works car park giving free ice creams to hospital staff. In
theory this is a very generous offer; in practice I couldn’t be queuing up in
the blistering heat for twenty minutes waiting. I
had planned to take the dogs out for a walk when I got home but it was
still far too hot. I sat in front of the telly and fell asleep. “er
indoors TM” woke me when she came home after a dog walk a few hours
later. I feel like death warmed up – did I have too much sun yesterday? |
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8 September 2021
(Wednesday) - Bit Dull Really
Despite having turned off my phone’s internet
connection last night, the thing spent much of the night beeping with
messages it was receiving through that turned-off connection. I gave up
trying to sleep, turned off the phone’s alarm, and shortly afterwards that
alarm went off anyway. That phone seems to have a mind of its own. I made toast and scoffed it whilst watching
an episode of “Drifters” before sparking up my lap-top.
It too had a funny five minutes; having updated its web browsers overnight
the things weren’t working. Eventually they got going, and I tried not to
laugh at a post on one of the work-based Facebook groups in which various
people were quarrelling about various features in a photo of a blood film. I
find it best to keep quiet on those work-based Facebook groups. As is so
often the way, the more vocal the people posting, the less they actually knew. With not a lot else going on in cyber space
and bearing in mind how busy the motorway was yesterday I set off for work
rather early. As I got into my car I watched not-so-nice-next-door
going off on her morning constitutional. Every morning at half past six she
goes up the road in a rather odd way. Slower than running, faster than
walking. You really would think she'd crapped
herself judging by the gait, only she was heading away from her house rather
than toward it. Pausing only briefly to post a nephew's
birthday card I was very soon being tail-ended by a
lorry of the Southern Fencing Company. Having been dangerously close to me
going up the motorway's slip road they overtook like a maniac, then drove all
the way to Maidstone never more than a hundred yards in front of me. What was
the urgency to get in front of me all about? As I drove, the pundits on the radio were
talking about the announcement of the new government in Afghanistan. A lot of
concern has been expressed internationally how no minorities or women are
part of the new Afghan administration and how people that western governments
have wanted to question are now in positions of authority. I didn't quite
laugh out loud, but what did the international community expect. Having spent
twenty years using military force to keep the religious extremists out, the
west has walked away leaving the door open to those they were keeping out.
How can anyone spend twenty years forcing an extremist organisation into
hiding, then walk away and act surprised that this extremist group stops
hiding? There was also a lot of talk about the
government's new tax to pay for the NHS and for social care. As far as I am
concerned the only surprising thing about it is that people are surprised by
it. The world is slowly recovering from a pandemic, we've had to use the NHS
and social care like never before. Of course it costs money. But the politicians are being
rather stupid about it. Of course the Prime Minister
has broken manifesto pledges... when he wrote them he had no idea there was
going to be a pandemic. And why are the Labour party having a go at the
Conservative party for raising taxes? How would the Labour party pay for the
costs of the pandemic? With shirt buttons? Speaking as a life-long-leftie,
the current Labour party are something of an embarrassment. Work was work, but
being in an early start meant for another early finish. And again I came home to find it far too hot to be taking the
dogs out. So instead I pondered the geo-map and have
worked out a route through London starting at Tower Bridge and taking a
convoluted route to the British Museum hopefully finding about fifty
geocaches as we go. “er indoors TM” is boiling up
dinner; I’ve got my eye on a bottle of plonk… |
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9 September 2021
(Thursday) - Honesty Table(s)
It was a hot night last night. Despite
sinking a bottle of red wine I didn’t sleep very
well, seeing every hour of the night. I had a little look at the Internet. There is
talk of a camping weekend being organised by and for the local geocaching
fraternity. I might have been up for it had it not been planned for next
April. I’ve camped in April before – April nights are *far* too cold to
be in tents. I’ve done that before – the days are hot enough to get sunburn
and at night there is frost in the tent. I’ll just pop down for the day
though. I’d like to support the event. I don’t think the local geocaching
scene has will survive much longer unless positive steps are taken. The
first, second and fourth most prolific local hiders of Tupperware have
effectively given up doing so. No one seems to be keen on organising local
geo-meets. It used to be such fun… it can be again. If I can get this
geo-walk from Tower Bridge to the London museum off the ground that will be a
step in the right direction. I’m rather concerned that hunting Tupperware in
Kent has gone the same way as it has in several other counties – I’m reliably
informed that there are large part of the country
where people don’t go hunting for Tupperware; they just sit about whinging
about how good it used to be. It *did* used to be good – and can be
again! I then sent out some birthday wishes and
sighed. My nephew was doing a birthday fundraiser for the hospice where my
mum died earlier in the year. I know he means well but I won’t be giving to
it. This is something about which I feel very strongly… (engage rant mode…) When that hospice started it was effectively
a part of the NHS. Today only a third of its funding comes from the NHS
because the government know that well-meaning people will pay the rest
through charity donations. And this isn’t party political; it happened
through the Labour governments too. No government of any party is ever going
to pay for anything when someone else is paying for it for them. Look at the
schools where the parent-teacher associations are fundraising for the text-books. That *can’t* be right. I’m all for
charities – when they are set up as charities. For example there’s the goat
sanctuary, the Scout Association and Guide Dogs; none of which are publicly funded.. But subsidising a government institution *isn’t*
a charity. I set off to work about an hour later than I
did yesterday and was amazed that the roads were quieter. As I drove the
pundits on the radio were talking about how the Home Secretary has announced
plans to have British ships on patrol in the English Channel looking for
boats of illegal immigrants. Apparently according to international law these
British ships can turn the illegal immigrants around and return them to the
French authorities… provided the French authorities will accept them. The French have said they won’t. You really have to laugh..
The whole Brexit thing was (in large part) about controlling
immigration. When Britain was a part of the EU Britain was one of
twenty-seven countries with a shared immigration problem. Now that Britain is
not part of the EU, the remaining twenty-six have a ready-made solution to
their immigration problem; send the immigrants on their way to Britain. Did no one else see this coming? I got to work where I spent much of the day
giggling. New porters were being shown round the hospital. They were brought
into the lab, shown to us and they were told “These are the scientists.
They are very nice”. No one else but me thought this was
hilarious. Mind you one of the girls at work wasn’t
laughing. She’d had a message from her son’s school telling her that tomorrow
was a non-uniform day and that as part of it she was expected to contribute
to the “Honesty Table”, but was admonished
that only quality offerings would be accepted. I’d not heard of an “Honesty
Table” before. Apparently they are a
self-service jumble sale where you put out stuff and others come along and
pay what they feel the stuff is worth. The thing is unsupervised, hence the “Honesty”
bit. When I was a lad
every day was a school uniform day. We didn’t mess about with “Honesty
Tables”. We did our lessons and anyone who didn’t got a crack on the arse. Simpler times… |
|
10 September 2021
(Friday) - A Wedding
I woke to the sound of the dogs crashing off of the bed as they chased after “er indoors TM”
who had gone to the loo. When I get up in the night
they just move into the warm space that I’ve left; when she gets up they are
heartbroken. I got up, and as they all went back to bed I made some toast, watched an episode of “Drifters”
and had my usual peer into the internet wondering if I’d missed much
overnight. I had a message via geocaching dot come about a Wherigo game I’d
set a couple of years ago. “Hiya a great quirky series, exasperated one
moment, laughing the next, great fun, thank you for putting it on.👍🏻😀”. Exactly what I’d
hoped for when I set the series. I hadn’t missed much else though. Glossing
over a sea of twee memes I got ready for work. The motorway was far quieter than it had been
yesterday. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how President Biden
has had enough with the anti-vax brigade in America and is now talking
about compulsory COVID vaccinations and testings.
The chap has a point, but he is up against stiff resistance. It is the
fundamental right of all Americans to be free... and unfortunately that
includes being free to make frankly stupid life choices. And our old friend science has issued a tsunami
warning for Scotland. When the ice sheets in Greenland fall into the Atlantic they look set to make quite a splash. I got to work and did my bit. Today wasn't a
bad day really. We had cake, and a day when we have cake is always one of the
better ones. As I scoffed cake so I reached the end
of my current e-book. A couple of weeks ago I downloaded and read "Ender's Game"
which was frankly excellent. I downloaded the sequel
which I finished today. It was one of those books which I read purely because
I felt that it might eventually perk up. It never did; frankly it was crap. Sequels of books rarely live up to their promise,
and this one certainly didn't, which was a shame. I've now downloaded "The Forever War"
to read yet again. Much as it is a good read, I find more and more I'm
re-reading books that I know are good stories rather than wasting my time on
books which turn out to be tripe. If any of my loyal readers can recommend a
good book, I'm all ears. The plan for today had been to go to a
wedding, but I couldn’t get the time off work. So
with work done I hurried home, we settled the dogs and drove down to Hythe
for the evening party. Friends and family had gathered to celebrate Glen and
Matt’s wedding and we had a rather good time. Though it was probably as well
that we’d only been able to get along for the evening. With a malibu and coke
going for nine quid it could have been a rather pricey day. And the hotel’s band made me think. Fronted
by someone I can only describe as “Adam Ant’s Granddad”, why do all
the live bands I ever see play music originally performed by people about
thirty years older than themselves? And in closing, today is something of an
anniversary. It marks fifteen years of my writing a diary. |
|
11 September 2021
(Saturday) - Early Shift
We got home rather
earlier from the wedding last night than we might have done, and I went straight
to bed. I’d come home with something of a headache. Why do all live bands
think that they can increase their quality by increasing their volume? I
slept for a couple of hours until Pogo had a barking fit at quarter past two,
and I didn’t get back to sleep after that. After three hours of laying awake I gave up and made
brekkie. As I peered into the
internet there was quite the argument kicking off on one of the local
Facebook pages this morning. As I drove home last night there were half a
dozen crackpots waving anti-vaccination placards at passing traffic in Chart
Road. A frankly frightening amount of people had been posting on-line in
support of the anti-vax movement. Whilst these people have the right to their
opinion, their opinion is factually wrong. Let’s be crystal clear here.
Anti-vaccination is up there with flat Earth theories, homeopathy, astrology,
the canals on Mars, and ideas about the Sun going round the Earth and fairies
living at the bottom of the garden. It is factually wrong. There is an
abundance of reliable and repeatable evidence to prove it is wrong. And just
because someone chooses to believe it doesn’t give it any credence
whatsoever. It bothers me that in today’s society the considered opinions of educated
people formed over years of study and reasoning are of no more worth than the
whim of a half-wit. And it also bothers me that there is no longer any shame
in proudly showing ignorance and frank stupidity. As I drove to work
there was some nonsense on the radio. The "Farming Today"
program was talking about de-carbonising the fishing industry and about how
much time and effort had gone into looking at alternative fuels for smaller
fishing boats. Amazingly no- one had considered sails or oars like my Dad
used on his small boat for many years. There was also talk
of Franklin's Bumblebee. Not having been seen for fifteen years it has been
declared as "endangered".
