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1 September 2023
(Friday) - This n That
Being
wide awake far too early again I got up and consoled myself by having a shave
with a new razor blade, what with it being the first of the month today. I'm
very mean; I get myself a new razor blade on the first of each month and make
it last for a month. There's no denying things get a bit scrapy towards the
end of the month. I made toast, watched an episode of "Shameless"
and rolled my eyes at one of the sci-fi related pages on Facebook
today. Following a few posts about the show "Blake's Seven"
earlier in the week, some idiot had started watching the show. Said idiot was
quite enjoying it (it is rather entertaining as I remember) but was
furious when he'd read spoilers about how at the end
they all die. Mind you, I'm not sure if "spoilers" is the
right word bearing in mind the episode in which they all died was first aired
nearly forty-two years ago. (If you didn't know that they all died, sorry!) I set off to work. As I drove the pundits on the
radio were interviewing some chap who is one of the leading lights in the
rail industry. It would seem the train drivers are on strike again. This chap
claimed that at the moment the average train driver
in the UK gets £65,000 basic pay for a four-day week. But this was
wrong. The figure is actually £48,500. Mind you, that's not really much
difference to worry about when you think that the average UK household
income is
only £34,000. If I ever need to travel anywhere by train again I shall check the coaches first. And will seriously
consider a taxi. And with all the country's schools looking to start
business again over the next few days, the announcement was made that quite a
lot of them (about a hundred) are structurally unsound and
frankly dangerous. Quite a few schools are looking to have classes in
village halls or remotely via Teams video calling as they've already had bits
fall down. Apparently a lot
of schools were built out of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete which was
all very well when it was first made, but now the stuff is crumbling and
collapsing. There was an interview about this with some Labour
party rabble rouser who claimed that this isn't news; the government knew
about it at least five years ago, and it's not just schools but all sorts of
other public buildings too. I got to work and glanced at the ceiling. Was that
about to come down on me? As I pondered I had
something of a macrocytic sort of day. You get those in my world. As I peered down my microscope
I had a phone call from Mackenzie of Clear Compare. She wanted to know if I
had life insurance. I told her that I might have. She wasn't having any of my
lip. She demanded to know if I had life insurance. "Yes or no!"
she rudely shouted. I told her that if I had it with her company
I would be closing the policy, and if I didn't then I would get it from a
competitor. I told her that whether I had life insurance or not was none of
her business and added her to my phone's growing "blocked"
list. I also had an email from my professional regulator telling me
it was time to re-register for another two years. It only took a couple of
minutes to do, and I’m going to pay the two hundred pounds by direct debit. I
bet those striking train drivers don’t have to pay a professional regulator
to be allowed to do their job… With work done I came home. “er indoors TM” was just finishing
so we all went down to Orlestone for a bit of a
walk. Orlestone is a very pretty place to walk. And
photograph bees. At one point as the dogs were charging round like
things possessed Treacle came back to us hobbling. She’d clearly hurt her
leg. She hopped round on three legs for a bit, then straggled really slowly looking very sorry for herself. Then when
Morgan and Bailey saw something to chase she also
flew off like a bullet from a gun. That leg got better quickly. “er
indoors TM” boiled up fish and chips which we scoffed as we started watching the
first episode of the latest season of “SAS: Who Dares Wins” (which
has been on the Sky Q box for ages). As always there was a lot of
hard-man-talk about being comrades in arms and all for one and all for one…
Am I being cynical in wondering what all the other stars of the show kept on
taking the money when the original leader Ant Middleton got the push? As I watched I pulled several thorns out of Bailey
who had clearly been running through too many bramble bushes. I then spent a little while setting up “Hannah”
(my GPS unit) for tomorrow’s adventure. I’ve not set it up from my new
lap-top before; I hope I’ve done it right. We shall find out in the morning
after Dog Club… |
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2 September 2023 (Saturday) - Dog Club and Ditton
As
I scoffed toast this morning I saw that two of my
Facebook friends had birthdays today… I say “friends” I used to work
with both of them over twelve years ago. I’ve seen
one of them a couple of times when I randomly bumped into them in a pub, and
I’ve not seen the other ever since we stopped working together. There wasn’t much else happening on-line
so we got ready for the day. As we drove round to Dog Club
so Steve was doing the “Lyrics Quiz” on the radio. He read out a
couple of lines from a song… they sounded familiar. They were from Kate
Bush’s “Babooshka”. Go me! Dog Club was fun; the dogs charged about and had a
great time. But as we arrived there was a minor commotion kicking off. A new
dog was having words with another dog, and the same pup had another squabble
later. The poor new dog has only been with her current family for a few
weeks; previously she was never allowed near any other dogs, and so
socializing is a must. There was never any actual contact between the
quarrelling dogs; there rarely is. It is usually loads of shouting and
shoving which just looks and sounds horrible. We (hopefully)
encouraged the chap with her to persevere. Pretty much everyone there
was very understanding; especially those whose dogs had been squabbled at. From Dog Club we drove up the motorway listening to
Steve doing the Mystery Year competition on the radio. I had it narrowed down
to within five years of 1990… then decided it was 1996. It was 1994. We drove to Ditton Community Centre where we met up
with Karl, Tracey, Jess and Charlotte. What with the
vagaries of my shift allocations we’ve not got out for a decent walk for
ages. But, as always, the geocaching map came up with a walk for us. A
circular walk of four miles (or so) starting from Ditton with a little
branch out to East Malling. We walked the route in reverse order to get the
road part out of the way first. Sadly that meant we
weren’t able to pick up the final of the second geocache (a field puzzle),
but I’ve made a note of the location for another time… something to occupy me
before a late shift perhaps? As we walked we saw quite a
few normal people coming past. We’d walked past the entrance to the East
Malling beer festival. We pondered going in… if it was a pub’s beer festival
we might have done. But the way the CAMRA operate their beer festivals mean
that it isn’t possible to just have one pint. You get a load of beer tokens,,, and off you go. It was as well that we didn’t go in. The place had
live music. And (like pretty much all live music) they made up for a
lack of talent by cranking up the volume. The caterwauling was quite audible
from over a mile away. Geocache-wise it was good to get back to old habits.
We searched for twenty-odd caches and found all of them (not counting the
one which turned out to be half a mile behind us). Mind you we did
struggle to find some of them; between us we had two GPS units and two phones and we all agreed that most of the given GPS co ordinates were about twenty-five feet out. Or that is
they were twenty-five feet out *today*. What with atmospheric
conditions and tree cover, GPS co-ordinates can be rather variable. I could
well go back another time and find they are spot-on. This is what happened to
me over the winter when I was setting up all the geocaches in Kings Wood. All too soon it was time to come home. We said our
goodbyes and I stayed awake for much of the way home. As we’d Dog Clubbed and
walked today I’d taken a few photos. I put
them on-line, then as “er indoors TM” went
shopping I had a little look at the geo-admin of today. I eventually got it done, and then had a little
fight with my GPS unit; The new lap-top told it all about all
of the geocaches in the Ditton area last night. The GPS knew all about
them as we walked today, but it flatly refused to tell my new lap-top which
ones we’d found when I plugged it in this afternoon. Eventually I sorted it
by creating a new folder somewhere on the C drive. However
my GPS unit also seems to think that at some point when walking today I got
up to ninety-three miles per hour. And just as I was on the verge of telling the GPS
who was boss, in some sort of electronic solidarity the lap-top’s cursor went
invisible. “er
indoors TM” came home from shopping with steak and a
rather good bottle of plonk which we devoured whilst watching another episode
of “SAS: Who Dares Wins”. I’ve whinged over the last
few days about how dull my life can sometimes be. Today was a rather good
day. I’m reliably informed there’s dessert to follow… |
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3 September 2023
(Sunday) - Early Shift
Yesterday had been a rather full-on day, but I was
still awake far earlier than I needed to be this morning. I got up, made
toast and once I'd watched a bit of telly I had a
little look at the Internet. Facebook prompted me with a memory - five
years ago today I'd led a dozen hunters of Tupperware on a boat trip
out to a geocache on a sea fort in the Thames estuary. We had a really good
time, but what I remember most about that trip was the sulking and attitude
from those who didn't go. At the time I booked the boat for myself. There
were spaces for twelve people on the boat, so I offered spaces to friends
that I thought might be interested. But word soon got about, and I
had messages from all sorts of people that I didn't know complaining about
how poorly I'd advertised the trip and how they wanted to go. I also had
messages from people that I didn't know telling me (not asking!) that
they were coming and wanting details of where we were all meeting up. All of
these people weren't at all happy that they couldn't come along, but I told
all of these people that they could organise their
own trip, and gave them all the details to do so.
This was followed by a program about pranksters;
people who play practical jokes. It started off sounding rather interesting
but after the first minute or so I found myself listening with a profound
sense of "WTF are they talking about?". The program was best
described as "pretentious bollox" with the presenter making
continual references to operas and obscure historical literature about which
not one person in ten thousand would have heard. I turned off when this idiot
pointed out that pranksters are still in contemporary society, and quoted
Bart Simpson as an example. But (to this idiot) the funniest bit about
The Simpsons was the theme tune which the chap felt was hilarious, and he was
laughing out loud when he played it.
Yesterday I devised a fix to get my GPS talking to
my lap-top; I thought I might test out my fix by using it to report the
geo-maintenance I’d done on the way to work. It sort-of worked… |
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4 September 2023
(Monday) - Before the Night Shift
Not
a lot was happening in the Internet this morning so
I got myself and the dogs organized and we set off for our morning walk. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking
about the “schools falling down” scandal. There was an interview with
a head teacher who said that despite numerous requests he’s had no
information whatsoever from the Department of Education about what was
happening with his (collapsed) school. However
he’d read the newspapers in which it had been claimed that the government
would pay to rebuild schools, but it was up to the schools themselves to fund
alternate arrangements for teaching the kids whilst the re-build happened.
Where the schools are going to get money to pay for alternate accommodation,
and to organize school dinners was anyone’s guess. They then wheeled on the Education Secretary who
basically refused to actually say anything at all.
But (to be fair to her) she said that bearing in mind that two schools
have had ceilings collapse when surveyors said all was fine, she wanted to
get a good idea of the scale of the problem… She said she’d have answers by
the end of the week. I wonder if she will have? We got to Kings Wood and went on a little mission.
