30 Movember 2025 (Sunday) - End of the Mo(nth)

I had a bit of a lie-in and had my morning’s perusal of the Internet at half past nine. Over four and half hours previously my brother had got up to set off to Nottingham to watch the football. He must love it. A group of local (ish) geocachers were posting to Facebook from Gatwick airport – they were off to Dublin.

And there was on-line mention of the Museum of the Moving Image in London. I went there many years ago and had a really good day out… apparently it closed over twenty-five years ago.

I Munzed, It wasn’t money, it wasn’t mardy. Mucky was a bit closer. It was muggy.

 

We got the dogs on to their leads and took them out. Sadly I forgot that from now until Christmas I really need to avoid the roads by the MacArthur Glen outlet centre. It didn’t take *that* long to get out of the traffic jam, but it did take a while to take a circuitous route to get out of Ashford. We drove to Ham Street where we found a puzzle geocache that I’d solved a few weeks ago, and we got a virtual Chihuahua for our troubles.

We drove on to Rye where we had a little circular walk gathering more virtual dog figurines. We got a Yorkshire Terrier, a Papillon and a Pomeranian and completed the set. From there we drove up to Tenterden where there was a little al-fresco geo-meet going on. It was good to catch up with friends old and new. And it was rather sad to say goodbye to our new friend Billy who had organized the meet. He’s now off to Cornwall for three weeks, then he’s spending the winter in Portugal before going back home to Canada. Safe travels Billy…

 

We took advent calendars round to the first fruit of my loins, then came home for a cuppa. Having found all the virtual dog figurines and virtual film festival tickets, the next virtual geo-things to find are origami animals (there’s never a dull moment in geocaching!). However there are fourteen of these things to find, and they are rather few and far between. I spent a few minutes planning some little adventures to go find those ones.

 

“Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Pogo came for a little sleepover. We had a rather good Shepherd’s pie for dinner and followed it up with Tesco hot chocolate fudge cake. Have you ever had a Tesco hot chocolate fudge cake? It was possibly the worst dessert I have ever had…

Such a shame.

 

And it is the end of the month. The frankly dreadful mutton chop have raised three hundred and fifty-two quid. Having raised over three hundred quid I apparently get a free pair of socks from them. Personally I’d rather they spent the money on the charity, but they’ve clearly already bought the socks.

I think the fundraiser remains open for a few more days, but for one last time…

https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15453545

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1355423342735210/1355423366068541/

29 Movember 2025 (Saturday) - Lazy Day

I heard “er indoors ^TM” get up in the night. Presumably she didn’t discover any little accidents? I then slept through till seven o’clock when I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there, and remarkably quiet for once. No one seemed to be bickering over triviality, but my piss did boil over one of the twee memes being posted. As I have said before I have often been told that when life hands me lemons I should make lemonade. However I have rarely (if ever) been told that by anyone who has ever even seen a lemon, let alone been handed one.

 

I perused the geo-map, Munzed, and started Wordle with “lemon” which gave me no letters whatsoever. “Strap” gave me the R, but in the wrong place. “Brick” gave me the correct place for the R (but nothing else), and with precious few letters left I got it with “Gruff” on the fourth attempt.

As I Munzed and Wordled so Steve was on the radio. He said that the weather would chirp up by the evening, and then did the “Guess the Lyrics” competition. “And I was there and not dancing with anyone” No? – “Chain Reaction” by Diana Ross.

 

The earlier heavy rain had eased up somewhat by the time we set off to Dog Club, and stopped by the time we got there. Sadly it had been bad enough to put people off of going, and we had perhaps the lowest turn-out of the year. But nevertheless nine dogs had a great (if rather muddy) time.

As we drove home Steve was doing the “Mystery Year” competition on the radio, The release of the twenty pence piece and the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands? 1982. I can remember getting my first ever twenty pence piece; it was in a little shop in Brighton. I’d no idea that a twenty pence piece was a thing, and only accepted it for the novelty value. I took it back to college, showed the rest of my class and was suddenly quite the centre of attention.

And I remember the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands. I can remember that a lot of people had no idea where the Falkland Islands were (and still are), and a surprising number of people I knew thought they were somewhere off the coast of Scotland with the Orkneys and the Shetlands.

 

There was a serious dog bath session when we got home; the dogs were filthy. As were we. A load of clothes went into the washing machine, and with “er indoors ^TM” off to the cinema with Cheryl I settled in to doing the ironing. And with ironing ironed I cuddled with Bailey on the sofa watching more episodes of “Brideshead Revisited” until “er indoors ^TM” returned. There wasn’t much else I might have done – the rain had returned with a vengeance.

