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

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

 

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

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

Both got deleted.

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

29 November 2024 (Friday) - Iffy Innards

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

I think I’d better nip to the loo…

 

28 November 2024 (Thursday) - Rather Tired

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

27 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Before Another Night Shift

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

I was frankly amazed.

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

26 November 2024 (Tuesday) - Bake Off Final

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

I won’t say who won.

25 November 2024 (Monday) - After the Night Shift

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

I get very smug when the dogs come when called…

 

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

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

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

 

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

24 November 2024 (Sunday) - Before the Night Shift

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

I’d forgotten what hard work she can be…