Over the weekend I’d had reports that four of my
geocaches there were missing. So I went out with
four spare pots in my pocket, and (sure enough) they were all missing. I must admit that I chose Kings Wood for somewhere
to put geocaches as replacing them can be done during a dog walk. And I am
fully aware that replacing missing geocaches is the responsibility of the
person who hid the thing. But is it really so much
to ask that people carry a few spare plastic pots in their rucksack when they
go walking? It takes less time to replace a missing cache than it does to
tell me about it. But this is an argument that has been done to death… There
are those who contriblute to any hobby and thos who take. As Oliver Hardy once remarked “Twas ever thus”. We had a good walk. We kept to the narrower paths
which were under the trees as much as we could be;
Treacle’s been sick a few times over the last few days – I think she might
have had too much sun on Saturday. Dogs are a worry. We came home; I got pastries from the corner shop. I
then sparked up the lap-top and told the geo-world that I’d replaced the
missing caches. I then spent a bit of time writing up more CPD, then took
myself off to bed for the afternoon. After four hours asleep (that’s not bad for an
afternoon!) I woke up. I came downstairs, and the dogs were all rather
excitable; they know when it is time to feed the pond fish. “Feeding the
Fish” has become something of a ritual; I pootle
about whilst the dogs get more and more worked up until I announce “I’m going
to feed the fish” at which point they all sprint down the garden to the
pond in the desperate hope that some of the fish food will fall on the side
of the pond where they can get it. Some usually does. And so off to another night shift. Back in the day
things were very different. Night shifts were rather lucrative; if rather
arduous. People would do the night shifts up until their thirtieth birthday
at which point they gave up and the youngsters
coming in to the job would take over. These days people don’t seem to start doing the job
until they are over thirty… |
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5 September 2023
(Tuesday) - Dentists
I
was rather glad to see the relief arrive this morning; last night’s shift had
been rather hard work. My watch resets at midnight and I’d walked over five
thousand steps between midnight and eight o’clock. My daily target is six
thousand, and some days I don’t get to it. Ironically having found the “Operation Brock”
stupidity had been removed on my way to work last night, five miles of the
way home had been reduced to only two lanes for absolutely no reason that I
could fathom. My piss boiled as I drove
home. There was a lot of air-time devoted to “Martha’s Rule”;
a suggestion that patients should be able to request a second opinion and
review of the case if a loved one’s clinical condition is deteriorating or
not improving as it should. As the talk went on there was a lot of stabbing
the NHS in the back and airing of all of its faults
and failings. At no point did anyone suggest that “Martha’s Rule”
is already in place; people *can* currently request reviews and second
opinions. But why would anyone point this out as it would ruin a perfectly
good story. This is typical of the BBC’s attitude to the NHS at the moment; slow to praise and quick to censure.
Compare this to only a few short years ago when the BBC was instrumental in
having us all on the doorsteps clapping for the NHS like things possessed. Once home I took myself to bed for the morning. All
three dogs came with me, and after a little fight for bed space I was soon
asleep. I woke three hours later, put a load of washing in to scrub and then had my usual root round the Internet.
I started off with sending out birthday wishes… Every morning Facebook tells
me whose birthday it is (provided that
person has told Facebook when their birthday is), and several times each
week I’m presented with a “friend” about which I’ve heard absolutely
nothing since Facebook last told me it was their birthday last year. I had
two friends with birthdays today; one with whom I work, and one I’ve not seen
or heard from for at least five years. I *love* Facebook in that it
helps me keep in touch with people, but that presupposes that people will use
Facebook to interact. Most people don’t. I know so many people who comment to
me about all that I post to social media but never actually post anything
on-line themselves (not even a “like”). There were a lot of “back to school” photos
this morning; bearing in mind what a shambles Swadelands
School was all those years ago I don’t miss “back to school” at all. I had an email cancelling Friday’s dental
appointment. The dentist annoys me when they do that. They’ve not been so bad
lately, but back in the day I think it fair to say they cancelled two out of
three appointments. I tried to phone them; the phone just rang and rang.
I gave up after half an hour; do they close for lunch? My plan for today had been gardening. Over the years
I’ve tried to create a very low maintenance back garden, but sadly “very
low maintenance” isn’t the same as “no maintenance”. My plan was
to prune the tree at the end of the garden and to tidy up the overgrowth
pouring over the fence from not-so-nice-next-door. I got some of
the tree pruned, and some of the overgrowth hacked back. But after a couple
of hours I began to wilt, so I ran round with a
watering can and settled down in front of the telly and tried phoning the
dentist again. After half an hour I gave up and walked down the road to the
surgery. It was mayhem. I joined the queue and eventually got to the front.
After a little chatting with a very harassed receptionist
it became clear that the private dental plan I took out (at their
insistence) was working against me. Back in the day the entire practice
went with Denplan and so if my dentist was on holiday I could see another. But with the passing of time they’ve now only got one Denplan
dentist and he only works Fridays. I re-booked the appointment, came home and phoned the Denplan
people who tell me they’ve got three Denplan
dentists at the surgery I go to, so seeing someone else shouldn’t be an
issue. I phoned the surgery again and left a message asking the practice
manager to phone me to talk about this… I wonder if they will phone tomorrow – they didn’t
today. And
talking of dentists, “My Boy TM”’s dog Ro-Ro went to
the dog dentist today. The poor little thing has had fifteen teeth taken out… |
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6 September 2023
(Wednesday) - Bit Dull
I
slept rather well last night; over seven hours. It’s amazing how a night
shift sorts out insomnia albeit temporarily. I made toast, watched some telly, saw absolutely
nothing at all was happening on the Internet, and set off to work. As I drove
the pundits on the radio were wittering on about “Martha’s
Rule” again. Having conceded that the rule is not news
and that people already can ask for second opinions, today they were trying
to make an issue of the fact that it is the NHS’s fault that the general
public can’t be bothered to educate themselves and don’t know their rights.
As I said yesterday, three years ago the BBC had us all on the doorsteps
clapping for the NHS like demented sealions. Today they can’t stick the knife
in fast enough or deep enough. This was followed by the “Thought for the Day”
in which some Hindu chap spent five minutes ranting on about how brilliant
the sun was, and that no one owned it. What a total waste of peak radio air-time. Work was work; today I was doing some training on
issuing of blood and blood products. Giving blood and blood products for
transfusions is dead simple as long as you remember
the one simple rule “don’t kill anyone!”. A tad flippant perhaps? Possibly. But that is the
secret of working in blood transfusion. As I worked so I had a phone call. Yesterday I
wondered if the dentist’s practice manager might phone me back. She did. I
pointed out that I joined a private patient scheme at their suggestion and
insistence only to be able to get any sort of dental treatment on a Friday…
provided the dentist who only shows up on a Friday isn’t having one of his (seemingly)
many long weekends. They asked if I would like to be seen by another dentist.
I replied that I don’t care which dentist rummages in my gob as long as I can
have a bit of flexibility (i.e. not just
Friday) on what day I can get an appointment. I’m being transferred to a dentist who works more
than one day a week… With “er indoors TM” out
with her mates I got myself something special for dinner. Some M&S
chicken wings and some posh salted caramel ice cream from the shop over the
road. The M&S chicken wings were rather grim, and the
salted caramel ice cream was all ice and no cream. “er
indoors TM” came home with
a huge Aldi trifle… I’ve got guts ache now… Some days in my life are rather good… some are dull. |
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7 September 2023
(Thursday) - Travel Fun (!)
I
went to bed last night with a guts ache that ached all night. I eventually
gave up laying listening to my stomach rumble and got up. I had this idea
that some toast might settle my innards. It didn't. As I scoffed toast I
watched the last episode of the tenth season of "Shameless".
Whilst fun to watch, the show would have benefitted from just the smallest
bit of effort on the part of the writers. For example, it is just not
possible for a trainee pharmacist to get access to blood test results; let
alone perform tests herself. A piddling detail perhaps, but a glaring
inconsistency to me. I get dressed and set off to work. It had rained
overnight (despite the weather forecasts). As I drove the pundits on
the radio announced that the UK is to re-join the
EU's flagship research scheme, Horizon. Some so-called expert or other was
wheeled on who said that this was just the first announcement of many in
which the UK is to re-join many European initiatives that it abandoned during
Brexit. Apparently no one really knew what Brexit
would entail, and now that the UK "is out of the EU",
there's an attempt at damage imitation going on behind the scenes. And there was a lot of talk about the government
setting up an investigation
into vet bills following claims that many pet-owners often did not
know the price of treatments until after their appointments. It has to be said that vets aren't cheap; I can remember back
in the day Sid needing dental work and “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” actually
shopping around for quotes. And little Fudge's trips to the vets (when he
had back issues and kidney problems) rarely came in at less than four
hundred quid. Mind you I'm not sure whether this investigation is
trying to lower the prices or just make the public more aware that a trip to
the vet will cost a small fortune. Work was work. It was hard going today, but there
was cake. And being on an early shift meant I got out early. Sadly it didn’t mean I got home early though…. Whoever is in charge of
organizing the highways in Kent is demonstrably not competent to do the job
and should be sacked immediately. Quite frankly some work experience child
could do a better job. This afternoon the motorway between Maidstone and
Ashford was closed because of “enhanced
port security checks” at Dover. However
there was absolutely no hold up to traffic going from Ashford to Folkestone. The practical upshot of all of this was that my
journey home took twice as long as it should and I
never got within twenty miles of Dover but “er indoors TM” went
babysitting within five miles of the place and experienced no problems at
all. Over a rather good bit of scoff sent to me
from “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” we watched
the last three episodes of “Scarborough”;
a rather good TV show. If you’ve not seen it, give it a go… Oh… and it’s a year since Dad died… |
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8 September 2023
(Friday) - Late Shift
We’ve
been looking at getting a new bathroom recently. Last night I had an
incredibly vivid dream in which a friend with whom I used to go to school
offered to do the “bathroom” far cheaper than anyone else would do. However my old mucker isn’t a plumber; he is a Baptist
minister. He came along, said some prayers in the bathroom, announced that
the taps now dispensed holy water, and gave me a bill for several thousand
pounds. Shortly after that the bin men came up the street
seeing who could be the noisiest. I made toast, sparked up the lap-top and saw two
people had birthdays today. I sent out birthday wishes to the one who had
made the effort to communicate over the last few years, and then had a little
rummage in cyber-space. Not a lot was going on. Once we’d found the dog leads (buried under a
bowling ball) I took the dogs out. As we drove to the woods the pundits
on the radio were talking about a new scheme whereby YouTube is now verifying health care
professionals accounts to stop the spread of disinformation. I
thought about signing up; after all I don’t want happy birthday videos,
movies from my Lego cities, dog videos and my lip-synching to be labelled as
“fake news”, do I? We got to the woods and had a good walk. Morgan
particularly was over-excited as he’d not been out for a couple of days, but
with the heatwave it has been too hot recently. We walked two and a half
miles and in that time only met one other dog-walker
with whose dogs my dogs had a good game of chase. We came home to the bath; Treacle had been wading in
the swamps, Morgan had been rolling in the poo, and
Bailey needed a scrub anyway. With dogs washed I popped up the road to the
corner shop for pastries, then phoned the car insurance people. My car
insurance is due for renewal next week and they’d quoted a price for the next
year of a hundred and seventy quid more than I am currently paying. I
threatened to go with another company, and the price dropped considerably.