She didn’t return for long; she went out on a shopping trip, and I carried on slobbing on the sofa watching more “Brideshead Revisited”.

Have you ever watched it? I’ve seen it so many times I know what everyone is going to say, but it is such a good story I will probably carry on watching it time and time again. The original book is a firm favourite of mine too.

 

“er indoors ^TM” returned and spent a little while taking photos of the sunset. It was a very pretty one; just a shame it happened so early in the afternoon. Mind you it’s less than a month till the shortest day so this can’t really be a surprise.

 

I played the bots at chess dot com a few times, and seriously struggled. The level one thousand bot is rather good. “er indoors ^TM” left me home alone again going off to see her mum. I thought better of going; for all that I’d had something of a lazy day I felt like continuing. Either I’d been sitting awkwardly on the sofa earlier or I’ve been overdoing the walking. But whichever it was, my hips had been giving me gip I didn’t fancy exerting them any more than I needed to. Hips can be dodgy.

Instead I cuddled with Bailey on the sofa and watched more “Brideshead Revisited”…

28 Movember 2025 (Friday) - Hit The Target

We had a rather late night last night and so I didn’t wake for the loo trip until half past four. Although it was still dark I know the way from the bed to the toilet so I didn’t need the light. However had I turned the light on I wouldn’t have trodden barefoot in the pile of dog diarrhea on the lino in the lobby by the bathroom. Oh well… it didn’t take that long to clear up, and it was on the lino rather than a carpet.

I went back to bed and slept though till after eight o’clock. I got up and because it was light I could see the puddle of dog tiddle on the kitchen lino.

Oh well… they rarely have little accidents, and when they do you can see they’ve tried to get out.

 

I scoffed toast whilst the dogs scoffed their brekkie then we went to the woods for a walk. As we drove so Sir Salman Rushdie was on the radio on Desert Island Discs. Some of his music choices were rather good, some were awful.

We got to the woods. Being a bit later than usual there were loads of normal people there… but as always once we were a few hundred yards from the car park we didn’t see anyone. We walked our usual four and a half mile walk, and probably won’t be doing that for a little while – it was seriously muddy in places.

We got back to the car park to find something of a commotion going on. Cars were trying to get in and out of the car park, no one was moving and there were heated voices. A couple of other people hurried over to get involved, but it was neither my circus nor my monkeys, and whatever it was all about was sorted by the time I’d got the dogs into the car’s boot.

 

As we drove home there was a fascinating article on the radio. Some chap had been running a scam in which he was importing tea from Africa to Scotland and selling it claiming that it had actually been grown on his plantations in Scotland. One so-called expert said a kilo of top tea from Africa could be sold for a hundred times its cost if passed off as Scottish. Mind you I would take what these so-called experts have to say with a pinch of salt as is was them who were agreeing that the scam tea tasted different to other teas which were actually exactly the same, and who were giving it awards.

 

We got home where I made us a cuppa, then rather than settling down there was a little errand to be run. In Folkestone. But the errand didn’t take long, and it wasn’t *that* much of a diversion into Lyminge on the way home. There’s a geocache there (there’s geocaches everywhere if you look hard enough) which you find by answering some questions about the village sign. We’d originally answered those questions eight years ago but the actual cache was missing then. We tried again last year as well, but failed…

Today was third time lucky…  and we got a virtual Shih Tzu as well.

 

Once home we saw there was a temporary Munzee garden nearby, so that was good for a blast and ten thousand Munzee points. I got Wordle (colic) on the fourth attempt. And I looked at the post…

I’ve had a letter from the tax people. Apparently I owe them the thick end of sixteen hundred quid. Ho hum… if I’m not finding dog shit on the lino, I’m faced with a tax man with his hand out… Such is life.

 

We had a very good bit of dinner whilst watching “Celebrity Race Across The World” in which Team Useless stormed into the lead, and the idiots seem to be falling further and further behind. We then sparked up the Infinity table and spent a little while struggling with the challenging remote players function. We can challenge people over the Internet, but people don’t seem able to challenge us…

 

Meanwhile the mutton chops have got two days to go. Many thanks to everyone who’s donated. I’ve reached my extended goal of two hundred and fifty quid, and here’s the links (again)…

https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15453545

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1355423342735210/1355423366068541/

27 Movember 2025 (Thursday) - Walk, Funeral, Pizza

I woke in the small hours like I so often do, but I got up, had that tiddle, and went back to sleep for another three hours. I really should do that more often rather than laying there, shifting about and trying to pretend I don’t need the loo.