How long do these things have to be missing before they are officially
extinct? I turned off the
radio. It was winding me up. Instead I sang along to
my "Ivor Biggun" CDs as I drove to
work. Work was much the
same as ever. I don't mind working at weekends when I'm not missing much. The
weather wasn't good, and much of the family was somewhat under the weather
after the wedding yesterday, so it wasn't a bad day to be at work. Today was my fifth
consecutive day at work. What with the vagaries of my shift patter I rarely
work five consecutive days; it has been rather tiring. I came home to find
the bathroom floor wet. “er indoors TM” had taken the dogs
down to Orlestone (together with Ro-Ro) and
they’d found a swamp and needed bathing. Seeing they’d had a walk already I
settled down and looked at geo-puzzles with a view to going for a walk
tomorrow. I didn’t solve many puzzles, but I eventually got “Hannah”
programmed for tomorrow. It took some doing. Whilst I wasn’t looking the software on the lap-top had upgraded itself.
It is probably now a wonder of technology probably doing all sorts of amazing
things that would impress IT gurus. But it now does its actual job far worse
than it used to and isn’t really fit for purpose any more.
Much like all IT upgrades… (not that I’m cynical…) |
|
12 September 2021
(Sunday) - Hadlow to Dene Park (And Back)
I had a better night’s sleep last night. Much
of it was down to having the dogs settling. Over brekkie I peered into the
Internet. Last night I’d asked a question on one of the Facebook
geocaching-related pages about the intricacies of programming a GPS unit. It
is always a mistake to do anything like that . For every
one person who actually has anything to say there are a dozen keyboard
warriors who want to heap sarcasm and scorn safe in the knowledge they will
never have to face the person with whom they are trying to strike up an
argument. There were quite a few comments about how
Emma Raducanu had won
the US Open (some tennis competition) overnight. I did chuckle as
several of the people posting on Facebook about this were those who are
regularly posting jingoistic hatred on-line. Either these people didn’t
realise that Ms Raducanu came to the UK from Canada
(having been born from Chinese and Romanian parents) or (like with
football players) are immigrants who are good at sport exempt from being
despised? I had an email which make me choke on my
coffee. It was from “William, a famous Medium and confirmed Expert Psychic”.
He claimed he inherited his gifts with a great capacity to love and help
others and he knows I need his help because he had precious revelations about
me. If he did, he would know exactly what I think about him. Like anti-vaxxing and 5G-crackpotism, mediums and psychics are a
load of crystal balls. We got ourselves and the dogs organised and
got into the “er indoors TM”-mobile and set off. I
had been hoping for great things this morning. Usually when we go anywhere in
the “er indoors TM”-mobile we have a running battle
to keep the dogs on the back of the car. Yesterday “er indoors TM”
had spent twenty-five quid on some dog pen thingy which goes on the
back seat and is tied around to head rests and stuff and keeps the dogs where
they are supposed to be (so the manufacturer claimed). Pogo was out of
it in a matter of seconds. That was money well spent. We got to Hadlow and soon found where we were
supposed to park. Treacle then did the tiddle she’d been whinging about for
some time (she will only go on grass), then together with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte we went for a little walk following (as
always) the geocaches. We had a very good walk along the paths and across
the fields, seeing a horse on a diet and watching a spitfire doing
aerobatics. Personally I wouldn’t want to put too
much strain on an eighty-year-old plane but that’s just me. Finding that we’d made rather good time and
were half way round our planned route by half past
eleven I suggested a minor detour on to Dene Park. Everyone else was up for
it, so we added about a mile and a half (maybe two) to our trip. I’d
never been to Dene Park before; it is not unlike Orlestone
Woods. I’d certainly walk the dogs there regularly if it were closer. After an hour and twenty minutes we were back
on our planned route. Narrowly avoiding a fight with a St
Bernard we admired the gorilla and tiger and then found a clearing
with loads of stumps which was ideal for lunch. It has to
be said that our picnic lunches are one of life’s high points, but (just
possibly) I’m getting too old to be sitting on the ground. It was rather
good to have a seat today, even if it was just a sawn stump. We then carried on through beautiful
countryside walking alongside (and in) streams and balancing up fallen
trees. We spent a few minutes admiring a little memorial which had been set
up for a local chap who’d died recently. That was rather sad. Geocache-wise the walk was something of a
mixed bag as we were looking for geocaches hidden by different people. The
main route was the first route put out by a chap who is relatively new to the
game, and there was an obvious problem in that three consecutive hides had been
archived by Geo-HQ because of some complaint about their being on private
land. Were they? I somehow doubt it. If they were on the path we were walking
(which they must have been) they would have been along a public
footpath and hurting no one. Geocaching HQ certainly wastes no time in
shooting themselves in the foot whenever the opportunity allows. The mini-series in Dene Park were (perhaps)
trickier hides. But as a stand-alone small series that works fine. We chose
to make them part of a bigger walk. We couldn’t find two caches. Both of them were “stand-alone” caches not part of
any other series. One would seem to have been hidden by someone who has only
logged three caches this year, and the other by someone who’s not logged a
find in over a year. Neither of these look set to be
maintained any time soon and will probably just be archived by the reviewers,
which will be a shame. Whilst I‘m all for regularly replacing series of
caches (to keep the hobby alive), some older ones need to be kept
going too. Ones like these two… After nearly nine miles we got back to our
cars and said our goodbyes. Amazingly I stayed awake for the drive home. I’d
taken a few photos as we walked. Once home I put them on-line whilst “er
indoors TM” drove down to Folkestone to get shopping for “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM”. As I fiddled about posting logs and
geo-stalking the owners of the caches we didn’t find
so both dogs snored. They’d had a really good walk,
and were worn out. Just as I’d finished doing all the geo admin
(and writing much of today’s blog instalment) so “er indoors TM”
came home. She’d come home via the KFC which was something of a result. We
scoffed the KFC whilst watching this week’s episode of “Lego Masters”.
Much as I like that show I struggled to stay awake. Perhaps an early night might be a plan? |
|
13 September 2021
(Monday) - Not On The Dartford Crossing
I slept like a
log; nearly nine miles walking yesterday had taken its toll. I watched an
episode of “Drifters” as I scoffed toast, then peered into the
Internet. The photos I’d posted yesterday had a fair few “likes”. I saw that as we’d
been walking my cousin had been to a stage show in London, and afterwards had
met quite a few of the people who had starred in it. She’d posted a lot of
photos of the celebrities onto Facebook and (fortunately) had
captioned who they were. I’d heard the names, but she really could have
posted up photos of random people in the street for all that I recognise any
of the celebrities these days. Also whilst we’d been
walking yesterday, other people had been walking round the series of
geocaches I’d out in Kings Wood and had said nice things about them on-line (which
was a result). I had an email.
Interestingly my credit score (at Credit Karma) has gone down another
five points. That’s a drop of about twenty points over the last couple of
months. I wonder why? – I’ve not done anything different recently. I sent out birthday wishes, and taking care to let sleeping dogs lie I got
ready for work. Pausing only briefly
to cap a couple of Munzees I was soon on my way to
work. I managed to get onto the motorway despite the queue of lorries
seemingly deliberately blocking all traffic coming up the slip road, and
after two miles I was able to get out of the fast lane. The slow lane was
full of lorries going at fifty miles per hour, and the middle lane was full
of lorries going at fifty-one miles per hour. I've ranted about
this before. As I drove the
pundits on the radio were were talking about
how the leader of the Scottish Nationalists Nicola Sturgeon is calling for
another independence
referendum for Scotland, but not until the COVID crisis has been
resolved. Talking about some time in 2023, she ain't
daft. She's seen how Brexit has lost Cornwall a hundred
million quid in funding form the EU and she wants the English tax-payers to bail out the Scottish NHS in the short term. Talking of
which there was quite a bit of NHS bashing on the radio
today. It was claimed that one in five patients have been forced to go
private to get treatments. Well, the NHS is under pressure because of
the global pandemic, but here's a question. Has anyone noticed that the
doctors you see in the private clinics are the same ones you see in the NHS
hospitals? If a specialist is too busy to see you in the NHS hospital, why
isn't she too busy to see you in the private clinic? Money talks... and to
many people it is saying "piss off, pauper!" I stopped off at the
petrol station to fill up the car. Amazingly the card reader machine worked.
I commented about this to the spotty oik behind the till who pretended that
there had never been an issue with the thing. Obviously
he'd had a talking-to from his manager since I was last there when he told me
how bad the thing had been. I got to work for the
early shift and did my bit. Today was a rather good day. What with a
colleague having had a birthday and another colleague having returned from
maternity leave we had more cake than sense. At lunch time I had a
message from “er indoors TM”. Why (and how)
did I go across the Dartford crossing only once (heading south) on June
2nd of this year. Checking my diary and my Google timeline it would
seem I didn't get any closer to the Dartford crossing than Maidstone. Obviously the automated number plate recognition gadget
had gone wrong. I wonder how many other people have had this happen to them
and have been billed for crossings they didn’t make? With work worked I
came home. I did have a plan to take the dogs out, but “er indoors TM”
had plans for a Munzee mission so she took them out
whilst I cracked on in the garden. Cutting back the overgrowth from not-so-nice-next-door,
mowing the lawn… it all takes time and with storms forecast for tomorrow I
thought I’d better get on with it whilst I could. And with lawn mowed I spent an hour or so fighting with programming
coding in GSAK and eventually got my GPS working how it should be working
despite (rather then thanks to) the
dedicated Facebook help group. I wonder what’s for
dinner… |
|
14 September 2021 (Tuesday) - Before the Night Shift
There was
quite the squabble kicking off on a 70s-related Facebook group this morning
which I read as I scoffed my toast. Some chap called “Dan” had posted
something or other. However his profile picture was
that of a woman. He had been accused of being an “anonymous twat” by
someone who was looking for a fight, and the argument just descended from
there. There also was a post on Facebook from “Jesus
Daily” that had appeared (uninvited) on my feed. I had a little
look at “Jesus Daily” to find out more. It is some religious Facebook
page on which people post up pictures of suffering children, elderly people
and dying pets. We are all supposed to pray for them. Amazingly loads of
people were posting prayer-like comments. I don’t understand… this god of
theirs lets nasty and cruel things happen. We then pray and Jesus sorts it
out if he can be bothered? But judging by the amount
of obituary posts on that page, he don’t seem to be bothered that often. Am I
missing something here? I got the dogs on to their leads and we drove
down to Orlestone Woods for a little walk. We
arrived to find the car park nearly empty, and we did our usual circuit of
the woods without meeting anyone until we were only fifty yards away from the
car where we met the little old lady with the poodle and the Jack Russell. Treacle amazed me. We walked with the little old
lady with Treacle cowering in terror from the poodle, then when we got to the
car Treacle and Pogo jumped into the car’s boot. We always have a treat when
we jump into the boot as that encourages them not to mess about but to get
into the boot. Seeing that dog treats were going,
the poodle came over. All her cowardice vanished as Treacle chased the poodle
away; she certainly wasn’t sharing the treats. As we’d come to the end of the walk so I’d felt some spots of rain. The rain picked up quite
substantially as we drove home; I’d been right to have mowed the lawn
yesterday evening. We came home, and as the rain poured down outside I fiddled about on my lap-top as I do. I
geo-puzzled for a bit, then went to bed for the afternoon. Despite the dogs
declaring two formal “Red Alerts” I got four hours in bed of which
over two were spent asleep. I then did another geo-jigsaw, scoffed some
dinner, and now I’m off to the night shift… I shouldn’t be. Today is something of an anniversary. Forty years
ago to the day I started working at the (now
demolished) Royal East Sussex Hospital as a junior medical laboratory
scientific officer, and I’ve been wondering if I’ve left it rather late to
think that was a bad move. Back in the day we all started off in the job
having done rather badly (or having failed) at “A”-levels and went to technical
college on day release for two years to get an ONC and then for a further two
years to get an HNC. At this point we would be formally assessed by the
professional regulator and would (if we passed) become state
registered. We then had the opportunity for further study (up to masters level) if we wanted it; all paid for by work.