And when I said I’d rather pay in one lump sum rather than in monthly
installments I ended up paying twenty quid less than I’d paid last year. It always pays to quibble with car insurance. I then paid the next year’s road tax for my car. Again I saved money my paying the year’s
worth in one hit rather than in installments. Paying out these lump sums might have left me a tad
short, but over the next year I will put money aside each month ready for
next year, and I shall be quids in… or that’s the
plan. I did
some CPD, had a shower (as I was rather sweaty – yuk!) and set off
to work. As I drove away from home I saw that I was
right to have taken the dogs out earlier. In the three hours since we'd gone
out the temperature had gone up by fifteen degrees. Seeing the co-op car park full I didn't stop. As I
drove up the motorway I saw there was a half-hearted
attempt at "Operation Brock", but rather than using the
barriers (which obviously had cost a small fortune), there were a few
miles of road cones going London-bound and only lorries going coast-bound;
cars (presumably) taking the A-road. Not having been to the co-op I went to Sainsbury's
to get lunch. I met some "normal people" there. I got my
stuff and joined the queue for the till. As we got to the till,
the chap in front saw how little shopping I had compared to him, and
suggested I went first as I would get through quicker. I thanked him, but as
the cashier ran my stuff through the till, so his wife loudly started
shouting about how some people have no manners, and there was a queue. And to
my amazement the chap who'd suggested I went first stared loudly agreeing
with her. The cashier winked at me and whispered
"we get all sorts in here". I hurried away... Yesterday had been hard work; the late shift was one
of the worse ones. And to think I'd asked to swap into it (to go to the
dentist appointment which got cancelled!). But eventually the night shift
rolled in, and I came home… down the A-road as the coast-bound motorway was
closed. “er
indoors TM” boiled up fish
and chips which we scoffed whilst watching more “Landscape Artist of the
Year” in which for every one person coming up with a half-way decent painting
there were half a dozen making frankly dreadful messes which (had he
scrawled them) my eight-year-old grandson would be embarrassed to
show to anyone. |
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9 September 2023
(Saturday) - Dog Club and Cider
I
had a good eight hours asleep last night, eventually
being woken by my alarm telling me “Get your arse out of its pit” (it
really does say that). I got my arse out of its
pit, made toast and had my usual rummage round the
Internet. I sent out birthday messages, then rolled my eyes as I read the
petty bickering. There are various “things” that have been going on
for years such as Star Trek, Sparks, Blakes’ Seven, dogs, garden ponds, and
for each “thing” this morning there were half a dozen half-wits who
had discovered it last week and despite knowing absolutely nothing at all
about it was now an expert on the matter. And a posting about spiraling vet
bills on a Radio Four Facebook page had descended into petty backbiting over
whether dogs or cats make the best pets. I suppose this is the Internet in a nutshell, isn’t
it? We set off for Dog Club. As we drove Steve was doing
the “Guess the Lyrics” contest on the radio. I had absolutely no idea
what today’s song was. We got to Dog Club early as I was on opening-up
duty, and we had a great time. The dogs all charged about and played. And
little Lilly who was so scared and reactive last week is coming on in leaps
and bounds. As we drove home I got the
mystery year right away – when did Space 1999 first air? 1975, Once home the dogs were soon fast asleep. Dog Club
wore them out. I hung out washing, harvested dog dung, mowed the lawn, and
got out the Bionic
Burner. As I bionically burned the front garden
so a passer-by asked me about the thing. She’d seen the adverts on the telly
and thought it looked too good to be true. I told her it was. The gadget
burns away the weeds easily enough, but the advert implies that having been
burned away, the weeds stay away. They don’t. They grow back just as fast as
when you pull the weeds out by hand, but it saves you reaching down and
pulling the weeds. Having bionically burned I
had a sweep-up, and then realized I’d spent an hour on “dull”. So I stopped. With the dogs still fast asleep after Dog Club we
settled them and drove down to Hastings for a family birthday. An afternoon
sitting in the beer garden trying out the fruit ciders worked very well. It
would have been good to have stayed later, but I wasn’t happy leaving the
dogs. So we came home. “er
indoors TM” saw to the
dogs; I popped to the kebab shop. We had kebab whilst watching the final of “Bake
Off: The Professionals” and the first episode of the remake of “Takeshi’s
Castle”. I might only have one day off this weekend, but I
certainly made the most of it. |
|
10 September 2023
(Sunday) - Early Shift
I was woken at five o'clock by the sound of
Treacle jumping off of the bed. She seemed rather breathless so I took her into the garden for some fresh
air. She's not coping with the current heatwave at all - it's the pug in her.
She wandered round the foggy garden, had a *lot* to drink, then went back to
bed. I set a fan blowing on her, and made myself
some brekkie. As I scoffed toast I watched an
episode of "Shameless" then had a little look at the
Internet. It would seem I'd missed a showing of "Rocky Horror"
at the Marlowe last night. I'd have liked to have seen that. Oh well, there
will be other showings (I expect). Trouble is these things book up so
quickly. Tickets probably sold out months ago. With not a lot else going on I set off to work listening to the radio.
As I headed off I caught the last part of some
new-age-hippy-drivel about "the fifth element"; the fifth
element being rather indeterminate and pretty much whatever the hippies
wanted it to be at the time. I thought the fifth element was boron, but what
do I know. This was followed by some utter tripe in which some other hippies
thought that foxes were actually all Satan. You
would have thought that the Prince of Darkness would have had better things
to do than rummage through some old bin bags, wouldn't you? Mind you, is that why devil worshipers supposedly sacrifice
chickens? I turned the radio off and sang along to my quality choice of tunes as
I drove up the motorway, and pausing only to open a a
gold qrate in the works car park I was soon in the
thick of things. Work was rather troublesome today; I was glad when it was home time.
But with “er indoors TM” and the dogs off
out on a play date with Reggie (and Dee and Elliott) I came home to an
empty house. I spent an hour pootling in the
garden. “er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching
more “SAS: Who Dares Wins”. I shall watch some more telly
drivel until the dishwasher is done… then I shall have an early night.
Treacle is snoring epically; I suspect she’s in for another restless night so
I shall get some sleep whilst I can. Yesterday was rather good; today rather dull. |
|
11 September 2023
(Monday) - Robot Goes Psycho
I
managed to sleep through to five o'clock this morning which was something of
a result. I woke to find Treacle was at the foot of the bed fast asleep, and seemed to be OK. I let sleeping dogs lie, got
up and did my morning round. I made toast as I do, watched a bit of telly
then sparked up the Internet. And rolled my eyes. People were on the Star
Trek Facebook pages asking what was special about the number 1701. Other
people were on the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy page asking why everyone
was talking about 42. More and more Facebook pages devoted to specialist
interests are being overrun by those who don't know the first thing about
said specialist interest. And it is not just Facebook pages... I had an email
of advice on Wherigo geocaches this morning from some chap who has just found
his second one (and only found his first geocache a couple of months ago). I set off to work. As I drove there was talk about
how the boss of the John Lewis chain was calling for a royal commission
to save
UK high streets. Apparently what with more
people working from home these days and many shopping centres
in out-of-town locations and the rise of on-line shopping, fewer and fewer
people are going into town centres to squander
their money. Personally I feel I have to question the entire concept of "going
shopping". If I "go shopping" I've either got
orders from “er indoors TM” to get specific
items, or I'm going to get something that I can't get on-line (having done
my research first). There are those who go shopping because they have
nothing better to do, but the days of wandering to the shops to waste an
afternoon squandering hard-earned cash on random crap
I don't want or need are long behind me, and long behind most people as well.
I wonder how long traditional shops have got left?
There will always be a need for food shopping (as it is perishable),
but as for everything else? Amazon have the right idea. Order it on-line and
have it delivered. I can remember the head honcho of "Whatever Comics"
in Canterbury going mail-order-only as having a physical shop cost him too
much money, and that was over twenty years ago. I got to work - it was rather better than it had
been yesterday. And being on an early start and consequently an early finish
was good too. I came home, loaded the dogs into the car and we
went to the woods. We had a good walk, but as we went
we did meet a couple of normal people who were out for a walk. With no dogs
of their own they were less than polite about my wolf-pack. There are some
people who seem to think that there is something rather sissy-ish and not at all macho about
having small dogs, and they had words to say. I smiled politely,
and resisted the temptation to tell them to get knotted. Five minutes from the end of our walk Treacle found
a stagnant ditch in which to wallow. One advantage of small dogs is that
there is a lot less to wash. With walk walked we came home for that wash. “er indoors TM” did dinner then
went bowling. I ironed shirts whilst watching a film on Netflix. T.I.M. is
a typical Netflix movie; an excellent movie made with an incredibly small
cast. But it wasn’t an original story… “robot goes psycho” is a very
old theme in sci-fi and sadly I found myself comparing this film’s T.I.M.
with Dean Koontz’s Proteus IV and Asimov’s TN3. T.I.M. didn’t come close to
those who came fifty (or more) years before And whilst we’re thinking about “robot goes
psycho”, one of the mailing lists I follow (for continuing
professional development) has set a little competition: “Write 50
words or fewer in response to the following question: How will Artificial
Intelligence transform healthcare over the next 10 years?” That should keep me occupied for a few minutes… |
|
12 September 2023
(Tuesday) - Going Walkabout
I slept reasonably well, which was something
of a result, But I was still wide awake far too early. And these days it is
now dark at "far too early o'clock". I got up, pootled
about, made toast and watched an episode of "Shameless".
I'm now into the eleventh season and am realistically only watching it
because I've got so far it would be a shame to stop now. Sadly
all the interesting characters have left and the plot (such as it is)
is seriously beginning to struggle. As I watched I sorted my undercrackers. They are getting a tad
threadbare; maybe it is time to get some new ones before word gets out that I
need new ones for Christmas. I had a very quick look at the Internet; some born-again Christian was
spamming the Atheist memes page that I follow. This chap is a strange fellow.
Hailing from the USA he is a great advocate of the American Dream and of
making as much money as he possibly can at the expense of anyone and everyone
else. However he sees no contradiction between his
political and religious views. I suppose this is what "faith"
is all about; desperately hoping that shit is sugar
and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Certainly
works for this chap. I had a quick Munzee session then set off to work. As I drove the
pundits on the radio were talking about the collapse of the high street giant Wilko.
