24 June 2023 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Badlesmere, Beer Garden

Having been wide awake for the best part of an hour I got up at ten to three. I watched an episode of “Shameless”, had a shave and went back to bed where I then got another three hours kip. I saw that as a minor result. I’ve done this in the past; when insomnia strikes I’ve got up, watched telly and then gone back to bed and slept.
Perhaps I should do it more often?
 
Once up for the second time I made toast and did my usual peer into the Internet. I follow Facebook regularly in the desperate hope that people who I rarely actually meet might be doing something interesting and so I feel that I can (in some small way) keep in touch with them. The reality is somewhat different. There are six hundred and twenty seven people on my Facebook friends list of which maybe thirty or forty post anything with any regularity (“regularity” being posting anything more than once a month). Overnight very few people I know had posted much at all. But people I’ve never met were flooding all sorts of specialist interest Facebook pages with sarcastic memes about the submersible that went down on a trip to the Titanic during the week. And for every one posting the memes were a dozen pretending to take offence. From what I can work out from the news articles some incredibly rich idiots paid a ridiculous amount of money to take a trip in a home-made submarine (which had passed no safety checks at all) down to the Titanic, and the thing not being fit for purpose imploded on the way. And now everyone is shedding crocodile tears and pretending to be upset about it. I can’t help but think that the sad thing here is that there are people rich enough to each spend over a hundred thousand quid on this sort of nonsense.
 
Being Saturday we got our stuff together and drove out to the Repton Estate for Dog Club. The chap who runs Dog Club had asked if anyone had a paddling pool the dogs might play in. He’d been given one, and had set it up. Within five minutes the clean water was filthy, and within ten minutes a bundle of dogs had broken it.
But the dogs had a great time. Bailey was everyone’s friend. Morgan got a bit boisterous but soon met his match in a lovely Rottweiler puppy who wanted to play but wouldn’t take any of his nonsense. And Treacle was tolerant of the other dogs too.
 
From Dog Club we drove up the A251 listening to Steve on the radio and trying to work out the Mystery Year. When did Michael Jackson sing “Rockin Robin”? I thought 1974… I was wrong. 1972.
The radio signal gave out just as we passed Challock, and five minutes later we were in the car park where Karl, Tracey and Charlotte were waiting for us. And Jess was along too. I’d not seen her for ages.
We walked out along the footpaths to Lees Court and back again. Perhaps a tad warm, but the dogs had regular water. And if they *really* had been too hot, Treacle would have used her mouth to pant for air, not to continually carry a succession of sticks about.
 
With our walk done we found a table in the beer garden of the Red Lion and set up a little beach shelter for the dogs. Partly to give them shade from the sun, and partly to stop them seeing what was going on in the rest of the beer garden (so that they wouldn’t bark at it). We had a very good bit of lunch. And pudding. And even a little cheese with the port and mild. Have you ever had mild with port and cheese? It goes rather well.
I took a few photos whilst we were out. I do that.
 
It would have been good to have stayed longer in the beer garden, but the last time we did that, things became rather vague and I ended up waking up on the sofa six hours later with no idea of what had happened. So we said our goodbyes, brought the dogs home and settled them (they immediately settled) and drove down to see “Daddy’s Little Angel TM”, “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TMand “Darcie Waa Waa TM. It was good to see them, even if I did just spend the hour asleep on the sofa next to “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM.
 
We came home for a lazy evening sitting by the pond. And then a very light tea watching more “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”. A rather good show. We were right to have started watching the show from the beginning again; I don’t remember tonight’s episode at all.

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