6 September 2025 (Saturday) - Hic !

I had a plan to paint the underside of the gnome platform this morning but I ached too much when I got up. I made toast and had a look at the Internet instead.
Several people were being rather disparaging about Angela Rayner. Three days ago the news mentioned that the deputy Prime Minister was in all sorts of trouble because of irregularities in the stamp duty she did or didn’t pay when buying or selling a house. A couple of days ago she claimed she paid the amount that her solicitors advised her. Two days ago her solicitors claimed they hadn’t advised anything and claimed they were being scapegoated. And yesterday it would seem she resigned.
To get on in politics you’ve either got to be utterly squeaky-clean or not give a sh*t about what the public think of you.
But what amazed me most was that (in broad terms) she’s not really done anything that any other disgraced politician hasn’t, but the people on my Facebook list who were ripping into her were totally denying that anyone in their favourite political party had ever done anything wrong in the history of politics. I’ve always thought that you should make a political decision on the strength of policies offered, but so many people I know chose a favourite political party in their youth (at the same time that they chose a favourite football team) and have stuck with that party through thick and thin regardless of what the party stands for or their own personal beliefs.
I was reminded of the most left-wing woman I ever met who always voted Conservative (and even distributed election leaflets for the Tories), always have a “Vote Conservative” poster up at election time even though she was constantly spouting what was actually pure Labour party propaganda. Apparently her father once commented that she was a “True Blue”, and she supported the party ever since even though she disagreed with everything they stood for.
And then I sniggered as I checked my emails. I’ve an alert set up on the geocaches we visited when in Uzbekistan last year; I’m nosey and I like seeing where people are coming from for their Uzbek holiday. When you sign up for a geocaching account you get to choose an alias. Someone had chosen the sobriquet “Shart”.
 
Morgan came down obviously wanting something. He didn’t want to go outside, he went back upstairs, then came back to me. Twice. I followed him upstairs to see that he wanted to jump on the bed, but Treacle was on the bed guarding it and wouldn’t let him come up. Treacle can be quite mean to the little ones.
As I was upstairs anyway I got dressed, and once dressed I went into the garden. Aching or not that gnome platform needed another coat of paint.
 
As Treacle glared out of the window growling at every passer-by, Steve was on the radio. The guess the lyrics competition today was “Well you’re built like a car”. No? – it was T. Rex – Get It On (Bang a Gong). No – I’d never heard of it either. I was only eight at the time…
 
We drove round to Dog Club where we had a rather good session. I lost count of the amount of dogs that were along today. All was going fine until the very end when two new dogs arrived… and then things got “rather frisky”… there’s not a lot you can do when the urge is on dogs to start humping each other.
As we drove off we caught the end of Steve’s mystery year competition on the radio. Yazoo – The Only Way Is Up… I was eight years out.
 
We drove up to Challock listening to the Ying Tong Song on the “Junior Choice” part of the radio show, then went on a rather good little walk. Back in the day I had a series of geocaches around North Challock. Last year someone put out a new series up there. It was a good little walk; only a shame that the caches clearly need a little maintenance. Some were old and tired, some were quite a bit off of the given co-ordinates.
 
And with walk walked in a novel break with tradition we didn’t go to out usual pub in Badlesmere. Instead we tried the Wagon and Horses in Charing. I’m glad we did. They had some rather good beer and some very good food. We were at table twenty-five… if you can find a sign with “25” on it and take a selfie you can log this year’s locationless geocache.  Those things are rather obscure – this is only the third I’ve ever found.
We were only at the pub for four hours. I slept most of the way home…
I took a few photos of our adventure today. It was as well that I painted my gnome platform this morning; it would have been a tad ambitious this afternoon…

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