There was an interview with some woman who was something big in the union to
which most Wilko workers belonged. She was lambasting Wilko's management for
not having a business plan and not embracing change and generally criticising them for very specific failures. Amazingly
pretty much everything she said that Wilko's management should be doing was *exactly*
what the railway unions say their management should *not* be doing and
are fighting them about. Funny old world. This was followed by an interview with some business guru who (quite
frankly) just spouted meaningless catchphrases saying that Wilko needed a
forward-going vision which would complement its portfolio. Possibly by
telling the portfolio it had a smashing blouse? Some
of these people wheeled onto the radio really do just spout utter tripe. Mind
you I expect they get paid far more than I do...perhaps that is somewhere
else that I've been going wrong all these years? I did my bit at work and drove home. I hadn’t intended going for a dog
walk after work as the weather forecast had thunderstorms from two o’clock
onwards. But as usual reality bore no relation to the weather forecast. I
took the dogs to Orlestone, and just at the
furthest point from the car the puppies zoomed into the trees. Having been
doing that all walk long I thought nothing of it, as they usually re-appear a
few seconds later. This time it was a little longer before they re-appeared. Three quarters of an hour. They must have seen a rabbit or a squirrel or something and given
chase and got lost. I walked around but couldn’t hear them at all. Eventually
a passing dog walker said she’d heard something crashing about in the woods a
few hundred yards away and I went in the general direction she said, blowing
the whistle periodically. Eventually I saw Morgan on the edge of the trees. He looked at me with
a very uncertain expression, so I called to him and
he sprinted up to me. He was whimpering and crying; obviously frightened by
his experience. Bailey appeared a minute later (bold as brass) as
though nothing had happened. As we walked back to the car we met “er indoors TM” walking
in to the woods. I’d called her when I’d got to the
“dogs missing for half an hour” stage. Once home we had a bit of scoff, then whilst “er indoors TM” went
to Zoom at her mates I had a look on the Internet at collar-mounted dog
tracking devices. It soon became apparent that they are all crap. They cost a small fortune, they need a monthly
subscription fee, and the tracking device talks to your phone’s app via the
Internet… Which is all very well all the time you are connected to the
Internet. There’s pretty much no signal at all in most of Orlestone
Woods or Kings Wood. There are cheaper ones which work via Bluetooth, but with a (in the
woods) range of up to ten metres I’ll see and hear the dog before the
tracker does. I shall keep my eyes open, but GPS dog trackers seem to be a lot of
money straight down the toilet… |
|
13 September 2023 (Wednesday) - Tree's Gone
As I scoffed toast I peered into the Internet. After
yesterday’s episode with the puppies, last night I’d posted on-line asking
about people’s experience with dog tracking technology. The general consensus was that the stuff doesn’t live up to
the adverts (which are at best misleading). Dog tracking needs
internet connection to work, and the only suggestions were to either keep
them on the leads (which defeats the object of taking them to the woods)
or having bells on their collars. Seeing the weather
forecast had completely changed overnight and a dry morning was on the cards
I got the dogs onto their leads and took them up to Kings Wood. As the
drizzle started so the pundits on the radio were talking about how it was a
bright morning in the south-east. They were also talking
about how the Ukrainians have launched a massive attack at the Russians’
navy. To me the big surprise here is how anyone is surprised. We got to the woods. I
let the dogs off their leads. After yesterday’s episode I wasn’t so much
worried as interested to see what they would do. But they were as good as
gold. They had a good run, they played with other dogs, and came back when
called. Today we walked round the top end of the woods and saw far more
people than we usually do, but the top end of the woods is usually where the
less adventurous people go for short walks. As we walked
I replaced two of my geocaches that had been reported as missing… I say “missing”;
someone who’s been caching for years couldn’t find them
so I replaced them. I didn’t really have a good look myself so there could be
two caches at each of those spots. Still, better two than none. As we got back to the car
we did “boot dogs” and with the dogs in the car’s boot I blew the
whistle and gave them a treat. A passing normal person came up to me at this
point. She’d seen me blowing the whistle in the woods (when the dogs were
setting off to bother some other dogs) and had been really impressed with
their recall. I smiled and didn’t tell her about yesterday’s debacle. She
then oh-so-politely asked why I was blowing the whistle when
the dogs were all captured and in the car’s boot. I explained the principle
of whistle training; they associate the sound with a treat and come to the
whistle in the hope of food. The look on this woman’s face was a picture; she
had wondered why her dog totally ignored her whistle. We came home for a bath;
the dogs had got rather grubby. I hung out washing in the hope that it might
stay dry, then popped up the road to the corner shop for pastries. I spent a
little while trying to connect my Facebook and Instagram accounts, then wrote up some CPD. A couple
of days ago I mentioned a competition on one of the work-based groups I
follow: No more than fifty words on ‘How will Artificial Intelligence
transform healthcare over the next 10 years?’ Here’s my entry: It won’t - AI cannot
compete with human recalcitrance. How long does someone
endure that irritating symptom before seeking medical advice? How many people drink and
smoke rather than exercise? How many healthcare
managers will see AI as a threat to their own little empire and fight against
it? Forty-nine words. I
wonder if I will win? In between writing up
some incredibly dull CPD stuff I charged out to the garden to get the washing
in. The rain which had not been forecast was hossing
down. I went to bed for the
afternoon; Bailey came up and slept on the bottom of the bed. I got three
hours asleep before the sound of her being sick woke me. I hurried her into
the garden… to see the tree at the end of the garden had gone. Vanished. I
must admit I’m glad to see it gone; it used to drop so much rubbish on the
gravel. I had mentioned to the bloke at the end of the drive about getting
rid of it; he’s done it. That was good of him. I’m off to the night
shift in a bit… |
|
14
September 2023 (Thursday) - Transmitting to Instagram
Last night’s night shift wasn’t one of the better ones. But during the
night I found myself wondering at exactly what point does “late” stop
and “early” begin. As I drove home the
pundits on the radio were talking about how some private schools aren’t bothering
taking their students through GCSE
examinations any more as the exams are seen as irrelevant to this
modern age. Instead they devising their own exam
system which will better prepare the students for “A” levels. The
religion minister Steve
Chalke was wheeled on. Being a Baptist minister turned politician he
blathered platitudes like a thing possessed. And there was also input
from Katharine
Birbalsingh. Billed as a a
British teacher and education reform advocate, she announced that the reals
reason that private schools aren’t taking their students through GCSE
examinations any more is that their results are dreadful, and this is a good
way of hiding the failings of schools that charge twenty-four thousand quid a
year. She claimed that we have a society in which everyone at the top is
there through some sort of old boys network and that
those who run our society are academically far thicker than those who do the
work. Sadly what could have been an interesting debate just
descended into a shouting match. Neither of the two so-called experts would
allow the other to speak and made a point of claiming that absolutely every single thing that the other said was wrong. I didn’t come
straight home; I went to Henwood to collect “er indoors TM” who
was waiting outside a garage in Henwood where her car was in for its MOT.
With her collected we came home and I went to bed
for the morning. After a few hours
in bed I woke (as the dogs crashed off of the bed),
made toast, and had a later-than-usual look at the Internet. It was still there.I had a message from the
people who make dog-tracking technology. They were very clear that their
dog-tracking thing will not work without an active internet connection. And I
had a wry smile at a posting from a chap whose son is doing a project for his
music “A” level. How much would people be prepared to pay to go to an
open-air festival of bands in Viccie Park, and how
would they get there? A difficult question really. Given a decent band then
I’d pay. However from experience the open-air
festivals in Viccie Park seldom attract decent
bands. They tend to attract the likes of “Smeg And
The Heads” who generally seem to think that cranking up the volume will
hide the fact that they are crap. And I saw that a puzzle geocache had gone live just before I’d left work this
morning and that as I’d come home I’d driven past it. Having taken five
minutes to solve it I might have had a cheeky FTF this morning… had I checked
my email before I’d left work. I drove “er
indoors TM” to get her MOT-ed car,
and leaving her at the garage I took the dogs for a walk. I had
planned on Kings Wood, but it was rather sunny so we
went to Orlestone where there was a bit more shade.
Again I kept a very close eye on the dogs, and again
they (mostly) stayed close. I managed to post today’s
obligatory dog photo to Instagram as well as Facebook; there are several
people I know who’ve commented that they only want to bother with one social
media platform and have chosen Instagram, so I’m now transmitting to them as
well. That’s nice, isn’t it? Mind you, being able to
transmit from Facebook to Instagram took some setting up. With walk walked we came
home, and as the dogs snored I set about the
ironing. It don’t iron itself, you know. “er
indoors TM” boiled
up a very good bit of dinner which we helped down with a bottle of
Sainsbury’s rioja whilst watching the first episode of the third season of “Lego
Masters: USA” in which one of the competitors was teamed up with his mum…
Am I wrong in thinking that was a tad odd? |
|
15 September 2023
(Friday) - Rostered Day Off
I
slept like a log, finally waking just before eight o’clock this morning. I
made toast and scoffed it whilst peering into the internet. Today the place
was awash with those annoying motivational memes. All sorts of people were
posting twee nonsense. These motivational memes annoy me. “When life gives
you lemons, make lemonade” has never once been said by anyone who has
been given lemons by life. There were a lot of people complaining about how
woke they consider today’s society to be, even though they prefer to whinge
rather than do anything about it. There were arguments about Star Trek, fishing and Lego… I turned the lap-top off and drove over to the
garage. My car was due for an MOT. In the past I’ve taken
dogs to the garage, left the car and and gone for a
walk but I had this idea that an MOT wouldn’t take long, I could then come
home and then take the dogs out. The good news was that the car passed the
MOT; the bad news was that it took over an hour longer to do than I had
expected. I made an appointment to get all the advisories
done, then came home and took the dogs down to Orlestone. We had a reasonable walk. It went better than
Tuesday’s debacle. It would have gone better had a squirrel not leapt from a
bush and dashed across the path not five yards in front of the pups. And then
when almost back to the car park the pups shot into a thicket and a pheasant
flew out. Consequently we were a tad later getting home than we might have been. I then spent some time in the garden. Mowing the
lawn, cleaning the pond filter, replacing the washing line, garden-hoovering
the carnage from the removal of the tree at the end of the garden, trimming
back not-so-nice-next-door’s roses, and quite some time
putting away all the garden tools I’d strewn across the garden as I’d worked. My plan had been MOT, dog walk, garden, tip run and
afternoon in front of the telly. It was half past four before I’d finished in
the garden, and by then I could hardly move. I cut straight to the telly;
I’ve booked a tip run for Monday morning. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate gardening?
Over four hours today and it looks just the same as when I started. “er
indoors TM” boiled up pizza
and chips which we scoffed whilst watching the first “Police Academy”
film. Did you know that film was released thirty-nine years ago. It was
rather good then and could be rather good now… but with the bleeding hearts
having censored one specific racist comment the last part of the film made
absolutely no sense at all to anyone who hadn’t seen the film in its
entirety. |
|
16 September 2023
(Saturday) - Before the Late Shift
Again I was woken by my alarm this morning.
Two days running… the after-effects of a night shift, perhaps? I made toast
and had my usual rummage round the Internet. It was still there. Today my
feed was filled with adverts for dog-tracking technology. You would think
that whatever technology that had been spying on me researching dog-tracking
technology would have seen the messages from the people who make it openly
admitting the stuff is no good to me. In between the adverts for dog-tracking
technology were adverts from various charities offering to write a will for
me… provided I gave them a bung. I’m all for giving charities a bung provided
the money goes to “charities” and doesn’t subsidise a
government-funded service. No government of any political persuasion is ever
going to fund hospitals and schools properly all the time we are popping
money into their collection pots, are they? I also saw that I totally forgot that Neon Street
had been playing at the Conningbrook last night.
Mind you every time I’ve seen them before I usually find that watching them
involves spending upwards of thirty quid at the bar just to get a headache. A
little hint to all musicians… if you are playing inside, you *don’t*
need an amplifier. You really don’t. Turning up the volume doesn’t improve
the sound quality. Mind you I did see that an old schoolmate is alive
and well and living in a forest in North Wales. That’s the sort of thing I
want from the Internet. I’m a very nosey person and want to know what people
are doing. I had an email (or two). The price of leccie and gas is going down in October. That’s a result.
Sky were trying to sell me their Sky Glass telly…
what’s wrong with the current telly? I deleted a *lot* of unwanted emails, then
got ready for the morning. I was on opening-up duty at Dog Club
so I wanted to be a few minutes early. I was first one there and I struggled
with the gate; you’d think they’d have made the thing so that you can get
your hand through to open it up, wouldn’t you? As I fought with it so the
queue of people (and dogs) waiting to get in grew and grew. Dog club was rather good today. Lilly the rescue dog
who was so reactive to other dogs is coming on in leaps and bounds. There was
a baby dachshund along for his first time, as well as a very small Jack
Russell wearing a coat as he has an allergy to grass. There were about twenty
dogs along today. All charging about and sniffing and scrounging for treats
and generally having a great time. All too soon it was time to come home. “er indoors TM” went off to Craft
Club; as I drove the dogs home Steve was doing the mystery year competition
on the radio. “Brideshead Revisited” gave it away for me. 1981. Once home I harvested a bumper crop of dog turds from the garden. How can three small dogs crap so much? And then I just sat quietly on the sofa for
a while as the dogs slept; dog club really does wear them out. I loaded up the dishwasher, set it scrubbing and
taking care not to wake the dogs I sneaked out. Sadly
there's some abysmal parking goes on up our street; I spent a few minutes
watching a chap trying (and failing) to park a van in his front
garden. I had no option but to watch as he was blocking the entire road. But
with him finally out of the way I set off to work. As I drove I sang along to
my strange choice of music in which Meat Loaf gave way to Abba, Kate Bush,
Spandau Ballet and Martha and the Muffins. With a few minutes spare I popped to the branch of
Smyths in Aylesford to get this year's Lego Advent Calendar. If I had any sense I'd open it now and give myself a little time in
which to plan this year's Advent story... But I don't have any sense, so I
won't open it. It will sit on the shelf for two and a half months, and when
this year's Advent story comes out no one will be more surprised than me as
to how it pans out. I got to work, had a rather good bit of scran from
the works canteen, then cracked on with the day. And as is so often the case
when on the late shift, the day was effectively all done by the early
afternoon. Mind you there was a minor incident on the way home.
