21 January 2023 (Saturday) - Dog Club, McDinner


I was woken by a wet nose up the bum at five o’clock this morning as “er indoors TM helped the puppies up to the big bed. The puppies are no trouble in the big bed; they both curl up tightly and you really wouldn’t know they were there. Unlike a couple of years ago when their places in the family wolf-pack were taken by Fudge and Pogo who would both somehow manage to take up about three times more area (each) than was physically possible.
My alarm eventually told me to get my arse out of its pit, and my arse took some shifting today. The strain of yesterday’s hour and a half of “Darcie Dancing” was taking its toll. I could hardly move.
 
There was (amazingly) something of note on Facebook this morning. The Town Crier of Hastings has resigned in protest that Hastings will no longer host the national town crier’s contest. I can’t help but think that what with inflation running at over ten per cent and only twelve other local council areas in the country being more deprived than Hastings, Hastings council has far more pressing matters than a town crier contest which will be of no interest to anyone but a vanishingly small minority.
It turns out that for some councils a Town Crier is a paid job which they fund. I always thought it was an honorary thing. If Ashford were to advertise for a Town Crier, I’d volunteer to do it for free. It looks like being a bit of fun.
But rather than resigning in a fit of pique, why didn’t the chap in Hastings do something constructive like start a crowdfunding campaign to fund the contest?
 
We got the dogs into the car and drove round to the Repton estate for Dog Club. Morgan and Bailey had a whale of a time. Treacle started to join in, but I made the mistake of stroking another dog and she had a fit of jealousy. Eventually she sniffed a couple of other dogs. It is very much baby steps with Treacle at Dog Club, but I think we’re seeing some progress with her. Similarly bringing Bailey home without any fox poo to wash off can only be a step in the right direction.
There was a minor incident when the bigger dogs came for their session and we had to go. Morgan and Bailey flatly refused to leave. I had to drag them out; they wanted to stay. I’m seeing that as a good thing.
As we drove home Steve was on the radio. This week’s mystery year competition – Jeffrey Archer, Harry Potter…? I was only ten years out.
 
We came home, and the dogs all soon settled. Dog Club always wears them out. We drove down to Folkestone to visit “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”, “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TMand “Darcie Waa Waa TM. We went straight to McDinner where the most recent fruit of my loin got added pickles on the Big Mac. Who knew such wonders were possible?
We then went to “The Works” for diaries (don’t ask!), and there was a minor melt-down as we came back past the gaming shop. “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TMwanted more Pokemon cards for his collection. I was happy to get some for him so we went into the shop and he told the nice lady what cards he wanted. She gave him a packet, and a free bonus packet too. As we came out I asked him how many Pokemon cards he had. “These ones” he replied, holding up what we’d just got in the shop. Mind you when we got back to the abode of “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” and opened the cards he was delighted with what he’d got in the packet. Some of the best Pokemon cards there are, apparently. Even better than the ace of Pikachu, or so I am told.
 
Eventually the rest of the family woke me up, and we came home where I settled in front of the telly and watched a few episodes of “Ancient Aliens” on the Blaze channel. In the first episodes it turned out that Ronal Reagan had tried to get Mikael Gorbachev to help him fight off an alien invasion. The next episode claimed that yetis were something to do with Adolf Hitler’s secret base in the Himalayas, and the third episode featured some utter bollox about Noah’s Ark and the Book of Enoch.
The trouble with “Ancient Aliens” isn’t that they talk utter bollox. To me that’s the attraction of the show. The trouble is that the idiots talking rubbish are so inconsistent and once they’ve presented some stark staring nonsense as incontrovertible fact they then forget they’ve done so. And so they present half a dozen utterly contradictory explanations for pretty much everything on the planet. Who built the pyramids? God? Ancient Aliens? A parallel dimension? The Loch Ness Monster? Yetis? Depending on which episode you watch, all might be plausible, either individually or working on various combinations..
 
“er indoors TM boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the new series of “Junior Bake Off”. I do like that show, but just occasionally it all gets a bit much for some of the contestants. They are all only small; is it fair to give them such stress?
 
As I pootled about here and there today I found myself thinking more and more about Scotland (of all places!). Last year a good friend (that I’d known for twenty years) just upped and moved there leaving friends, family and a pregnant daughter behind. The first anyone knew about the move was hearing that he’d already gone. Yesterday I heard that another friend is also in the throes of moving north of the border.
I can’t imagine why anyone would just abandon family and friends and go five hundred miles like that.
Mind you they may well soon come back. When we were taking scouts to Canada we met so many people who had enjoyed holidays in Canada, moved there, and found that actually living somewhere was utterly different to having a holiday there, and moved back within months.
 

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