But about twenty-five years ago the rot set in. Most health-care professions stopped taking
school-leavers and wanted graduates. Rather than taking people on and paying
for their training, the government of the day wanted to employ people who had
already paid for their own training. So students
took the biomedical degrees (with little idea of what the job for which
they were studying entailed), ran up incredible debts whilst doing so,
then looked at jobs in hospital laboratories and laughed. “My Boy TM”
drives a fork-lift truck about and he earns far more than I do. A train
driver (with twelve weeks training) earns more than my boss’s boss. Graduates have far more expectations than
school-leavers; effectively we went from a system of bringing in people who’d
done badly at “A” levels and had lifted them up to a system of trying to
bring in graduates and dragging them down. People looking at the job today
realise that opportunities for advancement are few and far between, with many
hospital laboratories merging and the pay differential between bands isn’t
worth the extra hassle of the additional responsibilities. They don’t
want to be expected to be available for work at all hours
day and night. (I don’t have a weekend off in this next month at all. I
missed my daughter’s first eight birthday parties and can’t remember when I
last had a complete Christmas break). Always at the back of your mind is the worry that
if you make a mistake, you might kill someone. And when that happens no one
remembers all the effort that you put in over the years; you find yourself
dumped and unemployable by managers desperate to cover their own backs (not
that I’m bitter). You are legally expected to create something like
https://adulldayatwork.blogspot.com (maybe
not as a website, but you have to do all that CPD
for no extra pay). It is no secret that biomedical scientists are top of
the United
Kingdom Shortage Occupation List. But what’s boiling my piss
today is that on my first day, as part of the introduction, the senior chief
medical laboratory scientific officer asked if I would like to join the NHS
pension scheme. He actually advised me against doing
so. He claimed that most people in this line of work died before getting
their pensions (things were very different back then). But he was
crystal clear that if I joined the pension scheme I could retire after forty
years’ service. I can distinctly remember him telling me that the first day
of my retirement would be the 14th
September 2021. So I joined the pension scheme. Forty years ago I
started paying for a pension in good faith. It’s like buying a bag of chips,
and as you walk down the road scoffing them, so the chip-shop owner comes
chasing you saying he’s put the price up.Not that
I’m bitter… What’s another nine and a half years… Mind you if I've got to do another nine and a
half years I will be doing it in the company of the
best bunch of people with whom I have ever worked. And (at times) that's up
against some pretty stiff competition. |
|
15 September 2021
(Wednesday) - Bit Tired
Last night’s night shift wasn’t so much “busy”
as “constant”; the work kept coming all night long. It was with a
sense of relief that I watched the early shift arrive. And having been up all night providing vital
services in an acute hospital I drove home wondering why I bothered. The
pundits on the radio were talking about the government’s plans to offer
vaccination to everyone over twelve years old. They were interviewing some
twelve-year-olds and their parents. One of the
parents felt the government had a duty to make all the facts available. She
seemed concerned that as well as facts, the government should also present
rumour, half-truths, disproved crackpotism and
frank nonsense. And having a myriad of options (of which reality was only
one) the children could then choose the one that they most liked the
sound of. Evidence-driven health care was only one of many life-styles
and was of equal worth as magical crystals and faith healing to this woman. They let these people vote, you know. I got home and went to bed for three hours;
woken shortly before mid-day by not-so-nice-next-door clanging away on
her piano. I got up and took the dogs to the co-op field
where we played a game of “Fetch”. We played nicely for three goes; I
would chuck one ball in one direction for Treacle, and the other ball in
another direction for Pogo. On the fourth go Treacle grabbed Pogo’s ball and ran off with it in her mouth as she went
to fetch her ball and Pogo soon lost interest. I started the afternoon by doing the ironing.
As I ironed I watched episodes of “Four in a Bed”
in which rival B&B owners try to out-do each other. This show seems to
have become something of a favourite with me. I do like the way so many of
the contestants are in denial. One will flatly deny there is any dust
whatsoever in her bedrooms when another contestant has just drawn a picture
in that dust whilst the cameras filmed her doing so. Feeling a tad tired I then sat quietly and
did two two-hundred-piece on-line jigsaw geo-puzzles which took an hour
apiece to do. Once she’d walked the dogs “er indoors TM”
boiled up sausages and chips which we scoffed whilst watching “Joe
Lycett’s Got Your Back” in which he tries to do what Esther Rantzen gave up doing years ago. It was OK I suppose;
exposing insurance rip-offs was laudable enough, but then he rather
embarrassed himself by claiming that Lego and Playmobile weren’t inclusive of
minorities and wasted quite a bit of air-time before
finding that they were. There’s something called “British as Folk”
on now. So far it’s a bit crap… |
|
16 September 2021
(Thursday) - Late Shift
I slept like a log, waking after eight hours
asleep. I made toast and made my sandwiches for work once I’d found where the
peanut butter had gone. Jam, margarine and marmalade
all stay where I leave them, but peanut butter really does grow legs and
walks away. I made brekkie and rolled my eyes as I read
Facebook. Some of the questions on the work-related Facebook pages amaze me.
In the UK we have national standards of how to operate in a blood transfusion
laboratory. Reading the Facebook pages it would seem
this is not the case in America with each lab doing its own thing, and
several people asking advice and opinion on what is (over here)
established protocols. American healthcare – paying a small fortune
for something far inferior to what the UK offers for free… (!) A cousin of mine was having a bit of a rant
on Facebook this morning too. There is a chap who sits on the pavement in Ore
Village (in Hastings) with a begging bowl. Every day this fellow comes
into the shop where she works; her boss has an arrangement with him that he
can change up the coins he is given for bank notes. The beggar doesn’t want
to carry loose change about as it is so heavy; the shop owner doesn’t want
the arse-ache of going to the bank for change. Everyone is happy with the
arrangement… except the shop staff who can see that this chap makes more
money in a few hours begging than they make in a day working. And those
working in the shop have to pay tax too. To add
insult to injury the beggar (apparently) regularly refers to begging
as “his job”. Perhaps this chap is truly needy? Perhaps he
really can’t get “proper” employment? But there’s clearly something
wrong when you can get more money by holding your hand out than by doing an
honest day’s work. I spent half an hour geo-jigsaw-ing then got ready for the morning. I put on a pair of
the new socks I bought on Tuesday evening (rather flimsy!) and Munzee-ed my way to the town centre capping enough
bar-codes as I went to open a qrate and even get a
new one (as you do). It wasn’t long before I was at the opticians.
In the past I’ve always gone to SpecSavers, but
regular readers of this drivel may recall that the last time I went there
they didn’t realise that one of my ears is higher than the other. Their
ill-fitting glasses gave me double vision and a week off work. As the nice people at Brownbills
looked at my glasses this morning they asked how I got on with them; specifically the varifocal bit. On reflection I said
that I did feel I had to tilt my head back rather a lot for it to work. The
nice lady showed me how the varifocal bit of my specs was a fraction of the
size it was supposed to be, and also showed me how
my glasses should be sitting on my nose. SpecSavers
are all very well *if* you want cheap. But demonstrably (in my case)
cheap doesn’t actually do the job. I had my eyes photographed and
pressure-tested, then had a serious session with the optometrist. My distance
vision is fine, but my close-up vision prescription had changed somewhat. It
was almost as if I’d spent two years with no close-up bit on my glasses (!)