As I came down the slip road off of the motorway at
junction nine so there was a fox walking down the road. Completely oblivious
to the traffic. I slowed down and beeped the hooter; the fox glared at me as
if to say “f… off fatso”. He really didn’t care. How do you teach the Green Cross Code to a fox? I
hope I don’t see him squished on the road soon. |
|
17 September 2023
(Sunday) - Lazy Day
The
dogs were on top of “er indoors TM” last
night so I had a peaceful night with bed space. Result! The puppies both shoved their noses into my face at
half past seven as though to say “Good Morning” but once I’d greeted
them, they both went back to sleep. Dogs, eh? We all got up an hour later. I made a cuppa (no
toast) and had a look at the Internet. A colleague told me yesterday
she’s come off of social media as she spent too long
on it. That’s such a shame – I love being nosey and seeing what others do,
but she told me that she’s looked back at her posts and what she had been
posting up was a sanitized version of her life; history as she would have
liked it to have been. Me – I just point the camera (phone) and press
the button. Admittedly I do try to get the dogs to pose… but with them any
old pose will do. We then drove into Ashford for the monthly Sunday
brekkie with friends. It was good to catch up and put the world to rights for
an hour or so. Rather than going for any of the set meals this morning I went
for the “make it up yourself” option in which you choose what you
want. Amongst which were two poached eggs. Poached eggs… oh yus!!! I shall be having those again. From brekkie we drove out to Bybrook
Barn garden centre because that’s what the normal people do on a Sunday, and
we wondered what the attraction was. I got some lawn food (as it is food
time of year for the lawn), thought about getting a palm tree, and looked
in horror at the garden statues which were about two or three times the price
of the stuff in Whelans. We came home just as the rain started. Rather heavy
rain. So with little else to do I watched a film on
Netflix. “Superintelligence”
featured James Corden as a self-aware computer, and would
have been a good film had it been about forty minutes shorter. By the time it finally drew to an end the rain had
eased up so I went into the garden and hacked back
some the stuff pouring over the fence from not-so-nice-next-door,
and some of the stuff from new-next-door (nowhere near as
much on her side though). After an hour or so I was rather knackered, so
I sat down and researched the palm tree I’d seen earlier at the garden
centre. Apparently if you are thinking of planting a palm tree, this is *exactly*
the time of year not to plant one. Early to mid-spring is the time to plant
them apparently. Oh well… perhaps I won’t get a palm. After all, the last
three I’ve had all died. I then alternately read my Kindle (Game of
Thrones books) and had a kip whilst “er indoors TM” painted
the back bedroom we’ve recently had plastered. Over dinner we watched more Lego Masters: USA… We didn’t do much today, but I’m worn out from
having done it. |
|
18 September 2023
(Monday) - It Rained
I
felt a bit rough this morning; when the noise of the rain hadn’t kept me awake,
the dogs had. They have this habit of sleeping at the bottom of the bed (which
is fine) and then slowly moving up the bed so I find myself hunched up
with my knees up by my ears. I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do.
A surprising amount of people had been camping last night and had posted
videos of the noise of the rain in their tents. It’s a few years since I last
camped, but I always felt that the sound of rain on a tent was perhaps the
most depressing sound ever. You just knew that you’d have a morning in which
absolutely everything you’d touch would be sodden. With not a lot else on and rain stopped but more
forecast I thought I’d take the dogs out. Bearing in mind the overnight rain, Orlestone would have been a swamp, so we went up to Kings
Wood. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Russell Brand.
I can’t pretend to know the first thing about him; apparently there’s several
rape allegations against him… but these are allegations made
firstly to various newspapers, then (so it would seem) as an
afterthought to the police. Personally If I’d been
raped I’d complain to the police straight away. Admittedly there’s probably
more money to be made from selling my story to the newspapers, but what do I
know? There was also an interview with some woman who was
a head honcho at the BBC who was ranting about how inappropriate Mr Brand is. During the interview it came out that Mr Brand still has a You-Tube channel which attracts over
six million people a day. Personally I’d see that as
saying that six million people find him amusing and entertaining, but this
woman being interviewed felt that this was six million people whose viewing
she needed to censor. As I say I don’t know anything about this bloke
other than what I heard this morning (and later read up on) but as is
the case with all these “evil celebrities”, years pass before anyone
says anything. We got to the woods and had a rather good walk. We
went for two and a half miles. We met a few other dogs; the meetings went
well. The dogs zoomed into hedges and thickets and came back when called.
Whilst their behaviour is far from bad in Orlestone, it is noticeable far better at Kings Wood. I
wonder what causes the difference. We came home where the dogs immediately went to
sleep. I loaded a load of rubbish from the shed into my car, then made a cuppa (with cake) for me and “er
indoors TM”. From the looks on the screen I think her
colleagues might have liked a cuppa and cake too.
I wrote up a little CPD and
as the rain became torrential I drove round to the
tip on my way to the late shift. I was tempted to leave the rubbish in the car for a
day or two, but I really needed to empty it out so I
braved the elements. I got to the tip and told the nice tip man I had some
plaster to shift. He explained I had to pay; I said I knew. So I lugged my bags through the rain past the barriers
into the exclusive pay-per-bag area where I had to empty each bag into the
skip. Or try to. There was another chap also emptying bags of hardcore. Or
trying to. His wife was with him; a quarrelsome old harridan who was keeping
up a constant tirade of criticism. The old bat was standing there in the rain
(getting in everyone's way) finding fault with every
single thing her husband was trying to do. I asked her to excuse me so
I could get to the skip; she kept haranguing her husband. I again asked her (a
little louder) to move .. She looked at me, and turned back to nagging her husband. After the
fourth time that I asked her to move, the nice tip man told the old bat to
either help empty the bags of hardcore or get out of everyone's way. She was
not all happy about being spoken to in this way, but the nice tip man was
adamant; she could either help or get out of the way. As the old bat shuffled
away muttering to herself, her henpecked husband quietly thanked the nice tip
man. What must this chap's life be like; saddled with a
wife who wants to stand in the torrential rain just to nag him? I paid the nice tip man twenty quid for allowing me
to empty my four bags of plaster, got rid of the rest of my rubbish, washed
my hands in the rainwater which had filled a discarded bathroom sink and set
off to work through the rain. I probably have driven slower up the motorway
but neither I nor anyone else dared go anywhere near what you might call
"motorway speed"; at one point (near the junction six
turn-off) there was an inch of water covering the slow lane. I spent much of the afternoon looking out of the
window watching the weather alternate from torrential rainstorms to glorious
sunshine and back again every fifteen minutes. It had all dried out by home time. It was a shame that I had to take a five-miles
diversion on the way home as the motorway slip road was closed. |
|
19 September 2023
(Tuesday) - This n That
Bailey
woke me in the small hours when she started coughing. Well, I say "coughing".
Just like my Fudge used to, Bailey doesn't so much "cough"
as "quack". When she coughs she
sounds just like an angry duck. It only lasted long enough to wake me up, but
from then on I dozed fitfully not getting more than
a few minutes' sleep at any time. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep, got up and
made toast, and watched another episode of "Shameless" in
which the scriptwriters would have us believe that a sacked trainee
pharmacist (with only a few weeks' experience and no qualifications
whatsoever) would have a post-graduate level understanding of
pharmacology and would be able to make all manner of designer drugs with a
child's toy chemistry set. Mind you the same writers would also have us
believe that our heroes "did the dirty deed" with their
pants still on (again). As I've said before that show could be so much better
had the scriptwriters made just the smallest amount of effort. I set off work-wards listening to the radio as I
went. Apparently the leader of the opposition Sir
Kier Starmer is travelling at the moment; meeting all sorts of foreign
leaders as he goes. Opposition leaders rarely get this treatment from the
leaders of other countries. The pundits on the radio saw this as evidence
that all these foreign leaders see him as Britain's future, and consequently
Rishi Sunak is already seen as history by the rest of the world. Is he? Time will tell - it always does. Mind you Sir Kier is apparently keen to re-negotiate
the Brexit deal which pretty much everyone in the UK sees as a bad
deal. But he will be on a hiding to nothing as there is pretty much no
interest at all anywhere in Europe for digging up the past. And there was more talk about Russell Brand who
denies all the allegations made against him (well he would, wouldn't he?)
Apparently yesterday the police received
rape allegations about incidents which supposedly happened between
2006 to 2013. Whilst I'm not condoning what he might have done, why does
someone wait over ten years before going to the police? And apparently You-Tube have stopped him making money out
of his You-Tube channel. I suspect that will hurt him far more than the
adverse publicity. I got to work and spent most of the day with a guts
ache; with a gut the size of mine, that's a lot to ache. And with work worked
I came home. “er indoors TM” boiled
up a very good chili which we washed down with a bottle of Sainsbury’s red
wine. As basic as red wine goes, and far better than stuff four times the
price. As we scoffed and guzzled we watched more “Lego
Masters: USA”. Not too shabby at all. And in closing I’ll make the
observation that today was International Talk like a pirate day which
was seemingly totally missed by everyone Ten years ago I wrote
"In previous years I've blogged about this. I won't go over the old
ground; I'll just say that it was a fun idea at the time which has probably
long since had its day. It's not been the same since its founder Mad Cap'n Tom threw in the sponge". I think that was probably fair - now even the website has gone. |
|
20 September 2023
(Wednesday) - Thirty Years Later
I had a reasonable night's sleep - settled dogs help. But I woke with the same niggling toothache
that I had when I went to bed last night. I made toast, turned on the telly and the SkyPlus
box refused to do anything. It does that periodically. Nothing that turning
it all off at the mains, counting to twenty and turning back on again can't
cure, but a pain in the glass (!)
nonetheless. Whilst checking that it had all come back on-line
I saw that “Star Trek: Lower Decks” was now available on Paramount
Plus. When I last looked it was only on Amazon Prime, and I had to pay extra
for each episode. So I watched an episode of "Lower
Decks" on Paramount Plus and reminded myself that despite being a
cartoon, it was rather good. Loads of references to what had gone before if
you paid attention. I quickly checked the Internet - a friend in America had seen a
documentary on Dover's Western Heights. I sent through some
of the photos from when we'd been exploring there twelve years ago,
then set off to work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how the Prime
Minister is looking
to ease up on some of the green legislation he had planned. There were a lot of people looking to lambast him about this. Not
least of which the people who make cars who are spending millions of pounds
tooling up to make electric cars. I feel sorry for them having potentially
spent a fortune needlessly, but... The trouble here is that the planning for electric cars is all arse-about-face. As a nation we need the infrastructure
to charge electric cars in place *before* everyone is forced to get
one. There's no point in people getting a leccie car
if you can't charge it anywhere (like I can't). In any case the whole "UK going green thing" is
rather pissing in the wind all the time the USA and China carry
on as they are, isn't it? I got to work and did my thing. I phoned my dentist to see if I could
get an appointment for my aching fang; I couldn't. When I came home I phoned them to see if they
had a cancellation. There was no reply so I went
down the road to talk to them. According to their website they were open
until seven o’clock. According to the sheet of paper blu-tack-ed
to their door they closed at five o’clock. I’m not impressed. With the dogs settled we went out for the evening for a
little get-together. Thirty and a half years ago I answered a letter in
the TV Zone sci-fi magazine asking if there were any Star Trek fans in Kent.
