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16 August 2024 (Friday) - FTF, Backache

 

There was heavy rain in the night. Heavy enough to wake me up. I eventually nodded off again, and woke about half past seven as Bailey was having a dream and was kicking me in the face. It’s as well that she is rather small.
There was talk of relatively local pubs on my Facebook feed this morning. The Black Horse in Pluckley is to re-open after having been closed for nearly a year. It was bought out in 2022 and the owners managed to keep it going for eight months before going under.I wonder how the new owners will fare.
A few miles down the road from there is the Chequers in Smarden. Owned by celebrity chef Paul Hollywood’s wife, she’s closing it down having pumped eighty thousand quid of her own money into it to no avail.
It strikes me that however you look at it, buts are expensive things. Just popping to the pub twice a week for a single pint costs the thick end of forty quid a month.
Meanwhile a Folkestone barber has closed down his shop (because the rent is far too much) and has opened up a business from his garden shed.
And then I had a notification of a new geocache… pretty much in the car park at Longbeech Woods. Bearing in mind that the location looked to be about ten yards from where I was planning to park the car for this morning’s dog walk I got ready a tad quicker than I might have done. However rallying the dogs takes some doing.
 
My piss boiled as I listened to the radio as we drove to the woods. I’ve ranted about the so-called “infected blood scandal” many times. But the government has decided to pay compensation to those infected. Payments should be made by the end of the year.
End of the year? Seriously? The government knows who they feel is entitled to the money, and to how much they are entitled. Why can’t they be paid today? What delays could there be?
By the time I finished shouting at the radio and got to the car park there were already four other hunters of Tupperware rummaging in the hedgerow. It was as well that this cache hadn’t gone live yesterday – that illegal campsite would have been right in our way.
I joined the fray, and after a while we had the elusive cache in hand. It took a little longer than it should have, but joint First One to Find It is always a good thing.
And then we went on to the walk that we’d planned all along.
 
After a hundred yards we were stopped by a distraught young lady in her pyjamas. Had we seen her dog? It seemed her dog had escaped her garden in Charing and she thought the dog might have gone to dog’s favourite walking place. I took her address and promised that if we met her dog I’d bring dog home. But we walked for another three miles and didn’t see anyone; dog or human. Yesterday I’d posted about Longbeech Woods to the Dog Club’s Facebook page. Some woman had said she might see me in the woods today. Mind you she also said that there was no walk in those woods listed on her walking app…
 
We came home. I made a cuppa and cut a slice of cake for me and “er indoors TM, then drove up to town. I need to get some American dollars for next month’s holiday. My bank told me to apply on-line. When the woman at the counter saw how un-impressed I was they suggested I might like to go to their Canterbury or Folkestone branch as they would be better able to help me. I told her that the branch of Nat West over the road was similarly able to help.
She didn’t like that very much.
I came home via the pet shop where I got eighty sachets of dog food for Morgan and Bailey (Treacle has senior dog food now as she’s old). It sounds a lot, but it will last almost but not quite three weeks.
The box was rather heavy; I felt my back twinge as I picked it up.
 
Once home I trimmed back the overgrowth from not-so-nice-next-door’s roses and other assorted climbing plants. My hand-operated trimmer hacks it all back, but isn’t the easiest thing to operate. I had a look on-line at battery operated hedge trimmers…
What a rip-off.
The ones advertised on telly are over a hundred quid. But that’s just for the trimmer. The battery is an extra eighty-five quid, and don’t forget the battery charger for thirty more quid. So far from the hundred and twenty five quid they claim, you actually have to spend double that to be able to trim the hedge.
 
I then voomed round the front garden with the bionic burner… and realized that having twinged my back lifting dog food I shouldn’t really be doing too much gardening. So I sat down and spent the afternoon solving geo-puzzles in the Edenbridge area. As I puzzled so the postie called. “Daddies’ Little Angel TM had sent me a rather good pressie of humming-bird ornaments for the garden.
Now to find somewhere to put them.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the latest season of “Below Decksin which those with far more money than sense pay ridiculous amounts of money to hire a luxury yacht crewed by the most self-centred narcissists who alternately hate each other and try to pork each other,
 
My back’s still a bit iffy…

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