23 October 2021 (Saturday) - A Day Off

I was enjoying not having to be up for work when my phone beeped with a message to do a COVID test. I’ve asked the people who send those messages not to do so quite so early in the morning, but to no avail.

 

Finding myself wide awake when I had no need to be I got up, did that COVID test (negative), made toast and peered into the Internet. A friend had had a birthday meal last night – it was good to see photos. Another friend had been invested as a scout leader. Had I known he was going to do that I would have offered a word of caution. I was a scout leader for thirteen years. I was promised it was only a couple of hours a week and all the other leaders laughed about that… Slowly but insidiously scouting really did take over my life. Pretty much every bit of free time I had was not so much given over to it but taken by it. I was expected to be available pretty much every evening and weekend, and made to feel guilty when work and family got in the way. If any of my loyal readers are thinking about becoming a scout leader I’d start as you mean to go on and set strict limits on how much time you give over to it or it will take over your life.

There was also a rather panic-ridden posting from someone in an American blood bank asking for advice on a rather tricky case. I know what I would have done in her position and that would have been to refer to the National Blood Service and *not* to ask on Facebook. Are American blood banks that poorly backed up that the only route for them is to ask on Facebook?

 

I drove round to B&Q to get the ingredients for the morning’s project. Not seeing any shed roofing felt anywhere I asked the chap behind the till where it was. The bloke said he didn’t know, and that he didn’t work for B&Q… I did think about asking what he was doing behind the till wearing what looked to be a corporate uniform but then thought that maybe B&Q’s security might be the better people to ask that question. I collared a passing assistant who showed me where the felt was, but she seemed quite proud that they didn’t have any clout nails to secure the stuff with.

Wickes had some, and it was only an extra five-mile journey to get them.

I got home just as “My Boy TM” and Rolo arrived, and we cracked on. A week or so ago “er indoors TM” spotted that a sheet of roofing felt was flapping loose on the shed roof. We took off the torn sheet, cut a new piece to size, hammered it in place… job done. It was one of those jobs that I could have done on my own and taken all morning, or with a little help get it done in an hour. We would have got it done in much less than an hour had the dogs not kept getting in the way.

Leaving Rolo with us, “My Boy TM” went off fishing. We took the dogs out for a little walk. We got to the park and suddenly remembered that today was Ashford Scarecrow Day. We’d intended to have a look-see at the scarecrows anyway, and so we did. Some of the scarecrows were very well done. Some looked like a small child had spent five minutes on it before loosing interest. But I suppose (like all these things) it is a work in progress, and the ones that this year were included to make up the numbers won’t make the grade next time.

We took a little diversion from the park over to Singleton Lake to do a little geocache maintenance as I’d been told some needed doing. As I’ve said before I found myself giving up a morning to do what the person logging “Needs Maintenance” could have done in less time than it took to log that “Needs Maintenance”. 

I could have mowed the lawn when we got home… I couldn’t be bothered. We spent the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching the first “Harry Potter” film. It was rather better than I remembered it. And after a rather good bit of dinner we watched the second “Harry Potter” film too.

There’s a lot to be said for slobbing in front of the telly…

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