It turned out there were three. The chap who’d asked the question (who
lived thirty miles away in Ramsgate) and two of us in Ashford. Shortly
after that a little Ashford-based Star Trek fan club started up. With twelve
of us at the first ever meeting (in May 1993 in my living room) over
the years the numbers grew. People came and went. Eventually we called an end
when lockdowns put paid to pretty much everything three years ago. But over
the years we had such fun. Star Trek conventions and role-playing games and
booze-ups. Weddings and christenings. We even had a couple of funerals along
the way. Over thirty years we lost touch with some people, and what with
people having moved away and illness and one thing and another we couldn’t
all get together tonight. But some of us did. We will *not* leave it so long before out next get-together… |
|
21 September 2023
(Thursday) - A Day's Leave
I
woke at one o’clock to find myself in front of the telly with Morgan asleep
by my side. I blame the fourth pint of plum porter. I took myself off to bed and slept rather well. Over brekkie I saw that the photos I’d posted from
the pub last night had received quite a few comments. It had been rather good
to catch up last night. Back in the day we used to talk all sorts of geeky stuff
with each other; last night we were mostly comparing ailments. And I sent out some birthday videos this morning;
people were having birthdays today. People do that. Rather than messing about with a phone that never
gets answered I went down the road to the dentist and was first one through
the door to get an emergence appointment. The woman behind the counter told
me they didn’t have any… I told her “No!”, told her I’d been fobbed
off yesterday and that I was having an appointment. She booked one for half
past five… Emergency, eh? With “er indoors TM” going
in to the office today I’d booked a day’s leave to
be on dog-sitting duty. I took the dogs out. As we drove up to Kings Wood the
pundits on the radio were talking about how Poland
had stopped sending military hardware to Ukraine. Snowed out with
Ukrainian refugees, not getting the grain shipments that were promised, and
seemingly fed up with the loudly expressed ingratitude of the Ukrainian
leadership, with an election coming the Polish leaders have had enough. We got to the woods and had a walk… not one of the
better ones with impeccable behavior, and not one of the worse ones either.
Rather average really. As we walked we met a nice
lady with two small dogs who played with the puppies. The nice lady said she
doesn’t come to Kings Wood very often and asked if she was on the right path
to get to White Hill. She was. I told her that if she stayed on the path for
a mile and a half it would take her straight to the lower car park. Her face
fell. “A mile and a half?” she asked. I checked my watch which had
been recording the route. When I confirmed the distance
she didn’t actually cry, but it wasn’t far off. After five miles we got back to the car and came
home to have our bellies washed (as they were rather grubby). The dogs
had a late brekkie and their monthly flea treatments and I put a load of
shirts in to wash. As I scoffed a bit of dinner
I started on an epic telly session. As I scoffed dinner and ironed I watched none episodes of “Star Trek: Lower
Decks” until it was time for my emergency dental appointment. After a little fiddling about and an X-ray the
dentist declared that the iffy tooth was a bit loose and that the root canal
didn’t look right. It did look different to the tooth next to it on the
X-ray. He’s recommending a root canal filling which might do the trick, and
if it don’t then the tooth will have to come out and I’ll get a falsie. I’ve got to wait a couple of weeks for the root
canal filling. Oh well… the tooth only hurts when I bite down on it. I shall
chew with the other half of my gob. “er
indoors TM” boiled up some
rather good dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego
Masters: USA”. Despite having done little more than watch telly
today, I’m feeling rather worn out. |
|
22 September 2023
(Friday) - Geo-Meet
One
of the smaller dogs moved in their sleep last night and Treacle got very
agitated about it. She can be quite the grump when woken up in the small
hours. But she has no difficulty in getting back to sleep. I dozed on and off
for a couple of hours, then gave up trying to sleep, and made toast, Rather than watching "Shameless" I
watched more "Star Trek: Lower Decks" which was rather good;
today's episode had loads of references to what had gone before; quite
possibly too many. I suspect people who hadn't been watching Star Trek
twenty-five years ago would have had no idea what was going on. I then had a little look at the Internet (my
mornings follow a definite routine); there were still “likes” and
comments appearing on the photos from Wednesday’s meet-up. And since then I’ve been thinking… I can distinctly remember that
there were twelve people along to our first-ever trekkie
meeting in May 1993. Five of us were at the pub on Wednesday. One was (and
still is) in America. One was (and still is) in Hastings. I can
picture three others who have completely disappeared… and I can’t remember
the other two at all. Taking care not to disturb anyone (especially a
grumpy Treacle) I got ready for work and set off through a very dark and
foggy morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how
President Biden has announced that (unlike Poland) he is continuing to
fund the Ukrainians' war efforts. I suppose the difference between Poland and
the USA is that Poland can't afford to pay for someone else's war and that
the Russians are very nearly on the Polish doorstep, whereas the USA is only
too happy to fund the war against Russia that they dare not actually fight
themselves. And a year after ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss
comprehensively poggered the UK economy the Labour party has suggested that any major changes to the
UK's financial policies be reviewed by the
official watchdogs. That's a very good idea. But why not extend this
beyond the Treasury. Why not have the same for education and health? It's no
secret that every change to the country's health policy has been instigated
and abandoned on the whim of the current political climate without a thought
for whether or not a policy might (or did)
work. I went to work via the petrol station where they
didn't have any sandwiches. having forgotten to make any this morning I
needed some scoff. So I drove over to Sainsburys where
I got lunch. And again my piss boiled. I managed to
work the self-service checkouts as I'm not entirely useless. However quite a
few other customers did struggle with them. There were several rather bored
members of staff standing round idle. Those that weren't fiddling on their
phones were sneering at the customers who were having trouble with the
checkouts. You'd think they'd put these staff on the manned checkouts,
wouldn't you? After all this is a very regular occurrence. Work was work; I did my bit. But as the day went on I felt progressively more and more grotty.
I was glad to be on an early shift. But once home early I didn’t take the
dogs out. “er indoors TM” had
taken them out at lunch time and brought them home covered in poo. Dogs is
foul creatures. Instead I sat quietly on the sofa and wrote up some CPD. By the early evening I’d perked up a bit, so we
settled the dogs and drove out to Badlesmere where
there was a geo-meet going on. It was good to catch up with friends I see
oh-so rarely. Three pints later we came home (via the kebab
shop) and watched more “Lego Masters: USA” in which each team of
contestants was given an extra team member – a dog. They then had to make a
Lego model of their canine team member. It turned out to be rather harder
than it looked, with three of the models collapsing into a thousand (or
more) pieces at the vital moment of judging. |
|
23 September 2023
(Saturday) - Still Here
I
was rather glad to wake up this morning. Apparently yesterday was the end of the
world. Mind you for all that Facebook had been crawling with memes about it
all week, there was precious little that I could actually find on-line to
explain why yesterday was supposedly the end of the world. Mind you I can remember the first “end of the
world” on the first of January 1980. Apparently Nostradaumus
had said that everything would come to a crashing halt. But it didn’t. I
spent quite a bit of that day walking round Hastings with my mate Douggie
Small; both of us rather disappointed that the world was still there. Since then there have been quite a few “ends
of the world” but none of them lived up to the disappointment of that
first one. “er
indoors TM” was off out
with her mates this morning leaving me with the dogs. As she went out and
closed the front door so all three turned to me and looked at me with a
rather disappointed air. “Oh, the spare human’s
in charge now?”. I did their brekkie and they
all went straight back to sleep. I did my brekkie and had a little look at
the Internet. There was a posting on the Kent Dachshund Facebook
page. Someone’s dog had seven puppies on Wednesday and had died (of sepsis)
overnight leaving the newborn puppies. How do you bring up seven orphaned
three-day-old puppies? I just wished I could offer more than just twee
platitudes. I loaded the dogs into the car
and we drove round to Dog Club where I was on opening up duty. I open the
gate and hang up the collection pot and a carrier bag for the poop. An easy
enough thing to do. Dog club went well. Little Lilly who was so reactive
and nervous a few weeks ago is coming on in leaps and bounds. There was a spaniel along for her first time; on
arrival she stood at the edge of the field barking in terror at everyone. But
after a few minutes she was in the thick of it all seemingly having a great
time. And at one point Treacle was part of a group of
seven or eight dogs clustered around me getting tiny treats. When we first
started Dog Club Treacle could barely tolerate Morgan and Bailey getting
treats from me, and wouldn’t let any other dogs get
between me and her; today she was part of a large group of dogs with whom I
was sharing treats and she was happy to wait her turn. She’ll never be
running and playing with the other dogs like the puppies do, but today was a
major achievement for her. As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year on
the radio. It was one of “the hippy years”…Was it 1970? It was. Once home I emptied the washing machine and hung it
out on the new line I’d put up a week or so ago.
What with the seemingly constant rain we’ve had recently this was the first
time I got to test my new washing line. I made myself a cuppa and
watched more “Star Trek: Lower Decks”, then settled the dogs (they
were asleep anyway) and set off to work. As I got on to the motorway there were a few miles
of dual carriageway as the cones were out. There were a few more miles of
dual carriageway at Junction eight as well. Having had an open motorway for a
week or so, the roadworks have been back in place
for a few days. Doubly so today as Junction five was also coned off meaning
that I had to drive up to Junction four and double back to get to work. Mind
you I was right to go up to Junction four and double back. Everyone else was
taking the short cut at Junction six and the traffic was doubled back for
probably about three quarters of a mile. Don't get me wrong - I have no problems with highway
maintenance and agree entirely that the roads need to be in tip-top shape. However I *do* have an issue with ten miles of
coned-off motorway and no one actually doing any roadworks. That's not "not
many" - that's "I've not seen a single person all week
no matter what time of day or night I drive up and down the motorway". I got to work where I had dinner in the works
canteen. I often do when working at the weekend. A plate of macaroni cheese
and chips with a bowl of apple pie and custard for pudding. Large portions
served with a smile, and change out of four quid.
Over the years I've heard so many snide comments about hospital food; all I
can say is that the stuff I scoff is rather good. I then cracked on with the business of the day. I've
often mentioned that I don't mind working at the weekends... but I did mind
today. Probably because the weather was so good. I
came home to mayhem… favourite smallest granddaughter “Darcie Waa Waa TM” has come for a sleepover.