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was much the same as ever. People were complaining about yesterday’s budget, but what could the Chancellor of the Exchequer do? If she don’t get enough money to run the country, people won’t vote for her, and she can only get the money from people who potentially might vote for her. If there was an easy fix to financing the country it would have been done years ago, wouldn’t it? Half (ninety per cent) of the trouble she faces is that most people don’t understand how politics and government work. Rather than educating themselves and looking into the various issues, people tend to pick a political party and stick with it through thick and thin in much the same way that they would pick a football team. There’s an old maxim which says that you can fool all of the people all of the time as long as you talk loudly and confidently… which explains the popularity of the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

And I had a flurry of emails. A new series of geocaches overlooking the Channel Tunnel terminal. That will make for a walk at some point.

 

“er indoors ^TM” did dog breakfast whilst I got dressed, and I took the dogs up to the woods. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about some AI invention that takes various pop songs and gives them a new twist. There was a hard rock version of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” and reggae versions of this and that. The inventors of this AI thing have got the hump because the people whose songs their AI thingy is tweaking want royalties.

Surely this can’t be a surprise?

 

We got to the woods and within a hundred yards I skidded in the mud and ricked my back. The woods were rather muddy today. We walked a shorter walk today; only three and a half miles, and we’ll probably be doing this walk for a few months now much of our usual walk is now a swamp.

We didn’t see any deer today; just as we approached the area where we are most likely to see them so I heard a couple of women we see from time to time… I usually hear them about five minutes before I see them. Despite walking about two yards apart, everything they have to say is bellowed. In the past they’ve mentioned to me that they’ve never seen deer in the woods. I wonder why.

 

We came home for a bath, and I harvested an epic crop of dog dung from the garden. I’d not been out there with a bucket since Monday… I really shouldn’t leave it so long. Amazingly I’ve met several people who say they’ve never been round their gardens harvesting. Either their dogs crap elsewhere, or it don’t bear thinking about.

I then chopped a bit of chip-board into shape to act as a dog gate, and then made us both a cuppa. I Munzed, unlocking a diamond qrate (as one does) and then bearing in mind what I’d just been sawing I stuck “board” into Wordle. From there I worked through “risky” and “runic” to get “remit” on the fourth attempt. I wrote up some CPD, and got my arse comprehensively handed to me on a plate by the bots at chess dot com.

 

Leaving the dogs settled in the kitchen (as a bit of an experiment) we drove down to Hastings.

Many years ago I joined the Boys Brigade. One of my mates from way back when lived next door to “er indoors ^TM”’s family. He and I were half of a group of four who went on to get the Boys Brigade’s top award. Over the years we’ve gone our separate ways, but still managed to keep in touch; managing it more over the last few years. His son died a month ago, and today was the funeral.

It passed off as well as any funeral might. There was a rather good turn-out, but it was a shame that others we knew from all those years ago didn’t show, including some who’ve since taken holy orders.

 

We came home to find the dogs seemed OK. Bailey had escaped the kitchen, and Morgan was incredibly over-excited to see us. We had a quick tidy-up then “er indoors ^TM” went off to meet Karl, Tracey Jess and Charlotte at the bowling alley. My back was still a tad twingy. But it wasn’t long before everyone was back home and we had a few pizzas and a few beers and a few goes on the Infinity table.

 

Today had been rather busy…

26 Movember 2025 (Wednesday) - Early Shift

There was a minor hiccup when I got up this morning… I spent a few minutes clearing up a pile of cold dog sick. Treacle did seem to be rather out of sorts yesterday evening.

I made toast and posted up yesterday’s diary entry; we were rather late to bed last night what with trying (and failing) to accept game requests on the Infinity table. I posted on one of the Infinity table Facebook groups to see if anyone had experienced this. Hopefully I’ll get an answer… though cynically I expect that I’ll have the same experience I’ve had with pond, fish tank and geocaching pages in that for every one sensible person in the group there will be half a dozen keyboard warriors.

There wasn’t much else happening at six o’clock this morning. I sent out birthday wishes to a colleague, then got ready for work.

 

Just as I was about to set off so Treacle came downstairs asking to go out. I went with her as she looked a little iffy. She did what dogs do in the garden, and went back to bed.

I went off to find my car. As I scraped the ice from my car so the unmistakable smell of wacky baccie came floating through the morning air. there wasn't anyone about; someone was clearly having a puff in their own house. I don't want to appear judgmental, if people want to smoke that stuff, that's up to them. After all I like a pint or two.  But my pint or two doesn't stink quite like the funny fags do.

 

I got the ice scraped from my car and drove off to work. The motorway was rather busy this morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the massive drop in Puffin numbers on Farne Island.

I'd hitherto never heard of Farne Island; let alone its puffins.