I must admit I sat up and took notice when I
got the bill for new specs but, as I’ve found to my cost, if you pay cheap
you end up with double vision, a week off work on sick leave and a place in
the emergency eye clinic at the hospital. As I walked home I
phoned my dad. He’s doing OK. My aunt was visiting
and I wound her up rather impressively. I’ve always made a point of calling
her “aunty” because it makes her feel old. I deliberately didn’t today and she took the bait. She asked why I hadn’t called
her “aunty” so I said I didn’t think she’d
want to be called “aunty” by someone who is a grandfather. I did laugh
at her reply. I came home via the corner shop where I got
pastries to scoff with coffee. As I scoffed I did more geo-puzzle; a
four-hundred-piece puzzle of SpongeBob SquarePants. A rather dull way to go
geocaching, but there it is. Until the puzzle is solved (or blagged)
the location of the final film pot remains a secret. After an hour I got rather bored, put on my
new shirt that I bought on Tuesday evening (not too flimsy) and set
off to work. As I drove up the motorway
I caught the end of some utter drivel on the radio. It was claimed that
Mongolians are becoming world-famous as opera singers and sumo-wrestlers. Apparently the wide open steppes improves the baritone
notes and muscular build? I turned the radio off and sang along to my rather
odd choice of music, then (once I'd scoffed a bag of fish and chips
flavoured crisps) I got on with the late shift. There was no cake, which
was something of a disappointment. In fact the late
shit was rather dull, and by the time I'd navigated the diversion caused by
the closed motorway, got home, finally found somewhere to park the car and
had a very late dinner it was nearly bed time. The late shifts are all very well, but they
do mean that the day is effectively over by the early afternoon. I’ll spend another half-hour on that jigsaw
puzzle before bed… |
|
17 September 2021
(Friday) - Puzzles Solved
I slept like a a log
last night despite the dogs having something of a scrap in the small hours. I
wish they wouldn’t do that. I made toast and scoffed it as I watched an
episode of “Drifters” and as another negative COVID test incubated,
then I turned on the lap-top. I had a friend request
on Facebook from someone claiming to be called “Miethkea
Shovda”. Wearing little more than a “Get
It Here” expression in her profile picture, “Miethkea
Shovda” suggested I might like to “join an
established WhatsApp group, there are many hot girls in this group who need
it. , so if you want raunchy women by your side, join our group because it's
all free with no money”. Not that I want to appear judgemental, but if
the hot girls are anything like “Miethkea
Shovda”, the “it” that they need is to
put some clothes on. Pretty much nothing else at all had happened
overnight so I spent a few minutes on that SpongeBob geo-jigsaw. When the
thing’s clock told me I’d spent a total of four hours on it (over the past
few days) I saw that as a sign to go get ready for work. As I drove to work the pundits on the radio
were talking about how half the GP appointments in the UK are conducted
over the telephone these days. The leading light of the Royal College of
General Practitioners was being interviewed on the matter, and he didn't
really come over as well as he might have done. Several cases were cited in
which people might not have died had they actually seen
a GP rather than spoken to one over the phone, and one woman was on the phone
to the radio show saying how a phone-diagnosed supposed muscle strain was
actually a blood clot which moved to her lungs and nearly killed her. I suppose the problem is the old problem that
GPs have always faced. I once read a GP's biography in which she claimed that
out of every hundred patients she sees, ninety get better and eight die
regardless of anything that she does. The clever bit is to be able to spot
the two per cent on which the GP can have any influence, and the obvious way
to do this is to get rid of the time-wasting ninety per cent. I'm reminded of
an old bloke I once met in a GP's waiting room who was loudly telling his
mate that there was nothing wrong with him, but he came to see the doctor
every Tuesday as he had paid his national insurance and he was entitled to do
so. There was also talk about how the French have
got the arse over a new deal in which the UK and the USA will
supply Australia with "at least eight" nuclear
submarines. Apparently the French had a contract
with the Australians but have been gazumped? Bearing in mind the UK has only got four of
the things, perhaps we might buy some off the French to keep them sweet? I'll
put myself down for a couple of
Skydivers if that's OK with the Ministry of Defence? I stopped off at Aldi on my way to work. The
place was surprisingly busy with dozens of customers. All blundering about,
all utterly oblivious of everyone else in the shop, and not one looking where
they were going. I got my shopping and got out as quickly as I could. I got
back to my car and headed to work where I had a minor disaster. As I parked
so the car’s parking brake refused to come on. The footbrake worked fine but
the parking brake wasn't having it at all. I spent an age phoning round trying to find a
garage who could sort it. Eventually I found somewhere that would do it on
Tuesday. No one else could do it any sooner. With work done I came home… having completely
forgotten about the troublesome parking brake. My memory wasn’t jogged
because the thing had started working again. The car alarm did exactly the same thing a few months ago. Bearing in mind
the foot brake works fine and the parking brake wasn’t attempting to work but
is now fine, I suspect an electrical problem. And I’ve now completed that SpongeBob
geo-jigsaw. Only took four hours fifty-three minutes… And with all one
hundred and thirty SpongeBob geo-puzzles solved maybe it is time to go
searching for the geocaches? |
|
18 September 2021
(Saturday) - Rocketman
Despite a rather vivid nightmare in which I’d
been acclaimed leader of a post-apocalyptic band of Armageddon-survivors I
slept rather well. Over brekkie I watched an episode of “Drifters” in
which our heroes were “doing the dirty deed” with varying degrees of
success, then watched as my lap-top struggled into action. Last night it had
done a Windows update, thereby leaving itself unable to do anything whilst
the update sorted itself out for what seemed an age. Eventually it got going. I saw that Gordon
had been to Wales and been on that rather impressive
zip-line. I quite fancy that, but don’t fancy going all the way to Wales.
I’m told there’s one at Bluewater – and it would seem I’m not too heavy for
it. Does anyone fancy a day out? There wasn’t much else happening on-line. I
had over seventy emails to say that people had found some of the geocaches
I’d hidden, but on closer inspection they’d found them in May but had taken
four months to tell the world. I wish people would log finds more promptly; I
see a “Found It” and assume that all is well. I haven’t got time to
fiddle about reading each and every log. As I drove to work so the farming program was
on the radio. The presenter was talking about how potatoes are a "high
risk" crop. What can be "high risk" about a spud? I
had a look
on the Internet and I'm still none the wiser. There was also an interview with a dairy
farmer who has had to chuck out days loads of milk as the dairies can't
provide lorries to come fetch the stuff. This was brought up in a wider
context of shortages of all sorts of farm workers. The government were
invited to send someone for an interview; they declined but gave a statement
saying that they were aware of shortages of staff all through the farming
industry. the obvious answer is to improve the worker's conditions and to pay
them more money. The farmer being interviewed said he'd
re-advertised jobs for which he'd had no applicants offering ten per cent
more money but still wasn't getting any interest. I suppose he'll have to
offer even more cash - after all ten per cent of sod-all isn't much. Mind you
where will that pay rise come from? How much will you pay for your dinner? A
pig farmer being interviewed was saying that she couldn't compete with the
price of imported pork. I suppose UK farms are facing the
consequences of having relied (for decades) on cheap foreign labour
all of whom have now gone home. And the French are getting more
and more wound up about the USA – UK - Australia nuclear submarine deal. Apparently they found out that they'd lost the contract
from reading the newspapers (which didn't impress them much!). There
are loads of British people who will shed no tears over the French being
upset. I'm just waiting to pay the price. *Every* time the French get
the hump over anything at all they take it out on the British by causing
delays at the ports, and so the lorries will queue back up the M20 again; poggering my journey to work. I got to work for yet another weekend shift
and did my bit. There was cake, which is always good, and at dinner time I
went to the works canteen for lunch. Cherry pie and custard - very nice.
But... when you have any sort of pie with custard how do you prepare it?
Surely the pie goes in the bowl first and then the custard goes on top? What
strange sort of person fills the bowl full of custard then tries to float the
cherry pie on top? And then has to wipe all the
custard off of the pie ladle? At going home time I remembered the car’s
parking brake had played up yesterday. It hadn’t played up on my way to work
this morning and it didn’t play up on the way home. As I was driving past the
garage who were going to be looking at the brake issue on Tuesday
I thought I’d pop in and have a word. I explained that it played up once and
now seemed to be fine. The chap behind the counter at the garage said that
this is a common feature of electric parking brakes, he said that the one in
his car does it all the time, and he asked why I was bringing my car to them
when they aren’t able to deal with electric parking brakes. I suggested that
maybe when asked if they could fix electric parking brakes
they might in future say “no” rather than “yes”. Next time I’ll
go to my usual garage. There is clearly a reason why my usual garage is
booked up for the next two weeks whereas other garages aren’t. Once home “er indoors TM”
and I took the dogs down to Orlestone woods. The
dogs wallowed in two separate swamps, and each ate half a dead rabbit. They
never do that when I take them on my own. Once the dogs had been bathed “er indoors TM”
boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we followed with stilton and biccies; all washed down with a bottle of Sainsbury’s
home-brand claret as we watched “Rocketman”.
It was OK… it was actually very good. It would probably have been better if
I’d known more of Elton John’s music. But I stayed awake for it, and that was
something of a result. |
|
19 September 2021
(Sunday) - A Day Off
I woke after ten hours sleep feeling rather
grim. For all that I obviously needed a good night’s kip, I often find that I
feel worse after a long sleep than after just a few hours. I made toast… eventually. “er indoors TM”
won’t hear a word against the toaster but the thing is fit only for the
dustbin. Today it would only toast for up to ten seconds before spitting out
the slightly warmed bread. I forced the thing to work by physically holding
the lever down. I’m told that the thing is very pretty; it may well be, but
it is of no use whatsoever. With thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon
we’d not planned a major hike for today. Instead we
took the dogs down to Lydd for a shorter walk following a Wherigo that had been
created in April. We parked up, activated the “Where You Go” apps on
our phones and took the dogs on a little guided walk round Lydd. I’ve not
really been round Lydd much before – it reminded me of Hastings in that you
go from the incredibly posh parts with detached houses and manicured lawns to
the council estates with piss-stained mattresses in the garden (and back
again) seemingly in the blink of an eye. We had a good little walk; the game started
us off chasing a squirrel, and then we were challenged to work out which kind
of station we’d found; fire, police or space. We
then found a lost puppy, gave him some steak, took him home, and was rewarded
with the location of a tiny little geocache. It was really
good to do a Wherigo that wasn’t the generic downloaded one that
comprises most of those that are active in the UK, or one that wasn’t ”blah
blah dull history”. We were about half-way round when the rain
started, but that shower didn’t amount to much, and we were able to finish in
the dry. Geocache-wise I loved it, but we were only
the fifth group to do the thing in as many months. People either love or hate
Wherigo. Having created sixty of the things (with six more currently under
construction) I’m seen as something of the go-to person for Wherigo
locally and I really can’t understand why they aren’t more popular. People
whinge about Wherigo: “I don’t have the app” – well get it
free from the Play Store “I don’t know how to do Wherigo” –
have a go and find out. It’s not hard. “Too much walking just for one smiley”
– Walking about is what the game is!! People who won’t (not can’t) do Wherigos miss so much – this walk round Lydd was ideal
for a dull morning before the forecast storm. We came home through light drizzle and had
sticky toffee pudding with custard for lunch. “er indoors TM”
served the custard as God intended (i.e.