She and her grandmother and the dogs are all up in the attic room… Telly time
for me! |
|
24 September 2023
(Sunday) - Prison Island
With “er
indoors TM” and the dogs up in the attic room with “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” I had a rather
good night’s sleep. As I made toast this morning Morgan and Bailey came
downstairs, went outside, did their “thing”
and went back to the attic room. I
sat and scoffed brekkie; making the most of the
peace and quiet before the chaos. As I scoffed toast I smiled at the
Internet. There was consternation on one of the atheist meme pages I follow
on Facebook. Someone who had posted some anti-religion meme had had her
Facebook profile attacked by a load of angry Christians. Apparently. I’m not
sure how one goes about attacking a Facebook profile; presumably having God
on your side makes it easier (or possible). And my nephew sent me a
link to the official trailer for the upcoming Doctor Who
episode(s). It looks rather like Alexei Sayle’s blockbuster
spectacular “Things
Exploding”; it looks rather good, but then trailers do. Personally I wish they hadn’t brought back David Tennant
and Catherine Tate. Am I being cynical in thinking that the writers have done
so because they need something pretty damn
spectacular to recover from the utterly dire last season? I
sent out birthday wishes, downloaded bank statements then the family came downstairs,,, We
spent a pleasant hour crawling round the floor, chasing dogs, singing silly songs and feeding toast to the dogs. Neither “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” nor dogs like
marmite on toast. “er
indoors TM” took “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” home and I
spent an hour in the garden. I harvested dog turds,
hung out the washing, harvested dog turds, started mowing the lawn, harvested
dog turds, continued mowing the lawn, harvested dog turds... You wouldn’t
believe how much dung three small dogs can generate. With lawn mowed I pruned
plants and bionically burned weeds. The bionic
burner I bought a few months ago does kill the weeds, but unlike the
marketing blurb would have me believe, the weeds do keep coming back. But a
few minutes blasting the thing around achieves the same as what I would do
scrabbling on my hands and knees for half an hour. After
an hour or so “er indoors TM” returned and I
stopped gardening. I was knackered. We had a cuppa, settled the dogs and drove up to Maidstone where we met “My
Boy TM” and Cheryl. As it is his birthday soon we thought we might have a bit of fun today. I had no
idea what to expect; I’d never even heard of the place before. “Prison Island” was really
good fun. The
first bit was an hour in a series of rooms in which we faced various puzzles
and tasks. I hesitate to mention any telly shows or say anything which might
give the wrong impression, but after a couple of minutes I seriously expected
to see Richard O’Brien running along next to me. In our hour we managed to
try fifteen of over twenty games. In retrospect I think my biggest mistake
was that it never occurred to me that I might stand up in the ball pit. The second part was perhaps the craziest crazy golf
I’ve ever played. I shall certainly be going back again. From Prison Island we drove out to the Toby Carvery
for far too much to eat. And a pudding. I gave myself a stomach
ache. I
took a few photos this afternoon. We got home, woke the dogs, and watched an episode
of “Lego Masters: USA” in which the contestants had eight hours
to build a Lego pirate ship. Regular readers of this drivel may recall that
last winter I built
one… it took me months. And then I had a look at those bank statements I
downloaded earlier. The fifty quid worth of new T-shirts and pants and stuff
I got for the summer holiday still hasn’t appeared on my credit card
statement. And the combined leccie and gas bill is
now over forty quid a month less than it was. Bearing in mind I worked yesterday, today’s been a
rather good weekend. |
|
25
September 2023 (Monday) - Birthdays
Finding myself wide awake far too early (yet
again) I thought about making toast and strawberry milk shake for “er
indoors TM”. Thirty-six years ago
last night we'd had toast and strawberry milk shake in the small hours when
she was in early labour starting the process of squeezing “My Boy TM”
out. For a couple of years it became something of a
tradition when awake with small babies, but as they started sleeping through
the night so did we (or tried to). But not being brave enough to wake
her I thought better of the idea. I tried to get back to sleep and dozed on and off
for a while, before giving up with sleep and I got up. Or attempted it.
Moving hurt; I blame an episode at Prison Island yesterday when I dived into
the ball pit and tried to "swim" in the balls rather than
stepping in and walking. I
hobbled downstairs and started my morning routine. As I made toast I was
surprised to see not-so-nice-next-door was in darkness.
There is usually a light or two on in there from five o'clock onward. Was she
having a lie-in? I made
toast and watched an episode of "Shameless" in which today
the scriptwriters showed their utter ignorance of the Scout Association. For
a show which started so well, the writers soon gave up any attempt at doing
any research on their storylines. And
with telly watched I had a little look at the Internet. There was an
extremely nasty squabble on one of the Lego pages about the right way to
stick one bit of Lego to another. Taking a thin Lego plate and wedging it at
ninety degrees between the studs of another brick was seriously being frowned
upon. And someone who was asking for help and advice on one of the Garden
Ponds pages was getting nothing but unnecessary sarcasm. Taking
care not to wake those who'd moved into what had once been my bit of the bed
I got dressed and set off to work. As I drove I
listened to the pundits on the radio. This morning they were rather concerned
that the army is on standby as armed police officers are
handing in their licences to kill. I can't
say I blame them - an armed copper was sent in to a
dangerous situation in which he had to make a split-second decision and now
he's being charged for committing murder. Understandably other armed coppers
aren't keen on going to prison for doing their job. Presumably the squaddies
aren't fussed, or they just do as they are told? Meanwhile
our old friend science was getting rather excited as fragments of
the asteroid Bennu have safely been retrieved. And
there was an interview with the leader of the Dribbling Democraps
who said an awful lot without actually saying
anything at all. I got
to work and cracked on with that which I couldn't avoid. As I worked I was surprised to see one of the secretaries in at
work; this morning Facebook had told me it was her birthday. Going to work on
your birthday? I worked on my birthday once. It was in 1983, it seriously
sucked, and I have never worked on my birthday ever since. If my birthday
wasn't a weekend day I would take the day (usually
the whole week) off. And talking of birthdays, as well as “My
Boy TM” and my Facebook friend, Treacle is having her
birthday today. She is seven. She's a funny thing. Sometimes she's a grumpy
old lady of whom both puppies are (very) frightened and who can't stand
the company at Dog Club; other times she's running off with slippers and
socks wanting to play a game. She *loves" "FEED THE FISH!"
She's a very intelligent dog and she understands a lot of what we say; she will fetch specific items when asked, and understands
when I tell her all the food is gone when I'm sharing scraps. She’s
currently fast asleep next to me on the sofa. Dogs don’t seem to understand
birthdays… |
|
26 September 2023
(Tuesday) - Before the Night Shift
I
slept well for a change. I made toast and scoffed it sitting on the sofa with
a very quiet, subdued and soppy Morgan. What was
that all about? As I scoffed I had my usual look at
Facebook. This morning it was rather entertaining. There was a rather nasty
rant about anti-same-sex relationships on one of the groups I follow…
apparently Donald Trump and some bunch of religious crackpots being in agreement automatically made anything true. It is
odd how some people really cannot distinguish between what is factually
correct as being “true” and what they personally believe as being “true”.
Quite often these people take to putting the word “Fact!” after
ludicrous nonsense as though that makes it true. There was a mini-squabble
about the origin of the name “Hastings” on another group; several
theories were being put forward despite no one having any actual evidence for
any of them. A friend who often pleads poverty was jetting off on
yet another international holiday. And someone who regularly spams all the local
Facebook pages for her own favourite pet projects
was lambasting others for doing the same… and getting quite a bit of stick
for doing so. And I had an email that the geo-feds had archived
one of my geocaches… that was kind of them. I
emailed a complaint. I got the dogs onto their leads and set off for a
little walk. As we drove there was a rather interesting article on the radio
about extremely rich people. It started off with concern being expressed
about how international leaders are queuing up for meetings with the rich.
Elon Musk was mentioned. It was then claimed that being extremely rich and
influential was nothing new, and there was a mini biography of Henry Ford who
(so it was claimed) spent a small fortune on anti-Semitic stuff. This
was followed by an equally rich and influential person who lived in the
eighteenth century. I’d have loved to have known who it was but the woman
speaking had such I thick accent that I could only understand about half of
her words. Why do they allow these people on the radio? We got to the woods and had a rather good three and
a half miles walk. The last time we were in the woods the puppies’ recall
wasn’t what it might have been, so we worked on whistle training and treats
today, and did (mostly) rather well. We had one occasion when they
were a tad slow coming back, but today was a vast improvement on the last
walk. As we walked I noticed Morgan doing “the hop”;
I think he’s got the patellar
luxation thing that Fudge had. I shall have to keep an eye on him. We came home. Treacle had her paws washed as during
our walk she’d made a point of being a swamp monster. Morgan and Bailey
walked (ran) round all the muddy puddles and swamps; Treacle proudly
marched through all of them whilst looking at me seemingly incredibly pleased
with herself for doing so. I then popped to the corner shop for pastries. “er indoors TM” had hers as she
worked; I scoffed mine as I wrote
up CPD. Dull, but I have to. Mind you, yesterday
when staring down the microscope I saw
something interesting. Having a CPD blog means I can gloat about it. I had a shower, then went to bed for the afternoon.
I slept for nearly four hours, which was rather good. I’m hoping that “er indoors TM” will
boil up some dinner in a bit, then I shall set off to the night shift. Can’t say I’m keen on the idea… |
|
27 September 2023
(Wednesday) - Ranting After the Night Shift
There's no denying I'd not been looking forward to
last night's night shift. The worst night shift I ever had was the night of a
26th September, and I get a tad superstitious sometimes. The one that had me
worried was in 1987; the day after “My Boy TM” was
born. Ideally I wouldn't have been working that day
but... Over the years the people I've worked with have come and gone.
Sometimes work has been fun, other times not so. I'm probably working with
the best group of people I've ever worked with at the moment,
but things weren't so peachy in 1987. I'll gloss over the "delightful
people" with whom I worked at the time; but I'll say that it speaks
volumes that at that time no one was prepared to swap a night shift the day
after my first child had been born. I went in to work feeling exhausted back
then and during that shift there was crisis after crisis. I did compatibility
testing on over fifty units of blood (these days more than four in a night
shift is rather excessive). Last night's shift wasn't anywhere near as bad, for
which I was rather pleased. But I was still glad when the early shift rolled
in to take over this morning. I listened to the radio as I drove home (as I do)
and rolled my eyes. The Home Secretary was being lambasted for making
some very
harsh anti-refugee comments and for threatening to take the UK out
of the international conventions on migration. What boiled my piss here
was that she is making these nasty comments and the masses think she’s
wonderful because they want anyone they see as competition for their dole to
be sent back on the next banana boat. What the masses don’t see is that voting
for her is voting for the government who has been allowing all these
immigrants in for the last ten (or more) years. I got home, had a shower and shave
and went to bed. Morgan and Bailey came with me and as I tried to sleep so
they had a play-fight. After half an hour (!) they wore themselves out
and I slept through till mid-day when I put some washing into the machine,
made toast, and remembered that yesterday evening when I went to Sainsburys
I’d meant to get some jam. I put peanut butter and marmalade on my toast (don’t
say “yuk!”, try it!) and had a little look at the Internet. Yesterday I
mentioned that the geo-feds had archived one of my geocaches. The thing had
been supposedly missing, and my plan had been to replace it tomorrow. However I had an email today telling me that “once a
cache has been archived for non maintenance it
can't be unarchived”. Bearing in mind that others have been unarchived
before I was a tad pissed off about this. Also
bearing in mind that geocaching dot com openly admit that their notification
system isn’t reliable you’d think that they’d make sure I got the message
before pulling the plug. Oh well… it was one of a series of caches along the
Greensand Way; those ones have run their course. Rather than doing the maintenance
run I’d planned, I shall archive the lot. I hung out washing, then got out the tape measure.
Ever since “er indoors TM” got me my new SmartWatch at Christmas I’ve been rather obsessed with my
step count. But (to be honest) the step count never really meant very
much… until today. After a few measurements I’ve worked out that twenty steps
is fourteen metres sixty-five centimetres.
Which means that one step is seventy-three and a quarter centimetres. So my daily
target of six thousand steps is four point three nine five kilometres or two point seven three miles (in English).
