As I peered into Facebook this morning people were singing
the praises of “The Kenny Everett TV show”. I watched an episode of that
the other day. I can remember it having been incredibly popular back in the
day… but funny? It was one of those shows where whenever a joke was made, the
one making the joke would grimace at the camera and canned laughter would be
played so that you knew it was funny. Much the same strategy was used in the
show “Friends” and many others. My mother couldn’t watch a TV comedy
that didn’t tell you when to laugh; she felt that comedies without canned
laughter and people grimacing at the camera were just odd.
I munzed, wordled, and went upstairs to wake the dogs. Pogo
was with us today, and four of us drove down to Orlestone. As we got to the
turn-off for the woods we saw “Larry” walking up the main road. We often
see him – I think of him as “Larry” as he looks like Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. This chap
walks up the main road from Ham Street to South Ashford most mornings, and
walks back again most evenings. Sadly he always seems to be going in the
opposite direction to us; I’d offer him a lift if I could.
We got to the woods. Again I didn’t wear my walking boots;
again my birdsong app didn’t detect any ducks. But it did detect coal tits on
the three times I ran it. The Merlin birdsong app seems to have an issue with
coal tits – how common are they? When I detect them at the bottom of Orlestone
Woods the app tells me that they are uncommon. When I detect them anywhere else
they aren’t uncommon.
We walked the same walk we did yesterday evening. With “er
indoors TM” not along the dogs didn’t disappear into
any thickets, didn’t run off, and didn’t need to be called at all. Mind you
Treacle did wallow in a swamp and the smallest two did roll in fox poo; you
can’t have everything.
We came home. Being Friday morning “Desert Island Discs”
was on the radio. This morning’s castaway was someone of whom I’d never heard
of; some professor who specialized in emergency planning. I once knew a chap
who worked in emergency planning. He told me he loved it – apparently whenever
there had been an emergency for which there had been no plan, the local press
would crucify whoever had had the emergency. This chap said he spent all day
playing “what if” thinking up the most obscure disaster scenarios and
making contingency plans for them.
As we drove home we saw that “Larry” had got to Park
Farm – that was a shade over four miles from where we’d seen him earlier. If I
was walking that route every day I wouldn’t go up the main road. There’s loads
of back lanes that are far prettier (and safer)
I wrote up some CPD, and got
ready for work. I wasn’t supposed to be at work today, but the boss had asked
me if I could help out by doing a late shift. Bearing in mind that I’m on the
skint side, and that only a few short years ago I wasn’t trusted to do anything
unsupervised, I’m only too happy to help. Even on a black Friday. Not that I’m
overly superstitious, but many years ago I worked with a senior manager who
took every Friday the thirteenth off work. He said he would take no chances.
I set off to work... via Folkestone to drop off those
who'd stayed overnight. I then had this idea to set the car’s cruise control
and drive at a steady seventy miles per hour for the thirty-five miles from
Folkestone to work thereby taking half an hour. A genius idea in theory;
utterly impractical in practice. The trouble with cruise control is that
no one else uses it, and so you are constantly either driving up other people's
rear ends, or having people driving up your rear end. And it didn't help that a
ferry or the Eurostar had just chucked out giving two lanes of lorries
overtaking each other at one mile per hour difference in speed.
I got some petrol and went in to work for the late
shift. Work was much the same as ever. Unlike Tuesday we didn't have any red
alerts, and we had cake; I was grateful for small mercies.
It was a shame there was a thunderstorm on the way home,
but I got in before the torrential rain started.
And in closing today I seem to have formed a blister on my
right thumb. I have no idea how that got there – possibly from all the fence
painting?
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