I slept well for a change. Worn out after yesterday’s
late shift perhaps? Back in the day Sundays at work were rather different. I
used to be on duty all day on a Sunday as overtime, and I would be called in from
home for specific emergency testing on named patients. Over the entire
twenty-four hours I might be called in six or seven times all day long.
Yesterday I did eight hours and I didn’t stop. How times have changed.
I made toast with peanut butter and marmalade. We get
the cheapo marmalade at seventy pence a pot. It wasn’t that long ago when the
stuff was twenty-nine pence. Yesterday as I got a sandwich from the hospital’s
league of fiends (!) shop I saw they were knocking out home-made
marmalade at four quid a throw.
As I scoffed my toast I peered at my Facebook feed
which was absolutely awash with adverts for insurance. Did the Facebook bots
read my diary yesterday?
I took the dogs up to the woods. As we drove the
pundits on the radio were talking about the ongoing situation in Ukraine. It
seems to me that this will go one of two ways. Either it will drag on and on as
the Russians clearly have no interest in packing up any time soon. Or the
Ukrainians will have to make massive concessions as the western world tires of
paying for someone else’s war.
We got to the woods and took a different route to
usual. As we started off I saw something that made me roll my eyes. Someone’s
set up a little campsite in the woods. There’s not supposed to be any camping
in Kings Wood. I once wasted months offering to stage a litter-pick up there
and the nice people at Forestry England were deliberately obstructive at every
turn. But a group of people have said “sod it”, set up camp and no one
bats an eyelid.
As we walked so Treacle wallowed in a swamp and Bailey
found some deer hide on which to chew. And three deer jumped on to the path not
ten yards in front of us. The dogs looked at the deer, and the deer looked at
the dogs, and by the time I’d got my camera out so the deer had wandered off.
Or so I thought – enhancing the photo with Paint Shop Pro (when we got home)
shows the deer was there.
As we came back to the car park we saw a woman with
two labradors. As the dogs played I told her that the deer were active. “Deer?”
she asked. She had no idea what a deer was, and seemed rather concerned that
there were large unattended animals loose in the woods. She wanted to know who
was stupid enough to release deer into the woods, and looked in utter disbelief
when I explained that they were wild animals in much the same way as a fox or a
rabbit would be. She was rather worried that the deer might attack her or her dogs…
I took a deep breath and patiently explained that deer don’t attack, but her
dogs might chase them. She wasn’t bothered about that; she had one of those dog
tracker apps. You know – the dog tracker apps that are dependent on having an
active internet connection that you can’t get in the woods. I patiently
explained this… the nice woman explained that her dog detector app had never
failed her before and she proudly showed it to me. She seemed rather miffed to
find it wasn’t working. I assured her that I manage in the woods three or four
times every week with no dog detector app, and left her to it.
I came home and made a start on painting the garden
planters. After a little hiatus to chauffer “Daddies’ Little Angel TM” about
then I mowed the lawn, and hacked back some of the trees pouring over the fence
from not-so-nice-next-door. There’s so much that I cut back on that
side; I could really do with a garden shredder. Back in the day I used to
borrow Brian’s sister’s one, but he did an overnight fit to Scotland five years
ago.
As I scoffed a cheese sandwich I had a look on Amazon;
garden shredders are rather cheaper than I thought they might be. I shall give
that some thought.
And with tat in mind I started today’s Wordle with “shred”
which gave me an S and an E, but not in the right places. On the fifth attempt
I got it – “issue”
I put another coat of paint onto the planters, and
became very conscious that Treacle was watching my every move. When we get to
mid-afternoon it is time to “Feed The Fish”. And with fish fed I sat by
the pond for a bit soaking up the ambience.
I wrote up some
CPD, I did my twenty
minutes’ worth of exercises.
Because it is Monday, “er indoors TM” has
gone bowling. I started watching the new series of “Squid Game”... and fell
asleep.
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