custard on top of pudding) and with lunch (pudding) scoffed I set
the washing machine and dishwasher doing their things. Seeing the rain hadn’t
amounted to much, I went in to do a little gardening. I picked fallen leaves
and weeds out of the gravel, pruned the potted shrubs
and mowed the lawn as the drizzle got heavier. Just as I was finishing there
were a couple of rumbles of thunder in the distance. I came in and perused the geo-map. Flushed
with enthusiasm after this morning’s Wherigo walk I was determined to find somewhere
to put out the new series I’ve been working on. Having made several field
trips and spent hours (days) programming the thing I’ve given up on
where I had in mind. Needing landowner permission, I’ve given up on Natural
England as they only reply to maybe one email in ten. But (hopefully)
I’ve found somewhere else that might do for a walk. I then geo-puzzled a little whilst “er
indoors TM” took the dogs chasing Munzees
during a break in the rain, and once she’d come back, “er indoors TM”
boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching a
frankly amazing program about the construction of a floating house on one of
the country’s canals. We then cracked open a bottle of port and downed it
with roulade and stilton whilst watching the semi-finals of “Lego Masters”
in which the frankly obnoxious little sh*t got
knocked out. We’ve shifted three quarters of that bottle
of port. I shall feel it in the morning… |
|
20 September 2021
(Monday) - Before the Night Shift
I woke in a cold sweat at half past four
after a nightmare in which I had been appointed leader of the Methodist
Church which had staged an uprising and had seized control of the UK. Why me
- (apparently) I never cancelled my membership of the thing forty
years ago. Part of my duties as supreme bishop were to blather platitudes
whist going round the country expunging common sense and reason as I found
it. I went to the loo and came back to find two
dogs where I had been sleeping. I didn’t want the aggro of waking them, so I
squeezed myself around them and tried to sleep. I gave up trying to sleep, made toast, and
had my usual peer into the Internet. This morning seemingly every other post
on my Facebook feed was from “Daily Jesus” who were asking for my help
for various very ill children. And these posts summed up entirely why I
stopped going to the Methodist church forty years ago. Does Jesus want my
money to help the ill children? If money is the cure, where does Jesus come in to it? Or am I supposed to pray for the children? If
so, why? To tell Jesus about the sick children? (doesn’t
he know about them?) Or to beg for him to do something about it? (so he knows but does nothing until we beg?)
There were also a lot of obituaries being posted on my Facebook feed where
children had died and we were asked to pray for them
in the afterlife. Surely (because the church is still going after two
thousand years) this all makes sense to someone, but it makes no sense
whatsoever to me. There was quite the argument kicking off on
one of the local Facebook groups. Some people are fed up about
the boy racers who use the A2070 as a race track late into the night. This
has been going on for years, I hear it most nights, and (quite obviously)
the local police have no interest in doing anything about it. Some of the
locals were whinging about it. Others were adamant that the police *would*
do something if they were told (they have been told, they haven’t done
anything). Others were denying there was a problem at all, and the whole
thing had descended into name calling. “er indoors TM” gave the dogs their
breakfast, and we went for our walk. Yesterday I’d found some woods on the
map that might be good for my latest Wherigo project. I’d had a look on
Google Street view and found somewhere to park and what looked like the
beginnings of footpaths. It didn’t take *that* long to drive out to
the back of beyond and I parked up in the spot that I’d seen on Google Street
View. The plan was to walk the footpaths in an
anti-clockwise direction in a circular way, but we fell at the first hurdle.
Where there was a clear track marked on the map there were trees, brambles and stinging nettles in reality. So I thought we might go clockwise and find where the
track was by coming from the other end. We got a few hundred yards before
that track disappeared beneath the brambles and stinging nettles. I should have given up at this point, but we
went back to the car and relocated to the backup parking spot from where we
found all the paths there equally impassable. All the bits of path we could
find were littered with shotgun cartridges, the place was crawling with pheasants,
and it was at this point that I realised I’d not seen a single “public
footpath” sign. We gave up and came home. I made a cuppa and peered into the Internet
again. I had an email. Back in April I’d mentioned on here that the pub in
Hastings that our family has frequented for over fifty years was up for sale.
I posted a link to the details of the place; this morning I had a polite
message from the estate agent asking me to remove the link. I did so, but
that place was a part of family history. I can’t help but wonder why they
wanted the link gone. Probably didn’t want to be associated with this blog… I
can sympathise… I then spent a while looking for somewhere
else for my Wherigo project. I’ve found somewhere. I shall have a walk round
the place in a few days’ time. I then CPD-ed but fell foul of the “Red Alert” simulator. I “think”
the thing might be lacking information on the Lutheran blood group system,
but that could be said of most people, couldn’t it? I took myself off t
bed for the afternoon. Pogo came up as well and made himself comfortable.
Once he’d had a little sleep and went downstairs again
I got some sleep too. After a couple of hours
I woke up and spent a little while on my latest Wherigo project. It was all a
bit “normal” so I’ve added some humour to it
(that usually winds up the normal people). Hopefully “er indoors TM”
will boil up some dinner soon, and then I’m off to the night shift. |
|
21 September 2021
(Tuesday) - Bit Tired
As I drove home from a rather busy night
shift the pundits on the radio were interviewing Kwasi Kwarteng (Secretary
of State at the Department of Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy). Amazingly the chap made a lot of sense this
morning. He was being given a load of stick about the national shortage of
carbon dioxide (which goes into packaging to keep food fresh and puts
the bubbles in your fizzy drink among loads of other industrial uses).
Why is there a shortage? Because the two factories that make it have stopped
doing so. Why have they stopped making it? Because there is no longer any
profit to be had from it. It costs too much to make. Mr Kwarteng said
he was looking at a range of ways forward. On the one hand was having the
government do nothing, on the other hand was to nationalise the loss-making
factories, and there were several options between. Mr Kwarteng was in a
rather difficult position; a fundamental part of a capitalistic system is
that loss-making companies go to the wall. And if no one can make a profit
out of manufacturing carbon dioxide, then no one will make it. A Labour
government would get stuck in and make the stuff, but that *isn’t*
what Conservative governments do. That’s what we all voted for wo years ago.
Didn’t the pundits realise this? I got home and went to bed where I slept like
a log. I woke to find both Pogo and Treacle fast asleep with me; having
arranged themselves into the ample free space on the bed (rather than
trying to shove me off). I got up shortly after mid-day, made toast and
peered into the Internet to see an attempt at an argument had kicked off. On
one of the fishing-related Facebook groups I follow someone had posted a
picture of a flatfish he’d caught in a river. Several people told him he was
a liar and he hadn’t caught that fish there,
claiming he’d carried the fish for miles just to fake a photo. I made the
mistake of replying that I’d once caught a plaice
in the River Tillingham. I must admit if I hadn’t
caught it myself I wouldn’t have believed it, and quite
a few other people had the same sentiment. Many of them said that the fish
I’d caught wasn’t a plaice but had been a flounder. I know what I caught; I
was there and I’d seen it. But nevertheless
half a dozen people were very vocal in telling me the identity of a fish
they’d never seen. I then set about the ironing – the afternoon
after a night shift is usually spent doing the ironing. As I ironed I watched episodes of “Four In A Bed”.
Today’s show featured some arrogant woman from Lancashire who wouldn’t shut
up about how high her standards were and how no one can compete with how
brilliant her B&B was. As she ranted on, so the show showed footage of
other contestants writing in the dust in her rooms, and
wobbling her toilet which wasn’t in any way secured to a wall, the floor or
anything at all. Some other chap was running a rather grim hostel complete
with (quite literally) piss-stained mattresses and was charging more
than a hotel wanted per night. Mind you this wasn’t just any old hostel – the
chap running it had proudly boasted that they had plates, so we were talking
top of the range(!) I then had a little fiddle about on my next
Wherigo project. The basic Wherigo itself (the bit that leads the punters
to the geocaches) is pretty much complete. Or would be if I actually had some locations for the geocaches. This
afternoon I spent time putting in the nonsense and the knob jokes that people
either love or hate. Those that love them will get me a pint at the
geo-meets; those that don’t love them don’t go to the geo-meets, so that’s
their loss. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the
new series of “Bake Off”. It was rather good. I’m off to bed now. I’m a bit tired from the
night shift… and I’ve got guts ache. I hope it settles by the morning. |
|
22 September 2021
(Wednesday) - Stomach Ache
I had perhaps the worst night ever last night.
With feet like blocks of ice, my head was sweating
and the dogs were taking up ninety per cent of the bed space. Though I have to wonder if it was my own fault that I was feeling
grim. In the past I’ve been rather unwell after scoffing Sainsbury’s granola
slices, and so on Monday night I got some before the night shift as a bit of
an experiment. I think I’ve conclusively proved that Sainsbury’s granola
slices don’t agree with my insides. I made some toast in the naïve hope that it
might settle my stomach (it didn’t) and watched an episode of “Drifters”
in which our heroes were attempting to “do the dirty deed” with
varying degrees of success, then sparked up my lap-top.
As I peered into Facebook I was immediately presented with an advert for “Fairies
and Fairy Magic Diploma Course”. For a mere thirty quid I could learn all
about “the world of folklore and theories surrounding fairies and their
activities in the British Isles. You’ll learn about their history and
origins, varying types, magic, homes and lives, and even how to meet and
communicate with them”. People pay good money for this, you know; I’m
just miffed that I didn’t think of it first. I had an email from Geocaching HQ saying that
they’d improved the search feature on the geo-map. I tested it out by typing
my home postcode into the search bar and the thing immediately centred the
map on the middle of the North Sea. That’s working well, then. I drove up a rather foggy motorway this
morning (farting like a thing possessed). As I drove the pundits on
the radio were interviewing one of the leading lights of "Insulate
Britain"; the bunch responsible for all the delays and closures
on the M25 over the last week or so. Apparently
their protests are rather dangerous and may well cause injury or death (by
having protesters sitting in the motorway). The woman being interviewed
made a rather poor show of presenting her case. Flatly refusing to answer any
question put to her, she had a pre-written statement and just read it out (time
and again) in response to everything she was asked. Given a prime slot on
national radio to discuss one of the most serious issues of our time, this
woman just came over as a bit of a twit. Such a shame. Apparently another of these protesters stormed
off of the set of Breakfast TV this morning. Banging on about sensible
energy use it transpired that this chap's London home is single-glazed,
has no cavity wall insulation and uses gas central heating. These eco-warriors have such a good and
worthy cause, and do their level best to make
themselves a laughing stock. I got to work where I did my bit with varying
degrees of stomach ache. Last night I had wondered
if I would be taking today off work as sick leave, in retrospect maybe I
should have done. I came home to find the postman had been.