I thought it was more… I got out the garden vacuum, sucked up all the dead
leaves from everyone else’s trees that were littering my lawn, then mowed the
lawn. And with lawn mowed I sat by the poind and read more of my “Game of Thrones”
e-book. As I read so Bailey yelped. She’d been sitting on the lawn doing
nothing (much like me) when she screamed, jumped up and flew into the
house where she seemed very sorry for herself and wanted lots of cuddles
whilst holding up her front right paw. Had something bitten or stung her? The plan for the evening had been to wander round to
the local Baptist church where the South Ashford Community Forum was being
re-launched. I’d seen the meeting advertised on Facebook and had asked what
it was all about. Shortly after my asking that, commenting on the event was
turned off. The South Ashford Community Forum was originally set
up from a feeling that the local council and councilors don't have a clue
about the people they serve, don't communicate and
basically get away with things because there's no interaction. A community
forum would give people a voice and let them know what's planned. The South
Ashford Community Forum has run as a Facebook group for some time, but
apparently (so I was told) the deputy mayor wanted to re-launch it to
make herself look good. Cynical? Perhaps. I might ask if has any politician
ever done anything other than self-aggrandizement but that’s probably not the
case for local councilors; if for no other reason
that no one really cares about local councils. Take for example my rant
of ten years ago when I pointed out that the local councilor at the
time got in with only seven point six of the electorate voting for him. That
was ten years ago and look at the most
recent election. With just over two thousand people eligible to vote, the
winning candidate came in with one hundred and sixty-one votes;
seven point eight per cent of the electorate. With everyone else utterly apathetic about local
matters would I be wasting my time? Mind you I was rather knackered after
yesterday’s night shift so I sent my apologies. Instead we cracked open a bottle of montepulciano (as
one does) and watched an episode of “Lego Masters: USA” whilst
Bailey sat with me and quivered. She’s not well. If she doesn’t perk up,
we’re off to the vet. |
|
28 September 2023
(Thursday) - Rostered Day Off
A
night shift and a bottle of red wine meant I slept like a log last night. I
was licked awake at half past seven by three rather excited dogs, the
smallest of which seemed to have got over whatever it was that had upset her
yesterday. I made toast (with jam) and had a look at the
Internet. It was still there. I looked at a few holiday photos… here’s a
thought. If you home-school your kids you can get to
go on holiday when it is a lot cheaper when everyone else is at school. I
sent out a birthday wish to someone who was one of my trainees thirty years
ago. She was fifty today. Fifty - where do the years go? And I looked at the geo-map. Yesterday I mentioned
that the geo-feds had archived one of my caches without my having received
any notification that there was a problem with it. I saw on the map that
another of my caches in that series had been disabled by officialdom because
of perceived problems with it that they hadn’t told me about. I can’t be
poring over the geo-map every day looking to see if there’s issues with what
I’ve hidden. I archived all my ones along the Greensand Way (as that
seemed to be where the problem was). I also heard that last night’s launch of the South
Ashford Community Forum wasn’t the success that it might have been. There
were four local councilors (who really had to be there), two members
of the “Friends of Victoria Park”, four members of the public (at
whom the meeting was aimed), the chairman of the South Ashford Community
Forum, and the secretary of the church which was hosting the meeting. As I
suspected, apathy was the winner here. And with not a lot else happening in cyberspace I
turned off the lap-top and cracked on with the day. Yesterday I did loads of washing which just didn’t
dry, so I hung it on the line again. That took ages. And with it done I took
the dogs for a walk. We went up to Kings Wood where we walked for three and a
half miles. We arrived to see a Dalmatian running round the car park; he
followed us (at a distance) into the woods but wandered off after a
while. I hope he’s OK – he was a hundred yards behind us for a while, then
suddenly just disappeared. As we went we did whistle
practice which worked with varying degrees of success. Treacle rarely left my
side, by when she did the whistle brought her back in near panic. Bailey
would come at top speed, but being only little and being keen to wander,
coming back took a while for her even if she did respond immediately. And
Morgan would come in his own good time when he was ready. But whistle
training did work (even if it took a while). With walk walked we came home where I put a load of
washing into scrub, got the washing in off the line, and started an epic
session of ironing. As I ironed I watched the last
episodes of “Shameless”; I started watching the series on May 5th;
it has only taken just under six months to watch. And with the last of “Shameless”
watched and pants still to sort, I put on a Netflix film. “Paradise”
is a sci-fi (ish) film, the premise of which
is that you can sell years of your life for financial gain or to pay off
debts. However (like “Shameless”) the writers would have benefitted
from the teensiest bit of research. *If*it were possible to extend
human life, telomere
transplantation would be a sensible place to start… and for the
film-makers this would involve something which would look like a blood
transfusion. Physically ripping years out of someone’s back in much the same
way that a butcher might remove the kidneys from a carcass simply doesn’t
work. And having the leading characters being in total disagreement, but each
alternately taking different sides of the argument didn’t work. The film was
originally made in German; perhaps it lost something in translation? I think
it fair to say “es war krappenschite”. “er
indoors TM” came home from
a day in the office and the dogs all got rather over-excited to see her. She
boiled up a rather good bit of scran which we devoured whilst watching more “Lego
Masters: USA”. There’s a new series of “Bake Off” going on to the
Sky-Q box, but we’ll get Lego watched before we start on that… Today was a rostered day off… I think I needed it
after Tuesday’s night shift… |
|
29 September 2023
(Friday) - Trousers
I've
a vague recollection of pushing a dog so that I could roll over in the night,
but other than that I had a good night's sleep. I got up, and as I wandered
to the bathroom I noticed all the light on next
door. As I took Bailey for a tiddle last night at 9pm the only light on next
door was the one in the back bedroom. She clearly goes to bed and gets up
several hours earlier than most. I made toast (with jam again - because we've now
got some), and as I scoffed toast watched the most recent episode of
"Star Trek: Lower Decks" that was released last night. Am I
being rather sad in thinking that Lt Tendi is perhaps the foxiest woman in
all of Star Trek? I got dressed in the dark; something I do for five
to six months every year over the winter. It is mostly much the same as
getting dressed with the light on, but you don't
wake anyone else up. However you do run the risk of
spending the day with your undercrackers either inside out or back to front. As I left the house I saw
we'd not moved out recycling bin to the pavement. With the bin lorry coming
up the road (you probably heard them shouting thins morning, no matter
where in the world you are) I moved the recycling bin two yards from the
front of the house to the pavement so that they could empty it. The bin men
flatly refuse to walk the two yards from the pavement to the front of the
house where the recycling bin lives... I've complained to the council before;
the chap with whom I spoke admitted that it was rather pathetic, but made it
clear that we all need to "appease the contractors"... As I drove through the rain up the motorway the
pundits on the radio were talking about how the Prime Minister is seemingly sucking up to
motorists. It was alleged that there's more potential votes for him from
those who drive cars than from those who get about using any other form of
transport. He can suck up to me all he wants, I'd
piss on the voting slip before voting for him. And there was a lot of talk about how Labour are looking to win
a lot of seats from the Scottish Nationalists. I thought it rather strange how there is clearly a
fascination with national politics whilst locally there is utter apathy. Work was work; I did my bit on the early shift, then
(with the afternoon off) walked out at mid-day and wandered over to
the vaccination hub where (after a ten minute
wait) I got my COVID jab in one arm and my flu jab in the other. I then came home. I thought about taking the dogs up
to the woods, but it was perhaps rather too hot for a long walk, so we
wandered round the local roads. A geocache I’d hidden not far from home was
supposedly missing and had had reports of being inaccessible because of
massively overgrown weeds. We didn’t have any problem getting to where it was
supposed to be. Was the old one still there? In all honesty, don’t know,
don’t care. I dropped off a new one and we walked home again. I then had a little sort out. I had planned to go to
Cotton Traders on my way home for new trousers and a new fleece. The pocket
of my work trousers has worn through (the keys do that to all my trousers) and the cuffs of my fleece have frayed away after many
years. But rather than buying new I thought I might have a little look-see
upstairs. I have a habit of buying new clothes, chucking them in the cupboard
and forgetting about them. Sure enough there was a
new fleece there. That saved a bit of cash. But as for trousers… There were
over a dozen new pairs in the cupboard, but all too small for me. If any of
my loyal readers would like a dozen pairs of new trousers (waist 40
inches, inside leg 29 inches) just drop me a line. I then had a little sleep for an hour or so. Why was
I so tired? I blame the vaccinations. “er
indoors TM” sorted out fish
and chips which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters: USA”. I’ll
have a look on Amazon for new trousers in a minute… |
|
30 September 2023
(Saturday) - Family Staying
After
yesterday’s vaccinations (one in each arm) I woke with my left arm aching
and my right arm was fine. What was that all about? As I made toast I saw that
the clock in the kitchen had stopped. What is it with stopped clocks?
Whenever one has stopped at home or at work I notice
it all the time, but when it is running I’m not conscious of ever even
looking at the thing. I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the
Internet. Facebook was crawling with posts about some tree that had
got chopped down in Scotland. Am I being cynical in wondering if
more than one or two of the dozens of people posting about the tree had ever
heard of it before, let alone seen it. I certainly hadn’t. There’s a lot of
this on the Internet – post up about some bandwagon or other and everyone
jumps on it. Someone else asked about good places to go for a
walk – I suggested Orlestone and Kings Wood;
someone else immediately claimed both places were ideal places for getting a
car broken into. Seriously? I’ve been going to both for years and never heard
of any issues there. I said as much… and the chap who’d said about break ins
then said he’d never actually been to either but had a vague inkling that
he’d heard rumours. Isn’t the Internet wonderful… Being Saturday we loaded up
the dogs and drove round to Repton for Dog Club. We had a great time running
and charging about. Little Lilly who was so nervous and reactive a few weeks
ago is coming on in leaps and bounds. The two Spaniels who came for their first time last week (and just barked in nervous terror)
were in the thick of all the games. And a tiny dachshund who came for her
first time today had a whale of a time. As we came home we listened
to Steve’s Mystery Year competition on the radio. As we’d driven to Dog Club
there was a competition to name a tune being played backwards – it was Super
Trooper by Abba. Go me. And I got the Mystery Year too – 1992. As we messaged
to Steve, that year was famous for being the late Queen’s
horrible anus. Once home I ran out the pond hose pipe, rigged it to
the filter and had the filter cleaned out and all the accessories away in
just under twenty-five minutes. Pond filter cleaning with the pressure filter
is so much easier than it used to be. All I need now is a round pole to act
as a spindle for my big reel thing. Just as I’d tidied up I had
a message. Someone had left the padlocks at Dog Club locked. Yes. I had.
Deliberately. I thought if I left them open then passing herberts
might nick them, and that whoever locks up might use their key to open the
padlocks prior to locking up. However it turns out
that Dog Club only has one key to the gates (the one in my pocket) and
that locking up is dependent on me leaving the locks open. Woops. I popped back to Dog Club where the big dogs session was in full swing and unlocked. I came home via Waitrose as I thought we deserved
Belgian buns. Two Belgian buns from Waitrose was just under a quid cheaper
than the co-op. We
drove down to Folkestone to collect “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”,
“Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM” and “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” (and Pogo). We brought them home and after a sandwich and a
“Feed The Fish” ceremony we went round to the
park. We’d heard the council had spent (literally) millions doing up the park, and they
had. New climbing frames, trampolines, swings, zip lines… there were hundreds
of people at the new play area and we spent over an
hour there with the littluns. You really don’t mind paying council tax when
it is spent on projects like that. Eventually
we were played out and come home for a KFC dinner, and then spent a little
while watching Lube-Tube videos. Baby songs and gallium and crochet… the
evening passed rather quickly. “Darcie
Waa Waa TM” is asleep; “Stormageddon – Bringer of
Destruction TM” is doing crochet with his
grandmother. Pogo hasn’t screamed for at least fifteen minutes. I’m rather
exhausted with it all… |
