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26 October 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Shopping, Gardening


No geocaches went live as I scoffed my toast this morning, so I didn’t go charging out on another wasted journey. But I had a message via the messaging service on geocaching dot com. Someone had specifically created a geocaching account to send me a message. The message was “I'd like to know more about your work on the river stour especially if you have any wildlife survey data in the fields behind Kingsnorth Surgery or flow data at the riverside Inn location. It’s a bit urgent as we have to respond to the EA regarding Kingsnorth Green WWTW discharge permit application.” This was deliberately intended for me as it came with one or two little snippets about me so that the sender could be sure he was messaging the right person.
What was that all about?
I peered into Facebook as I do. Yet another person had asked for recommendations for a good vet in the area. This question comes up at least once a week, and every surgery for miles around gets an equal amount of praise and criticism. There wasn’t much else on Facebook this morning… other than a myriad of adverts about things in which I had no interest whatsoever. I reported half a dozen as spam, and clicked the box to find out why I was being sent utter drivel. Apparently advertisers only need to specify a target audience that uses English and is over eighteen before being able to harass the masses.. I suppose that if only one person in a hundred thousand buys the rubbish they are peddling then they’ve made their money back.
 
Being Saturday we went to Dog Club. There was a rather good turn-out today – about fifteen dogs. It was difficult to count as they kept moving about. Morgan was surprisingly well behaved. He did get a little over-excited, but no need for any time-out and no need for his muzzle at all.
Again we were rather late out of Dog Club; as we drove off so Steve was on the radio announcing what the Mystery Year had been.
 
We came home and had a cuppa, then I set off on a little mission. The pond liner covering the bit of the sleeper near the waterfall doesn’t look quite what it might. What I needed was some of those strips of stones glued to some sort of backing material.
I went to Bybrook Barn garden centre who didn’t have any. The nice lady in Wickes said I might try Amazon. I tried B&M Bargains as I remembered seeing them in there (when I didn’t need them). There was no-one to ask. The only staff they had were on the tills looking harassed with queues seemingly half a mile long and growing. In desperation I tried B&Q. They’ve been difficult in the past, and today summed up what I’ve come to expect from them. As I walked in there was some chap strutting about the entrance as though he owned the place. I started to ask him … and he shut me up and said that if I wanted anything I should go ask one of the staff. I stared at his staff badge on the lanyard round his neck. He stared at me as though I was the shit on his shoe. I asked if he worked there. That confused him… he said he did. I told him I’d take my money elsewhere.
 
I came home and seeing the forecast rain hadn’t happened I cracked on in the garden. I rearranged rocks, pressure-washered our Neptune statue and pressure-washered paving slabs until both the pressure-washer’s batteries went flat.
As I fiddled about in the garden I kept looking over the back to the house at the end of the drive at the end of our garden. I’d got chatting to the bloke who lives there and he says he’s selling up. Do we want to move there? The house looks nice enough, but I’ve put so much time and effort into our back garden. I don’t want to start again from scratch. The bloke was asking if he could have some of my spare topsoil to bung up the holes in his garden through which the foxes get in. If foxes can get in, dogs could get out.
Moving would be a major upheaval… maybe I’ll pass on this one?
 
I came inside for a cuppa just as the rain started… and woke up two hours later and found I could hardly move. And after dinner and having put two loads into the washing machine it still hurts to move about.
“er indoors TM is watching Celebrity Weakest Link in which several actors from TV soaps are bending over backwards to show how proud they are of their ignorance. Why do they do that?

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