With a little over two months to go until the start of Advent, my Advent
Calendar has arrived. I really should open it up and see what is in there,
but I won’t. I shall open each window on the correct morning and stare at
whatever is inside wondering just what I am supposed to do with it. I can’t wait… I also can’t wait to stop farting… |
|
23 September 2021
(Thursday) - Early Shift
I had a better night last night, despite a
rather vivid dream in which I caused consternation on the set of “Upstairs
Downstairs” when I told them that they weren’t real but just characters
in a TV show that had been cancelled forty years ago. That revelation was
rather upsetting; I suppose it would come as a shock if you didn’t realise
that. As I scoffed toast I
realised that my stomach was far more settled than it had been recently,
which was a major result. I watched an episode of “Drifters” then
peered into the Internet. The photo of my Advent Calendar had received over
forty clicks of the Facebook “like” button. I had a message from “Duran Hancock”
who said “hello I'm a woman”, followed this
with a little photo of a union jack, and then said that she was “thirsty
for sex” and had followed this with a web link about which she said “look
I'm not wearing panties here”. I decided not to look. My piss boiled
somewhat when I tuned into the Munzee clan chat.
Playing Munzee isn't just about scanning bar codes
stuck to lamp posts, you know. For me a large part of it is the monthly
"Clan War" in which we team up in groups of up to ten
players and together have to achieve certain goals and
targets (both as individuals and as a team) for which we get in-game
rewards and credits. Whilst it gives me something to do on the way to and
from work, more and more I'm feeling that the "team" aspect
is somewhat missing. More and more it is me and “er indoors TM”
(and one or two others) doing the lion's share of work for the
team targets, with some others very noticeably doing bare minimum effort. One
of them posted in the clan chat late last night. It was rather obvious that
she was struggling to meet her individual requirements and had been asked if
she needed any help. In her reply she mentioned that she was happy to use the
in-game credit she'd built up but didn't want to spend real money. I spend about a tenner each month on that
silly game, as does “er indoors TM”... Perhaps we won't
next month... Making a point of pretending not to see
not-so-nice-next-door starting her strange fast walk (which she does every
morning at half past six) I set off to work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were
talking about how half a dozen power companies have
gone bust this month. Millions of people have been left wondering who
they are now having to pay for their gas and electricity. And all the
remaining power companies are desperately hoping it won't be them. Why don't
they want more customers? The power companies are having to pay rapidly
increasing prices for the power they get, but there is a limit (enforced
by law) on how much they can charge the customers. The whole point of the government's selling
off the nation's power providers (all those years ago) was so that
someone (the people in the government and all their chums) could make
a profit. But if you are buying something for a quid and being told you can't
sell it for more than fifty pence then there's not a lot of profit to be had,
is there? Did no one else see this one coming? And the Prime Minister has upset
the French even more. With them already up in arms about the ongoing Australian
nuclear submarine row, he's said: “I just think it’s time for some
of our dearest friends around the world to ‘prenez
un grip’ about this and ‘donnez moi
un break’. On the one hand it is a firm and deliberate
kick in the goolies to UK/EU relations. On the other hand
it is a sure-fire vote winner for the Prime Minister. Whilst I wish he
hadn't said it, I can't help but chuckle. This is typical of the Prime
Minister, isn't it? He knows just what to say to impress the masses who will
lap this up. I got to work for the early shift and got on
with that out of which I couldn't skive. I had my annual appraisal today. It
seemed to go well; the boss seemed impressed with me. But I couldn't really
take it seriously. I can remember another appraisal ten and a bit years ago
which also gave me a glowing report only to then get sacked for (supposed)
gross incompetence only a few short weeks later. Looking back from this
remove in time I'm pretty sure that the (admittedly serious) mistake I
made at the time was used as an excuse for a rather incompetent manager to
get rid of someone who she didn't like. Again looking back
I could probably made a case for constructive dismissal. But ten years on I
am in a far better place than I was. As Wallace once said to Gromit "all's
well that ends well". With work done I came home and took the dogs
down to Orlestone Woods. We had a little explore
and went down a little path I’ve not followed before. In the depths of the woods we heard voices, and then saw a couple of lads on OneWheel Pints. I’d never seen one before. A OneWheel Pint is an off-road electric toy – a sort of
a cross between a skateboard and a Segway. The lads were over a mile from the
closest tarmac path so the things must work well off-road. I had an idea of
getting one for myself; with a top speed of sixteen miles per hour I could
zoom about after the dogs on it rather faster than I do at
the moment. With a range of twelve miles it
wouldn’t let me down half-way round the woods. I then came home and looked
them up… They only cost a shade over a thousand quid… Maybe I could buy one from the money I stop
spending on Munzee? |
|
24 September 2021
(Friday) - Rostered Day Off
I slept like a log last night, When the dogs
don’t try to crowd me out, things are just peachy. After nearly nine hours I
got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet to
see if I’d missed much. I hadn’t really. I saw that a friend was having a
birthday today; I sent my usual birthday video and found myself rather
thoughtful. I first met the chap (who was having a birthday) over
twenty-five years ago. He came along to the Tuesday night Trekkie-club that I
used to organise; we had so much fun together over the years including two
week-long caravan holidays in Dorset. But apart from two chance meetings in
the street I’ve only seen him twice in the last five years. Over the years I
met so many people through Trekkie-ing and we had
such good fun. But looking back there were two or three of us who would
organise, and two or three dozen who would enjoy the efforts of that two or
three. As the few stopped organising things (for one reason or another)
so the whole Tuesday Trekkie-ing thing died. This is the story of my life, isn’t it? The
snake club, kite club, Trekkie-ing, works football
club (yes I ran a five-a-side club once!),
summer camping holidays, mid-week weekly geocaching events, the social side
of the Astro club (which only last week I was told is now moribund)…
I’m tired. Can’t someone else organise something? I had an email from the Credit Karma. My
credit rating has gone up five points but is still nine less than what it was
in June. I wonder why? Nothing had really changed in that time. I loaded the dogs into the car and drove out
to… I won’t say where. I was hiding some geocaches, and there is great kudos
in being the first one to find them. There are a few people who lives locally
who have what I can only describe as an addiction to being First to Find. In
the past people really have been out and found two entire series of the
things “er indoors TM” hid before they were officially
published by following my blog posts and Facebook photos. I’ve had this on
caches I’ve hidden before, as have friends and acquaintances who have also
been stalked. It’s all caused no end of bad feeling over something which is
supposed to be a bit of fun. Unbelievable, isn’t it… But we got to wherever it was that we went
and had a very good walk. As we approached the corner of a field
so Treacle ran forward and adopted a “hunting dog pose” and started
snarling. I looked round the corner to see a herd of a dozen deer scampering
off. Part of our route went through someone’s
garden. The footpath really does go through a garden. A bit of a pain but
there it is. After an hour (or so) and two and a
half miles we were back at the start. As we’d walked
I’d found hides for fourteen geocaches. The Wherigo I’d got ready to go had
six stages so will need a little re-writing *if* the geo-feds are
happy with the locations. I
took a few photos as we walked; the terrain is flat; the views are
lovely. Ideal for dog walks. We came home and I left the dogs with “er
indoors TM” whilst I popped to the vets for Treacle’s flea and
worming treatments, and then went on to the local bakery for cakes for lunch. We scoffed the cakes; they made an excellent
bit of lunch. As I scoffed I did the monthly
accounts. The app via which I get an e-copy of my payslip seems to have
failed. Probably just as well. This month featured our pay rise which seems
to have been more than taken by all sorts of other expenses. I would ask (in
all seriousness) that the next time there is one of these (frankly
embarrassing) stand-on-the-doorstep-and-clap-like-a-thing-possessed
things organised, rather than joining in, people go to their local hospitals
and throw money. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not (entirely)
pot-less. But surely the idea of a pay rise for a
health service which has bust a gut for over a year during an international
pandemic (from a nation which won’t shut up about how grateful it is)
isn’t just to keep up with inflation? I then cracked on with the geo-admin that
goes with the project I’m working on. The bit I needed to show to the
geo-feds only took two hours, then I started working on the Wherigo
cartridge. Creating eight new zones only took two more hours. “er indoors TM” boiled up fish and
chips, and as we scoffed it we watched a film. “Yesterday”
features a struggling musician who wakes up in a world in which no one had
ever heard of the Beatles… and so makes himself a fortune. It was quite a
good twist on a very old idea. Today has been rather busy… |
|
25 September 2021
(Saturday) - Lazy Day
I slept like a log despite a rather vivid
nightmare in which an old work colleague “attempted to get jiggy”. I
wasn’t having any of it though; if I don’t take a puritanical stance, who
will? I made toast and peered into the Internet. It would seem that yesterday’s nationwide panic-buying of
fuel (for no reason whatsoever) was carrying on. Or was it. People
would report hour-long queues at Tesco or Sainsburys to Facebook only to have
other people say there were no queues at all. I really couldn’t help but laugh – two days
ago some people had posted photos to social media of petrol stations with
closed pumps. This morning the very same people were lambasting everyone else
for panic-buying. There was a knock at the door. It was the
birthday boy. “My Boy TM” and his entourage were off to
Chessington for the day and we were dog-sitting for
Ro-Ro. There was a minor bit of excitement in that at the last
minute Lacey had dropped out of the trip and did I want to go in her
place. Did I?! Just as I was about to sprint upstairs to get ready so Cheryl
pointed out that the spare ticket was a child’s one and I wouldn’t get in on
a child’s ticket. They set off leaving us with Ro-Ro and me in
a bit of a sulk. “er indoors TM” prepared for
a geo-maintenance run whilst I worked on my Wherigo, and once she was ready we drove up to Badlesmere
where we made sure all the geocaches that “er indoors TM”
had hidden there were all in good order. They were. Apart from the first part of the walk being
over-run with pheasants the walk went well. Ro-Ro was a little bit of a
princess and had to be carried over the ploughed fields, but other than that
he seemed to like the walk. As we’d driven out
we’d seen cars queuing up Brookfield Road waiting to get into the petrol
station. As we came home we saw the BP garage at the
top of Beaver Road had closed off its forecourt (presumably having run out
of petrol). Apparently there is no actual
petrol shortage; it’s just that people think there is and are panic-buying
presumably to create one. I then spent the afternoon alternately
working on my latest Wherigo project and shrieking at Treacle who would not
stop barking. After several hours of effort I had a
first simulator trial which failed halfway round because I had forgotten to
add my seventh input to my dialogue (as one does). It was at this point that “My Boy TM”
and his entourage arrived back from Chessington to collect Ro-Ro. We chatted
for a bit, putting the world to rights before they set off to see if they’d
left it too late to go panic-buying petrol. “er indoors TM” set off to a party,
but I decided to give it a miss. I’ve an early start tomorrow and having an
ale apocalypse probably isn’t conducive to that. So
I spent a little more time working on my Wherigo… It’s kept me out of
mischief these last few days and is now all but ready for field testing. I’ve had something of a lazy day today… more
and more these days I feel that is want I want. Soon be bed time… |
26 September 2021
(Sunday) - Quiz Night
I had an
early night and woke full of energy and raring to go at two o’clock. I then
dozed fitfully; finally getting up feeling like death warned up at half past
six. I made toast and as I turned on the telly, rather than watching my usual
drivel on Netflix I found myself wrapped up in “Ancient Aliens” on the
Sky History channel. There was a lot of talk about J Allen Hynek who was involved in all sorts
of UFO research in the 1960s including the famous “Project Blue Book”.
