18 September 2023 (Monday) - It Rained

 I felt a bit rough this morning; when the noise of the rain hadn’t kept me awake, the dogs had. They have this habit of sleeping at the bottom of the bed (which is fine) and then slowly moving up the bed so I find myself hunched up with my knees up by my ears.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do. A surprising amount of people had been camping last night and had posted videos of the noise of the rain in their tents. It’s a few years since I last camped, but I always felt that the sound of rain on a tent was perhaps the most depressing sound ever. You just knew that you’d have a morning in which absolutely everything you’d touch would be sodden.

With not a lot else on and rain stopped but more forecast I thought I’d take the dogs out.

 

Bearing in mind the overnight rain, Orlestone would have been a swamp, so we went up to Kings Wood. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Russell Brand. I can’t pretend to know the first thing about him; apparently there’s several rape allegations against him… but these are allegations made firstly to various newspapers, then (so it would seem) as an afterthought to the police. Personally If I’d been raped I’d complain to the police straight away. Admittedly there’s probably more money to be made from selling my story to the newspapers, but what do I know?

There was also an interview with some woman who was a head honcho at the BBC who was ranting about how inappropriate Mr Brand is. During the interview it came out that Mr Brand still has a You-Tube channel which attracts over six million people a day. Personally I’d see that as saying that six million people find him amusing and entertaining, but this woman being interviewed felt that this was six million people whose viewing she needed to censor.

As I say I don’t know anything about this bloke other than what I heard this morning (and later read up on) but as is the case with all these “evil celebrities”, years pass before anyone says anything.

 

We got to the woods and had a rather good walk. We went for two and a half miles. We met a few other dogs; the meetings went well. The dogs zoomed into hedges and thickets and came back when called. Whilst their behaviour is far from bad in Orlestone, it is noticeable far better at Kings Wood. I wonder what causes the difference.

 

We came home where the dogs immediately went to sleep. I loaded a load of rubbish from the shed into my car, then made a cuppa (with cake) for me and “er indoors ^TM”. From the looks on the screen I think her colleagues might have liked a cuppa and cake too. I wrote up a little CPD and as the rain became torrential I drove round to the tip on my way to the late shift.

 

I was tempted to leave the rubbish in the car for a day or two, but I really needed to empty it out so I braved the elements. I got to the tip and told the nice tip man I had some plaster to shift. He explained I had to pay; I said I knew. So I lugged my bags through the rain past the barriers into the exclusive pay-per-bag area where I had to empty each bag into the skip. Or try to. There was another chap also emptying bags of hardcore. Or trying to. His wife was with him; a quarrelsome old harridan who was keeping up a constant tirade of criticism. The old bat was standing there in the rain (getting in everyone's way) finding fault with every single thing her husband was trying to do. I asked her to excuse me so I could get to the skip; she kept haranguing her husband. I again asked her (a little louder) to move .. She looked at me, and turned back to nagging her husband. After the fourth time that I asked her to move, the nice tip man told the old bat to either help empty the bags of hardcore or get out of everyone's way. She was not all happy about being spoken to in this way, but the nice tip man was adamant; she could either help or get out of the way. As the old bat shuffled away muttering to herself, her henpecked husband quietly thanked the nice tip man.

What must this chap's life be like; saddled with a wife who wants to stand in the torrential rain just to nag him?

I paid the nice tip man twenty quid for allowing me to empty my four bags of plaster, got rid of the rest of my rubbish, washed my hands in the rainwater which had filled a discarded bathroom sink and set off to work through the rain. I probably have driven slower up the motorway but neither I nor anyone else dared go anywhere near what you might call "motorway speed"; at one point (near the junction six turn-off) there was an inch of water covering the slow lane.

 

I spent much of the afternoon looking out of the window watching the weather alternate from torrential rainstorms to glorious sunshine and back again every fifteen minutes.

It had all dried out by home time.

 

It was a shame that I had to take a five-miles diversion on the way home as the motorway slip road was closed.