There was quite the argument about the use of solar power
for running garden pond pumps on the Facebook garden pond pages this morning.
There were those who blithely announced that solar power was crap, and there
were those who felt it was wonderful. Those who felt it was crap had bought the
biggest pumps and the smallest panels. Those who thought it wonderful had
relatively small ponds and big panels. The argument was akin to asking how long
is a piece of string.
I can remember back in the kite festival days when friends
used to run fridges from solar panels. I’d like to set up a solar power
arrangement for a pond in my front garden, but the things aren’t cheap and
would probably get nicked.
I spent a little while pondering an upcoming
mega-geo-event. “London Calling 2025”
‘s website says a lot without saying very much. What
actually is happening there? There’s a GPS Maze there which is only
the second time one will happen in the UK, but when you look closely it’s eight
miles from the event and getting from one to the other involves trains and
buses.
I’ve been to seven of these mega-geo-events in the past.
They seem to be the culmination of a weekend or week of geo-events. The first
ones we went to were rather fun, but if you’ve not been for all the events
leading up to it, then they can seem to fall a bit flat. The last one we went
to (last August) was a
round trip of a hundred miles. Admittedly we did get to say hello to quite a
few friends, but pretty much the entire time was spent sitting in a barn with
over a hundred other people all fiddling with their phones playing rather
tedious adventure labs. One or two ad-labs are fun; over fifty got rather
monotonous.
The dogs had their brekkie and I got them onto their leads…
eventually. Bailey is always keen for a morning walk, but Morgan doesn’t do
mornings. He’d always rather go back to bed. He loves it when we get going, but
he takes a while to get going.
As we drove the pundits on the radio were doing the “Thought
for the Day” in which some religious woman was saying how it is fine to
have religious doubts, and that her god seems to spend an awful lot of time
deliberately hiding away. Somehow a complete absence of any form of proof in
her god was clinching proof for its existence.
I’ve always maintained that everyone switches off when
religious types start spouting, and so they can present any old nonsense secure
in the knowledge that pretty much no one will actually listen to what they are
saying.
We drove over to the Skoda garage. The car has been making
knocking sounds whenever I go over the speed bumps at work. There was an issue
with the suspension and we left the car to get sorted. The nice man asked if we
wanted to wait. I asked how long we’d have to wait for; he said about three
hours.
We walked home.
Once home I made us both a cuppa, then had a look at the
monthly accounts. They weren’t as bad as they have been in the past, but
they’ve been better. And then I wrote up some CPD. Dull, but
I have to do CPD. It doesn’t take long to do it as I go along. I’d rather take
a few minutes a few times a week rather than take the chance that I won’t be
randomly selected for a CPD audit and then panic.
And then the phone rang. The car was ready for collection.
So I got the dog leads out. Being a couple of hours later in the day Morgan was
up for it, so we walked the two miles back across to the Skoda garage. The car
was sitting outside waiting for us, and the nice man charged over a hundred
quid less than what he said it would cost when we had the service last week.
I’m not complaining.
After I’d scoffed a hot cross bun for lunch I went into the
front garden. All sorts of things had been growing through the weed-proof
membranes under the gravel so I scraped up all the gravel. Knowing that I’d
probably need more I drove to the garden centre to get more, and I got a few
more alpines whilst I was at it.
I came home, laid a triple thickness of weed-proof membrane
on top of the old, and toshed the old gravel back. I had plenty; I didn’t need
the new stuff. Oh well, it will keep for the next project.
I sat by the pond for a few minutes… until the dogs came
up. Treacle started whinging and was so obviously the spokesman (spokesdog?)
for them all. She was demanding that I fed the fish because she always gets
some fish food. And the other two were along for whatever pickings were to be
had. And once she’d had her share of fish food Treacle tried to whip the fish’s
food too.
And then I slobbed about some more playing various bots at
chess. I might have overdone the gravelling earlier, and I clouted my leg on a
table edge yesterday and the four miles from the garage and back earlier didn’t
help that very much.
“er indoors TM” boiled up tacos which
we scoffed whilst watching another episode of “McDonald and Dobbs”.
The fast-forward button is wonderful. Something which played for over two hours
took less than an hour and a half to watch when you fast-forward through the
adverts.
Another day off and I’m worn out. I’m going to work for a
rest tomorrow.
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