Apparently the chap started off very sceptical about
UFOs but after having investigated twelve thousand reported UFO sightings he
had over seven hundred cases he couldn’t explain. To my mind that’s where the
“U” in “UFO” comes from (unidentified). Somehow or other
though J Allen concluded it was aliens. The crackpots on this morning’s show
didn’t think it was all aliens though. They had a theory that it was all
stuff from another dimension. However it struck me
that the problem with this theory was that no one really knew what the phrase
“from another dimension” actually meant. Or even what a “dimension”
was. UFO
crackpots annoy me. They take a serious issue and reduce it to stark
nonsense. UFOs clearly exist. There are thousands of sightings of things that
can’t be explained. But are they “really” flown by aliens from the
planet Spodulon? There was a
minor row kicking off on one of the local Facebook pages. Someone was
offering a lift to work for any key workers who couldn’t get petrol, claiming
to have been preparing for fuel shortages since the Brexit referendum. Had
she been stockpiling petrol for five years or was she just talking bollox? It
certainly seemed to be the morning for it. I had a
friend request on Facebook from Missy Charlotte this morning. I have no idea
who "Missy Charlotte" is, but she was wearing clothes which
is a step in the right direction for many who send me friend requests on
Facebook. She didn't seem to be overtly peddling filth either which was also
a point in her favour. But I have no idea who she is. If any of my loyal
readers might know why a rather foxy twenty-something wants to chum up with a
fat bald nearly-sixty, do let me know. I did
another (negative) COVID test. Just as I recorded it
I got a text reminder to do it. Pausing
only briefly to cap a greeting card (it's a Munzee
thing) I set off to work. At eight o'clock on a Sunday morning the radio
often broadcasts a church service. Sometimes it can be inspiring and
uplifting. But today wasn't one of those times. Today was a Harvest Festival
service in which the theme was "get your sorry ass down to the church
and suck up to God or else it's famine for you sinners". I've often
mentioned that I don't understand religion. As a child in the Boys Brigade I was rather indoctrinated with it and eventually
became a Steward in the Methodist Church. But looking back that was pretty
much because that was what happened in my social circle. When I moved away
from Hastings and all my friends and acquaintances in the Church, I actually thought about what the Church was teaching. And I
suddenly realised that I didn't actually believe a
word of it; I just went along with it because everyone else in my world did,
even though it was all rather nonsensical. The basic premise of the Christian
Church is rather bizarre, isn't it? We supposedly have a loving God who
allows all sorts of evil things to happen. And it is our fault that this God
lets the evil things happen. And this loving God wants nothing more than to
be told how marvellous it is. Christianity
would seem to be up there with panic petrol buying and UFO crackpotism... but I'm willing to be proved wrong. Talking of
panic petrol buying I drove past two petrol stations today. The one in
Brookfield Road had a sign up saying it had no petrol and diesel. The one
I usually go to in Aylesford had a queue of cars a hundred yards down the
road. Oh well... I didn't need petrol today. I think my car is good for
petrol until Wednesday. We shall see what happens then. I got to
work and treated myself to the cooked breakfast, then got on with the morning
shift. I had a rather good shift really; it could have been a whole lot
worse. And in addition to the cooked brekkie there was also cake too. Bonus!! With
work done I came home… I say “home” I didn’t go into the house. “er
indoors TM” had settled the dogs so I met her outside and she
drove us round to see “My Boy TM” and we spent the
afternoon in his garden in honour of his birthday yesterday. It is possible
that I might have had one bottle of ale too many as when we came home I slept like a log. Fortunately
I woke in time for the monthly family Zoom bingo and quiz night… which we now
do on Microsoft Teams. |
|
27 September 2021
(Monday) - This n That
I was up rather earlier that I might have
been this morning. I watched an episode of “Drifters” then had a
little look at the Internet to see what I’d missed overnight. Last week I saw an advert on Facebook for a
for “Fairies and Fairy Magic Diploma Course”. This morning as I peered
into Facebook I was presented with
an advert for a “Unicorns and Unicorn Energy Diploma Course”.
Reduced in price by nearly a hundred quid, for only thirty quid I could “journey
through the Kingdom of Unicorns and examine the myth, history, legends and
perceptions of unicorns and the hopes humans connect to them. Receive
guidance through the unicorns’ connection to the inner realms. Discover how
to connect with my unicorn and activate my sixth chakra, mythical
imagination, and spiritual intuition – to purify the poisons and venoms of my
mind, heart, and body”. I would point and laugh, but nearly five hundred
people have already enrolled on the course, and it has a 4.8 out of 5 rating
on Trustpilot. Am I missing something? There was also a row kicking off on one of
the Hastings-related Facebook pages where people had taken offence about
photos of Gary Glitter who had appeared on Hastings
pier some time in the 1970s. I’m not defending the
chap, but I don’t understand this current trend of trying to expunge so much
from history. If we don’t learn from the past, we will just repeat it. I had an email from the nice people at Credit
Karma who congratulated me on having paid my credit card bill. They do this
every time I pay the credit card bill. I wonder how they know about it? I wonder who tells them? I set off to work through the drizzle. As I
drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the ongoing Labour party
conference. The Labour party was getting itself embroiled in squabbles about
cervixes, internal voting processes and all sorts of trivia whilst seeming to
be deliberately avoiding the major issues facing the country. I’ve said
before that it bothers me that the Labour party make no effort whatsoever to
be seen as a credible alternative to the current government. Pausing only briefly for Munzee
purposes near junction eight of the motorway I was soon in Ayelsford and at twenty to eight I joined the queue for
petrol. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done so with half a tank of petrol, but I
get through the stuff at quite a rate. I’d left home far too early and (in
all honesty) had nothing else to do. As I queued the pundits on the radio
were talking about the reasons why there is a major panic-buying of petrol at the moment. No one seems to really know why but
everyone had a theory. Part of that theory was the ongoing shortage of HGV
drivers which the government is planning to address. However
the government’s plans is to recruit people on short term visas.
Having told people who have lived in the UK to piss off back home (which
was what actually happened to thousands), they
are now being asked to return – for three months. Who’s going to leave the
job they’ve got in their home country to come back here for three months? As
the Dutch HGV driver being interviewed live on the morning’s radio said “You are turning to us European drivers to drag
you out of the shit you created yourselves”. (I did chuckle at the
interviewer’s embarrassment at that one). After twenty-five minutes I had petrol and
was on the way to work. I again paused for Munzee
purposes on the way home. As I pulled up I saw “er
indoors TM” and the dogs going for a walk. So
with a relatively quiet house I phoned the bank to ask how the people at
Credit Karma knew about my credit card payments. After all it’s only me and
the bank’s automated system who know when I make a payment. After twenty minutes I got through to someone
who didn’t really speak English at all. I asked her how Credit Karma got this
information. She put me on hold for five minutes and then rad out what I can
only describe as “bank standard reply #5” whilst addressing me as “Mr
Johnson”. After a few minutes the woman to whom I was speaking realised she didn’t have a clue what I was talking
about and put me through to the fraud prevention department. I spoke to
two people there, neither of whom could speak any English that wasn’t in
their pre-prepared scripts. I suggested that they might get someone from the
bank’s local branch to phone me tomorrow; they were quite clear that this was
beyond their ability, and some chap claiming to be called “Molly”
suggested I took a day’s leave to go into the branch myself. After
thirty-five minutes I hung up. I’m not at work tomorrow – I might go in to the branch and close the account. In the meantime I’ve sent the bank a message via Facebook
messenger. If nothing else they can run it through
Google Translate. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whist watching the final of “Lego
Masters: Australia”. I did like that show – I wonder when the next series
is on? |
|
28 September 2021
(Tuesday) - Rostered Day Off. (Day Off ?!)
I spent a few minutes peering into the
Internet as I scoffed toast. Some chap I used to know forty-five years ago
had been posting photos to my old school’s Facebook page. I suppose it is a
sign of our times that photos are far more readily available (to create
and to share) these days, but my old school’s Facebook page really does
sum up one of the fundamental principles of that school. If you weren’t good
enough to be in the spots team then you could f… off. There are quite a few
photos on that Facebook page… mostly all of the same
dozen faces. When I was at the school there was (about) seven hundred
and fifty boys there. You’d never know that looking at most of the remaining
photos. Are schools today like that? I saw an ex-colleague was spreading
anti-vaccine conspiracy theory bollox based on the
principle that modern science is a fabrication made up by the big pharma companies
who are trying to sell their products. I chuckled and resisted the temptation
to point out that big pharma companies are big because their products work.
Unlike the supposedly cancer-curing products my ex-colleague tried to sell
until she went to prison for selling unlicenced crackpot cures (that
didn’t work). Once the dogs had scoffed their brekkie I took them out. Having spent quite a bit of time
creating a Wherigo cartridge the thing was ready for testing. So we took a little drive out. As we drove there was more
talk on the radio about the recent panic-buying of petrol. This made me
think. I spent twenty-five minutes queuing for
petrol yesterday. It wasn’t that bad. But something’s occurred to me. The
government wants the sale of petrol and diesel cars to have stopped by 2030.
Whilst there will still be petrol and diesel cars about, more and more
electric cars will be the norm. So… where will we charge the things? New
houses will be legally required to have a charging point for an electric car.
