13 July 2020 (Monday) - New Shoes


I came downstairs to find "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" watching “Spongebob Squarepants” on the telly and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM" playing some noisy game on his pad-thingy. I fought my way through the carnage that was once a kitchen and made some brekkie which I scoffed amidst the chaos.
I had a little look into the Internet and saw that it was pretty much how I’d left it.

I took the dogs down to Orlestone Woods (if only to give them a break from "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM"). We had a very good walk. We only saw one other person, and they were in the distance. As we walked we heard a very odd squawking sound from up a tree. Was it a parakeet? I've no idea but I've not heard it in those woods before.
As we walked so Fudge straggled. Yesterday when we went for a geo-walk he led the way. Today he was rarely less than fifty yards behind, but he seemed happy sniffing everything, and having sniffed everything then tiddling on everything. Dogs are easily amused.
Eventually there was nothing left to tiddle on, so we came home where I popped to the corner shop to get croissants to scoff with a cuppa. They went down nicely, but as I was getting changed for work a very wet Fudge came upstairs to find me and I could hear mayhem downstairs.  "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM" had been chasing round the living room hosing down the dogs with his super-soaker. "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" had tried to instil discipline and had received a super-soaking for her troubles.
I set off to work leaving them to it. As I drove "Women's Hour" was on the radio. From what I could work out, the lock-down had supposedly been a holiday for men but had just been double hard work for the women. I wasn't going to get involved in that so I turned the radio off.

I drove up to Notcutts garden centre. I needed new shoes for work. The last pair I had I bought on 16 February this year and now five months later they have all but had it. So I went to Mountain Warehouse and spent eighty quid on a pair of Salomon's walking shoes. The nice man in the shop says they should be good for a year's wear as work shoes. They seem a tad tight, but that would be the newness wearing off.
As I was there I had a little look round the rest of the garden centre. They had obviously sent someone to Whelan's to get a whole load of statues and were selling them at quite a considerable mark-up. That was a bit cheeky, I thought. Mind you they sell everything at quite a considerable mark-up in Notcutts. Bearing in mind I will need some food for the pond fish soon I didn't even look at their aquatic section but went to Aylesford Aquatics instead. I'd had this naive idea to support local businesses who might be struggling after the lock-down.
I got there to find myself being rather rudely ordered about. “Stand here”, “stand there”, “don't do this”, “don't do that”... I explained to the little Hitler that I had planned to help his business, but bearing in mind I could buy job lots of fish food on-line at about half his prices, I would save myself some money and help someone who *wasn't* treating his customers with such open contempt.

I got to work a little earlier than I might have done, and as a treat I got myself lunch form the nearby branch of Subway. It wasn't a bad lunch but it certainly wasn't nine quid's worth of lunch.
And with lunch scoffed I got on with work.
What with the rigours of having had a houseful this weekend it didn’t seem like a Monday at work at all…

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