5 October 2022 (Wednesday) - Watching the Telly

Having spent much of yesterday in something of a sulk about not wanting to do the night shift, the night shift was nowhere near as bad as it might have been. But I was still pleased to see the relief arrive.

Just as I was walking to the car “er indoors ^TM” sent a message. Little Morgan had asked to go outside and had done a poop in the garden. Some of my loyal readers might think this a matter of the utmost triviality; others might just think “too much information”. Personally I’m seeing this as a seriously major result.

 

I drove home listening to the pundits on the radio spouting their drivel. They were interviewing ex Prime minister Gordon Brown who spouted a lot without saying anything. And then they interviewed James Cleverley (the new Foreign Secretary) who didn’t really say very much at all. I felt rather sorry for the chap; he was quizzed on no end of subjects and every time he tried to answer so the interviewers interrupted him with another question. I have to wonder why they invited him onto the morning news program if they weren’t going to let hm speak.

 

With rain forecast for later in the day I thought we might get a big walk in earlier rather than later. This would also have the added bonus of the dogs (hopefully) being tired when I was trying to sleep. Bearing in mind what a good walk we’d had yesterday we did the same walk round Kings Wood again today, and had another good outing. As we walked we met several (much) bigger dogs who all played with the puppies. It was so good to see the little ones and the big ones all playing chase together.

Our walk was a circle following the gravelled track from the car park to the deepest part of the wood and back again. When we were about a minute past the furthest point from the car park we met a chap with two lovely French Bulldogs. As the dogs all played the chap commented that he supposed we weren’t far from the car park. He must have noticed my expression; before I could reply his face dropped and he suggested that we were nowhere near the car park. I tried to be encouraging and pointed out that there were parts of the wood further from the car park… but not many. The poor chap had lost his bearings and had walked the best part of a mile in completely the wrong direction. I suggested he and his dogs might like to walk with us back to the car park, and we had a good chat as we headed back to the cars.

As we walked this chap told me that he was in the wood today because of today’s train strike stopping his usual commute. He said he normally takes the high-speed train to St Pancras which takes less than forty minutes. But today the only train route he could take involved going via Hastings and Croydon and would take three and a half hours. He said he’d got a quote from a local taxi firm… they were asking for four hundred quid. As this usually costs under forty quid, the taxi firms are clearly profiteering from the train strike, aren’t they?

 

We came home. As we drove home ”Women’s Hour” were speculating on whether or not the Prime Minister was having her menopause. Is nothing sacred to these people? I turned the radio off and sang along to Ivor Biggun songs.

With dogs settled I slept for three hours, and then spent the afternoon tacking the ironing whilst watching the last few episodes of “Better Than Us”. If you’ve not seen it I’d suggest giving it a go, but I’m not alone in suggesting watching it in the original Russian with subtitles rather than the dubbed version.

Apparently there is to be a second season; this one to be made in Mandarin.

 

I then watched this week’s episode of “House of the Dragon” with very much a sense of “WTF is going on”. I hear there is to be a second season of this show too. The second season was announced days after the launch of the show when everyone was hyped up about it; am I being cynical in wondering if the same level of hype is still there?

And then I followed this up with two episodes of “The Empress”; a Netflix period drama which is quite entertaining for all that (like with “House of the Dragon”) nothing much seems to be happening.

 

Part of me feel that much of today was somewhat wasted by staring at the telly. But I quite like staring at the telly whilst buried under a pile of dogs… it was only a shame Bailey had to go berserk every time a horse appeared on the screen. And there were quite a few of them.