But my house doesn’t have one and there’s no point installing one as I’ve no
guarantee of parking the car outside. As I type this, my car is parked about
two hundred yards away. I will have to use some public charging point. As
will thousands of other people. The electrical infrastructure for anything
like enough charging points simply isn’t there so I shall be queueing up for
some time to then sit about waiting half an hour for my (as
yet unbought) electric car to charge. And as my (as yet unbought) electric car will have a
range of about half that of my current car, where I currently spend about
five minutes a week fuelling the car, in future this will be a chore of
several hours twice a week. I suspect the advent of the electric car (and
demise of the petrol one) will force me to move house or into retirement. We got to where we wanted to be, and I
started up the Wherigo cartridge. We walked for two and a half miles and it was a good walk. Apart from a roll in fox poo
the dogs were as good as gold. The field testing of the Wherigo cartridge
worked well. There were a couple of mistakes I’d made in it which were easily
corrected, but it has got one problem in that whenever a typed response is
required it gives a “scan QR” button. I wish it wouldn’t. As we walked back to the car
so the dogs started pulling like things possessed. Someone had left a dressed
rabbit on the side of the path. Not a dead rabbit covered in gore that a fox
might have had. A dressed rabbit, perfectly skinned
like you might see in a butcher’s shop window. What was that all about? We drove home through torrential rain; we’d
been lucky. If we’d walked for five minutes more we
would have been soaked through. It didn’t take *that* long to scrub
the fox poo off of the dogs. I put a load of washing
in to scrub, ran round with the Hoover and made a
start correcting the mistakes in the Wherigo cartridge. As I fiddled on-line I had an ongoing Facebook messenger row with the
bank who seemed to be determined to log a complaint on my behalf about the
bad service they felt I’d had from their telephone helpline. They seemed to
be utterly unwilling to address my actual question (NOT complaint)
about why they were sharing confidential information about my accounts with
third parties. Eventually they effectively admitted that there was no such
thing as banker-customer confidentiality and that they would tell anything to
anyone who asked, but refused to say anything more
unless I lodged a formal complaint. By then the washing was done. I hung it out
round the house and ironed shirts whilst watching a film. “Wild Rose”
was… I won’t say it was good and I won’t say it was bad. I will say it was
incomprehensible. With many of the leading characters speaking in a thick
Glaswegian accent I couldn’t understand any of what was being said so I
turned it off half-way through. I spent a few minutes (over an hour)
sorting out the cache pages for my latest Wheri-project
then looked out some pots to use as the caches. It was at this point when “er
indoors TM” came home. I had intended to mow the lawn and
clean the pond filter today but never got round to it – where did the day go
? For a rostered day off I’ve been busier than if I’d gone to work. But we’ve got a bottle of rioja ready for
dinner time… |
|
29 September 2021
(Wednesday) - Bit Dull
After one of the worst night’s sleeps I’ve ever had I surrendered whatever little bed
space I still had to Treacle and got up. I made toast, watched an episode of
“Drifters” and then sparked up my lap-top as
I do most mornings and waited for yet another negative COVID test to
incubate. A friend of mine wound me up. She was posting twee memes about how
to lose weight in a desperate attempt to sell some diet milk shake thing
she’s pushing. She claims she’s lost a lot of weight with it. She may well
have done. I’ve tried all the weight loss tricks I can find – the only one
which works for me is having the will power to remain constantly hungry. Many
people have told me that being hungry is no way to lose weight. If that is true then I personally have no way to lose weight. Another friend was still spouting
anti-vaccination propaganda. She was absolutely adamant
that the COVID vaccination was all part of some huge conspiracy but was
utterly unable to explain anything at all about the conspiracy. Much like all
conspiracy theorists. I sent out some birthday wishes, set the
dishwasher going, and got ready for work. I walked out to my car on a very wet and
murky morning and set off to work. Seeing the epic queue of cars along
Brookfield Road (presumably queueing for petrol?) I took a little
diversion (only a mile out of my way) to avoid the traffic. As I drove
the pundits on the radio were talking about Greg
Rutherford. Mr Rutherford won a gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games for
long jumping and he's looking good to be a bobsleigh-er at the next Winter
Olympics. Personally this is a matter of the utmost
indifference to me, but I can only assume that millions of people must be
enthralled by this for it to warrant mention on prime-time national radio. I've mentioned before that I really don't
understand the fascination that so many people have with sport. There was also talk about how the French are up in arms again. According to the terms of the
Brexit agreement, in order to get permission to fish
in UK waters, French fishing vessels have to show evidence that they always
used to fish there before Brexit. Dozens of French fishing vessels have been
refused permission to fish in UK waters because of uncertainty as to whether or not they used to fish in what is now UK waters. Am I the only one who feels that there is no
uncertainty and that this could be settled in five minutes? Call up the
Google timeline of anyone who works on any of the ships in question. My
Google timeline has a very detailed track of my movements over the last seven
years. This would provide an answer right away. But I suppose that an ongoing
argument is preferable to some, particularly right now bearing in mind
Anglo-French relations. There was also talk on the radio from the
Labour party conference in which consternation was being expressed by many
that the Labour party is becoming increasingly more "Blair-ite". I have no idea what that is supposed to
mean, but it was being seen as a bad thing by many of those at the Labour
party conference. Thinking about it, it probably is terrible for the
Labour party. In all the years during which I have been eligible to vote, the
only times that the Labour party has won a general election was when Tony
Blair was in charge. Obviously doing anything remotely "Blair-ite" will improve their chances at the ballot
box and make them more likely to have to actually take
responsibility. I've mentioned before that this is demonstrably the last
thing that they want. I got to work and had a busy day during which
my D-dimers turned orange and my thermals needed adjusting (it’s a
haemostatic thing!). But there was cake. Cake is always good. And (much
as I like where I work) so is home time. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the latest episode of
celebrity “SAS Who Dares Wins”. I quite like the show – I’m treating
it as just another series of “SAS Who Dares Wins” as I have no idea
who the so-called celebrities are. I’m thinking of having an early night as I’ve
got an early start tomorrow and I feel like death warmed up right now… Today
was rather dull. |
|
30 September 2021
(Thursday) - Early Shift
Nowadays the nights (when I’m not working)
seem to follow the same pattern. I sleep for a couple of hours then go to the
loo. When I come back I have to shift Treacle out of
the warm space I’d left, and in doing so I disturb Pogo who then takes
umbrage. What could be a two-minute-tiddle becomes a full-blown “dog
episode” and it is rather difficult to get back to sleep after all the
excitement. I didn’t really get back to sleep after last
night’s “dog episode”. I got up whilst it was still dark, and watched an episode of “Drifters” before
having a look at the Internet. There was a little to catch up with on one of
the Munzee chat threads (I’m leading a Munzee clan again next month), and there were a lot
of updates about which local petrol stations had run out of petrol (all of
them). As I walked to the front door
so my hand brushed against the radiator. It was warm. We have the things on a
thermostat and (apart from cranking it up once a month to make sure it
works) this is the first time since last winter that it has been on.
Winter must be coming! It was rather cold as I drove off to work as
well. The car's thermometer was reading four degrees and I had the car's
heater going for most of the trip to work. This morning there was no queue of
traffic up Brookfield Road like there was yesterday, but there was a car
parked outside the petrol station pointing against the traffic with its
headlights on full beam. I slowed, but being unable
to see any reason for the car's dazzling headlights, I turned mine on to full
beam too. Whoever it was in that car took the hint and turned their
headlights off. As I drove past that car I saw a
closed petrol station. I wonder what that car was playing at with his
headlights? Silly buggers, probably. It is a game
which gets played quite a bit these days. Amazingly the pundits on the radio were
claiming there is no shortage of HGV drivers, and that hauliers are using
their extra drivers having leased the government's emergency
tanker fleet. Personally I consider this to be a
load of old bollox - I don't think that the current government is organised
enough to have an emergency tanker fleet, but what do I know? There was also a lot of talk about student
loans. Back in the day only the cleverest of kids went to university, but
this was seen as elitist. Every college and polytechnic then got re-branded
as a university and suddenly loads of students went to uni... which cost the
country a fortune in student grants. Nowadays students get a loan which they
repay when they get a job which pays enough, but it would seem the bar has
been set too high. It was claimed that fifty-three per cent of student loans
never get repaid as the ex-students never get a job which pays enough to reach
the repayment threshold. The obvious answer is to ask why these kids
are going to university in the first place. If they are going to get a degree
which is of direct relevance to their chosen career
then that makes sense. But so many careers these days are "graduate
entry" regardless of what degree the students actually
have. I've heard that fifty-two per cent of biology graduates go into
banking, and that less than two per cent of history graduates do anything
remotely historical. Why don't employers go back forty years and
take on trainees with "A" levels (or whatever they call
"O" levels these days) and send them to the universities on a
day-release option? Like I did? The cost of the education is paid by the
employer as part of the student's wages. As a trainee my money wasn't
brilliant. In fact at the time I was matey with a
chap who worked in an abattoir who earned far more than I did. But as a trainee, part of my wages was having someone else
paying for the courses I was studying (and much of the associated costs
too). I got to work for the early shift and had a
relatively good day. As good a day as we could have without cake. At lunch
time my phone pinged. A new geocache had gone live only three miles from
work. As I left work I saw a “Did Not Find”
log on that cache. Someone had been out and couldn’t find it. The First to
Find was still up for grabs. Mentally composing a rather gloating FTF log I
took a minor diversion on my way home and after fifteen minutes scrubbling on the roadside I had to concede that I
couldn’t find it either. Amazingly I was stealthy enough not to
attract the attention of the police who were hammering on the door of the
house directly over the road from where I was scrubbling. I came home and collected the dogs. There was
a dodgy moment when I opened the car’s boot and, in her impatience, Treacle
head-butted the opening door as she leapt in. That made it open a lot faster.
She seemed unharmed, but I kept an eye on her as we walked. We went to Great Chart and walked from the
cricket pitch up to the river and back (not going int the river today –
too cold). As we walked we saw a few other dogs
and all but one encounter passed off well. Each time another dog came close I
made the dogs sit and I blew the whistle. My dogs’ attention was on getting a
treat, and the other dog walkers could see we were doing something and gave
us a wide berth… all but one plank who deliberately led his dog up thinking
that there might be a treat going for his dog too. When it all blew over I explained (in a tone of voice that I would use
with a petulant toddler) that my dogs can barely share with each other;
let alone some dog they have never met before. We walked out at Great Chart because I had
some geo-maintenance to do. Some time ago (9 June 2020) I hid some
geocaches along part of the Greensand Way. Supposedly easy to find, one seems
to be more difficult than the others. With seven consecutive “Did Not Find”
logs over the last two months I thought I’d better go have a look-see in case
it had gone missing. I saw the thing from several yards away,
hanging in the hedgerow where I’d put it last June. I checked the location
with my geo-app – when I took the photo of the thing my phone said I was
three feet from the posted location. That’s about right. So why can’t people
find it? We came home where “er indoors TM”
made me a cuppa. I took one sip, threw it away and made another. The milk I’d
bought on Tuesday afternoon had gone off. The milk we get from the shop over
the road never lasts more than a day or so. “er indoors TM” also made a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the
new series of “Taskmaster”. I’ve heard of one of the five celebrities
in this series, which is something of a result. “er indoors TM” is now fighting
with the dogs. I’m not getting involved… |
