2 December 2024 (Monday) - Seeing The Gribbles

Having started a Christmas story about a rogue carol singer, this morning I opened the second window of my Advent Calendar and was presented with what at first sight appeared to be some sort of road working machine. That gave me something to ponder as I scoffed toast. Seeing that forty people had reacted to yesterday’s first installment of my Lego Advent Calendar adventure, the pressure was on.
There was an interesting post on one of the Ashford-related Facebook groups I follow as I scoffed toast. Interesting and encouraging. Some local idiot had posted a load of conspiracy theory bollox about additives to milk, and pretty much everyone was laughing at him. Good.
And there was quite the argument about whether one should wish people a Merry Christmas or a merry Christmas. Opinion was split on the capitalization of the word merry, and people were very defensive of their stances.
When I was young, people were walking on the Moon and had eradicated smallpox. I had such high hopes for the future…
 
I took the dogs out. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Gregg Wallace the TV celebrity who is in trouble for being the latest celebrity who is in trouble. Overnight he’d released a statement saying that he’d not done whatever it was that he’s been accused of. Some idiot was on the radio insisting that Mr. Wallace had made a big mistake by issuing a denial, and was adamant that he should have issued an apology regardless of whether or not he’d done anything about which he should apologize.  
I sighed.
 
We got to the woods and had a good walk. As we went we met a few other dogs and dog walkers and exchanged pleasantries. We saw two other groups who saw us and turned and walked off in opposite directions. And we met one rather special woman. Oh, she was special… On seeing us she and her (presumably) husband put their (rather huge) dog onto a lead and marched twenty yards off the path into a swamp. As we walked past so Morgan and Bailey went up to see their dog. I whistled to call them away and they ran back to me. But at the sound of my whistle her dog ran to me too. And being a big dog it came with enough force to pull the woman holding his lead face first into the swamp. I hurried away trying not to actually laugh out loud.
 
After three and a half miles we were back at the car. We came home where I washed a surprisingly little amount of mud from the dogs’ bellies, did their monthly flea treatments, and set off to Folkestone.
I collected “Daddies’ Little Angel TM and Darcie WaaWaa TM and we drove to the other side of town. We shovelled down a quick McLunch, ten had a look in the pet shop. Ostensibly going to look to the fish, we spent ages looking at the bunnies, the rats, the big mouses (Guinea pigs) and the gribbles (could have been anything!). I’d not looked at the prices of small mammals recently. A Guinea pig is now thirty quid a go and they wanted sixty quid for a rabbit.
From there we popped over the road to Homebase. The most recent fruit of my loins wanted shelves for her kitchen cupboards. Have you noticed how no one makes standard sized kitchen units? We got some shelves, took them home and cut them to the right width and depth… Or near enough…
 
Pausing only briefly to do a tip run I came home. There was all sorts of things I could have done at home, but instead I had a little sit down and pondered what I might say for today’s episode of my Lego Advent Calendar.
 
I woke up an hour later and watched another episode of “Downton Abbey”. I’ve taken to watching it in the evenings. In tonight’s episode Lady Mary was a right cowbag to the butler. Bearing in mind she once porked the Turkish attaché to death she’s in no position to take the moral high ground.
I then drove “er indoors TM to the pub. Her bowling gang are having their Christmas beano tonight. I’ve got to collect her in an hour or so – here’s hoping she can get into the car under her own steam…

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