31 July 2025 (Thursday) - Drizzle

I slept rather well last night for a change. I got up at about the same time that I was talking to a nice man about coffee in Tesco at Pembury yesterday, made toast and had a took at the Internet.

I had to do some moderating on the “Upstairs Downstairs” Facebook page that I help to run. Someone asked a perfectly reasonable question about hereditary peerages, and some keyboard warrior got needlessly offensive. He’s been suspended for a week. Suspended from the Facebook “Upstairs Downstairs” group… how sad is that.

I told everyone to play nicely. Unfortunately some people really do have to add a personal insult to everything they type. Where ideally someone might say “I disagree for the following reasons”, people are actually saying “you are wrong because you are stupid”. The trouble with social media is that no one ever has to face anyone else and so they get cocky.

 

I took the dogs out. As we drove the pundits on the radio were saying that more children are taking PE “A” level than “A” French, German and classical languages combined. And PE “A” level only counts for four per cent of the total “A” levels taken. Mind you, have you seen the PE “A” level paper? It ain’t easy.

 

We got to the woods just as the rain was starting. According to my Met Office weather app the rain was supposed to start at ten o’clock. It started at eight o’clock, and fizzled out after an hour.

But rain notwithstanding we went on with our walk. As we walked we didn’t see any slow worms, and there was only one deer and that was in the distance. It stood perfectly still until I zoomed in with my camera at which point it pissed off.

As we walked we saw what I thought was a geocacher. We saw some woman scrubbling in the undergrowth where I’ve hidden a geocache. When she saw us coming she got up and carried on walking past us. I smiled and said hello, but before I could say anything more she reacted as though I was an axe murderer and she couldn’t get away quick enough. I had a little look at where I’d hidden that geocache. Someone (presumably her) had been rummaging and there was no pot there. I’m hoping she took it and put it back after we were gone. If there’s no log registered on the thing by next week I’ll go out with a replacement.

I tested my new “Map My Walk” app as we went. It announced progress every mile, which made me jump. It seems to agree with my watch on the distance we walk, but it thinks I burn less calories than my “MyFitnessPal” app thinks.

 

We came home. The forecast rain hadn’t arrived so I voomed round the garden with the lawn mower. It’s only been three days since I mowed the lawn, but it had grown impressively in those three days. And then I had a go at the front garden with the garden burner. That’s the way to deal with weeds.

I made myself a cuppa and had a look at Amazon. Fish food and deodorants don’t buy themselves or have themselves delivered. I’ve mentioned before about how the days of the average shop must be numbered when you can sit on your own sofa, buy stuff and have it delivered cheaper than going to the shops.

As I shopped so the dogs kicked off. Someone was in the front garden having a go at the geocache there. I went out and said hello – it was a Spanish couple whose English was about as good as my Spanish. We all smiled at each other.

I came back in, and Munzed, then failed to get Wordle. I got to ?RILL on the second go… brill, grill, drill, trill, krill… It was frill.

 

I sulked, and wrote up some CPD, and looked out of the window at a rather bright day, and with CPD done I popped over the road for a Polish pot noodle for lunch which I scoffed whilst watching an episode of “Orange is the New Black”, and as I scoffed it so the rain started. Not particularly heavy, but enough to make me not want to continue in the garden.

With telly watched I then cleaned out the fish tank; it’s surprising how grubby that gets. And with fish tank cleaned I watched another episode of “Orange is the New Black” before having a go at my chair workout.

 

The rain had stopped and had started again, but fish don’t feed themselves. Treacle likes feeding the pond fish. She looks at me expectantly but won’t move until I say “I’m going to feed the fish”. Once I’ve said that she’s like a bullet out of a gun to get to the pond… but only once I’ve said that.

I cleaned out the fish tank filter again… and then watched more telly whilst glancing out of the window as the rain stopped.  

 

We had a yellow warning of thunderstorms and torrential rain today. We were told to brace for an entire month’s worth of rain in a few hours. We had a few showers.

Yesterday Gordon told me that the BBC are now getting their weather forecast from the Met Office… They want to ask for a better one than the one I had this morning.