I had a look at the Internet. On Saturday I mentioned that
a geocache had gone live locally but I didn't have time to go hunting for it. I
saw that over the weekend others had tried but not found it, so I thought I
might just possibly be the First to Find. I drove over to Godinton, parked up,
and ten minutes later I added my name to the list of people who couldn't find
it.
I headed off west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens
on my way to work. As I drove I listened to the pundits on the radio. There was
a lot of talk about the
Bibby Stockholm barge. Moored up just off the coast of Dorset the ship was
supposedly to house asylum seekers, but that plan went west when tests found
legionella in its water. Whoops! This morning there was a lot of fuss about who
knew what about the legionella. Not so much about the legionella, but who knew
and who should have known. It transpires that neither the Home Office, Dorset
council nor the contractors charged with running the boat seem to want the
responsibility for the thing. I can't say I blame them.
And there was quite a bit of bitterness being vented at the
NHS (again) as it seems that several cancer-treating targets are being dropped.
I can't help but think that this is entirely what is wrong with the NHS. These
targets are yet another scheme brought in on the whim of whatever political
ideal was in vogue at the time. Over the years so many schemes like this have
been forced onto the NHS and then dropped, with no one ever having looked to
see whether they were good, bad or indifferent. Every time just as the latest
way of working is starting to take effect so it is abandoned for the next.
I can't help but think that what the NHS needs is to be
left alone.
I got to work; I did that which I had to. But the early
start made for an early finish. I came home, collected the dogs and took them
down to Orlestone Woods which were surprisingly busy this evening. As we walked
we met six other dog walkers. We said hello nicely to three of them. One of
them was “rather special”, with dogs on leads a mile into the woods, but
we all just walked straight past. “Straight past” is something of a work
in progress; this evening it worked.
Sadly one of the encounters was an utter disaster. Sometimes
I wish my idiot magnet wasn’t quite so powerful…
We met them at the junction of three paths; father,
precious pup and two very weird children with very noisy toy guns. On seeing
us, father bundled up his precious pup and stood well back, looking on in
abject terror. We walked past, but after ten yards the weird children started
making all sorts of noises with their toy guns which they accompanied with
strange howling noises. Of course Morgan and Bailey didn’t know what to make of
this and started barking at them (to the weird children’s amazement and the
father’s obvious horror). Eventually the weird children shut up, and Morgan
and Bailey carried on the way we were going. When we were ten yards away so the
children started their strange howling and started making noise with their toy
guns again. So the dogs were back on the defensive until they shut up.
After this had happened six (I counted!) times I
explained in a very loud voice that it was quite plain that father wanted us
out of the way, and the sooner his two weird children shut up and stayed shut
up, the sooner we could get out of the way. Father was amazed – he really had
no idea that the pups were reacting to the peculiar behavior of his weird children.
The last dog we met was lovely; we met him and his mummy
toward the end of the walk. He walked with Treacle (which was a major result
bearing in mind how she hates other dogs) whilst his mummy told me about
the strange man with two even stranger children she’d encountered earlier.
We came home; with “er indoors TM” off bowling
I washed undercrackers, ironed shirts and watched more “Shameless” as
the dogs snored.
It’s a tough old life…
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