23 February 2022 (Wednesday) - During the Car Service

As I scoffed my toast I saw I had a message about a Wherigo I’d put out in Canterbury which had been giving people some trouble. I created the thing seven years ago and had thought about archiving it when I stopped working in Canterbury five years ago, but it seems to have been OK up until now. The software seems to have developed a bug in which it throws up random QR codes where it shouldn’t. I wish it wouldn’t.

And the nice people at Credit Karma had emailed me to say my credit score has gone up, They’d suggested I ask the bank to increase the limit on my credit card so over two weeks ago I did just that, and now they have increased my score by eleven points, which has taken it from “Good” to “Excellent”. I suppose this is worth having? After a little farting around on-line I found that the people who make these scores won’t say what the national average credit score is for the UK, but they did say that area with the highest score is Kingston-upon-Thames which has an average score of five hundred and forty-seven. I suppose you’d expect no less from Kingston-upon-Thames, would you?

And there was a lot of talk on Facebook on the work-related groups in which an American blood tester was gloating that she’d just had a cut-price birth. Apparently because yesterday was the midwife’s birthday (or something) the cost of the medical expenses that went with the birth was only thousands of dollars, rather than tens of thousands of dollars. There was then quite the debate (squabble) among the American blood testers about the going rate for a birth, and the consensus of opinion was to shop around before deciding to go into labour. Doesn’t this make you realise just how wonderful the NHS is…

 

I went down the road to the dentist. As always I’d had no end of messages from them about COVID precautions and the need for face coverings, and as always not one of the receptionists had a face mask over their noses as well as their mouths.

There was minor panic there as their computer system had crashed, but I got to see the hygienist right away as hygienists apparently don’t need computers. She had a rummaging in my gob, told me it was mostly OK, and said to come back in six months. In the time it took her to do that, the computers had been fixed, so the dentist could see me. I’m not saying he didn’t do a thorough job, but I was in and out in less than two minutes.

 

I collected the dogs and drove out to the Skoda garage. The nice people in the garage seemed rather taken with the dogs, and they suggested that seeing how my car had no service history, maybe a full service might be a good idea. I left the car with them; they said to give it a couple of hours.

I had a plan to put out a Church Micro geocache at Sevington, then walk out to Mersham and back. We got to Sevington church where we met with something of a disaster. The footpath I intended to follow has been diverted seeing how the inland border facility has been built across it. So rather than following the old footpath, we explored the new ones. Bearing in mind it is February that was probably a better plan as the new paths are all on hard standing. From the church we followed a loop round the inland border facility up to the new(ish) green footpath over the motorway, and then walked up past the hospital, over the motorway again and down through Boys Hall back to the garage. Thirty seconds to type, two and a half hours to walk. I took a few photos as we walked; apart from Treacle going rogue and picking a fight with a swan it was a good walk.

 

I got back to the garage with something of a sense of dread. What would they have found on the service? Surprisingly little, really. There were a couple of advisories… I shall get those done in the next month or so. And we got out having spent about two hundred quid less than I had been expecting. And whilst they hadn’t given the car a full valeting, someone had scraped out a lot of the mud which was something of a result.

 

We came home and it wasn’t long before the dogs were both snoring after their exertions. There was no end of stuff I should have got on with, but there is something strangely satisfying about having a dog sleeping on you, and the rules are that you cannot disturb a sleeping dog, so I watched two series of “Trailer Park Boys”.

I stopped Trailer Park Boys” to nip to the loo, and when I came on “Married At First Sight: Australia” was on, and I found myself captivated by it. The premise is that total strangers get married and then… well, from what I could see they then immediately regretted having been so stupid.

I found myself thinking of someone who was once a good friend who I haven’t seen for years. This someone has spent the last twenty-odd years throwing himself head-first into one disastrous relationship after another. Having moved in with an utterly unsuitable partner in less than a week, he then had months (if not years) to regret the decision… only to go and do it again. I’ve not seen him for some time as the last-but-one disaster forbade him from associating with any of “his geek mates” of which I am apparently one. 

“er indoors ^TM” came home with a ton of KFC. That was good. If “er indoors ^TM” were to croak I certainly wouldn’t be on a “Married At First Sight” show; I’d want to know I was setting up shop with someone who would feed me.