And there was loads of speculation about what the Chancellor of the Exchequer was going to announce in the afternoon's budget. The poor woman was on a hiding to nothing really. If she didn't sting people to raise money for the country's ailing economy she'd lose votes for poggering the country's economy. If she did sting people to raise money for the country's ailing economy she'd lose votes from people who didn't want to be stung for their money.

 

I went to Sainsbury's to get a sandwich. As I drove into the car park there were loads of cars in the car park which were thick with ice; obviously having been there all night. Do Sainsbury's have staff there all night? There's not many (i.e. none) houses within sensible walking distance.

I was in and out in minutes; I fed the self-service machine with all my change and it gave me a voucher for double nectar points on petrol. So I went to the petrol station to make the most of it.

 

As I worked “er indoors ^TM” messaged - Treacle had been sick again. Twice. I did my bit and then made my way home as best I could. Originally the plan for today had been to come home, collect Treacle and Bailey and take them to Doggy Dentist but I thought time might have been tight so I rescheduled their appointment for last Monday.

I was right to have done so – it was gone five o’clock before I got home. I wouldn’t have got the girls across town in twenty minutes with tonight’s traffic.

 

I got home to find that Treacle had perked up a bit. As I sat on the sofa so she climbed behind me and dabbed my head. She seriously tucked into her dinner, and scoffed it all.

“er indoors ^TM” went out to see her dad who was staying locally with friends. As the washing machine did its thing with my shirts I wrote up some CPD, then ironed the shirts. Shirts are best ironed whilst still wet.

As I ironed I watched the first episode of the TV adaptation of “Brideshead Revisited”; a favourite of mine. How can it be forty-four years old?

25 Movember 2025 (Tuesday) - Car Service and Stuff

I felt rather rough this morning when I got up, having again done that thing where I woke up full of energy and raring to go only to find it was twenty past one.

After laying awake for a while I got up, made toast and thought better about putting the telly on. I have no idea what was going on with “The Witcher” and couldn’t be arsed to start watching anything else, so I had a look at the Internet – it’s a standard fall-back position. I sent out birthday wishes to the one friend having a birthday today, and had my usual look at Facebook. There was a rather entertaining photo on one of the pages I follow. Seemingly taking the piss out of a religious band, it turned out the thing was made-up satire. So much on the internet is just made-up, isn’t it?

And our local councilor posted that there’s going to be a closure of a local footpath so that necessary work can be done. It’s a shame that the closure will come into effect a few days before Christmas, and then will probably stay closed but with nothing going on between Christmas and the New Year. This is the sort of silliness that the chap got voted in to stop, isn’t it?

And there was whinging on one of the Hastings-related Facebook pages I follow. An arcade of shops had closed because no one shopped in them. Many people were blaming the council. Don’t people realise that it isn’t the local council that opens and closes shops; the shops are profit-making businesses, and all the time it is quicker and cheaper to have an Amazon van deliver things to your door the shops will carry on closing.

I Munzed and opened a gold qrate getting a mini-vendor cubimal. There’s never a dull moment in Munzee, is there? I got Wordle on the fourth attempt, and got ready for the off whilst the dogs ate their brekkie… eventually.

Bailey will only eat hers if she has a spoon of Treacle’s senior dog food mixed in.

 

I loaded the dogs into the car and we drove over to the garage where we left the car for a service.

We had a little episode as we walked home. Some idiot on a pedal bike got rather impatient because the pavement wasn’t wide enough for him to get past us and he expected us to step out if the way into the road for him. He got rather angry when I suggested that he should go on the road as cycling on the pavement was illegal. I probably didn’t help matters much when I corrected him. He said that cycling on the path wasn’t “f…ing illegal”; I agreed that it wasn’t “f…ing illegal”, it was just “illegal” (a subtle difference). Which it is.

I also noticed loads of dog turds on the pavements as we walked home. When I was a lad, dog turds everywhere was de rigeur. People started picking up the turds in the nineties, but just lately it would seem that us who gather the dung are in a minority.

 

I got home and made us both a cuppa. And then I had an email form the garage saying that my car was due for a service. And then I had another email from the garage with a video of the underside of my car. I played it a few times but sadly couldn’t understand a word that the chap on the video was saying.

I saw someone outside looking uncertain. Someone fiddling on their phone was looking at our garden… I went out – it was a fellow hunter of Tupperware looking for the huge geocache in our front garden. We had a little chat… that huge box in the front garden is broken and needs replacing. It’s needed replacing for some time, but the chap I spoke with this morning has given me a little idea of something that might work…

 

I got the message that the car was ready, so I walked the dogs back over to get it. The service went well; there were a couple of advisories, but the nice man said that nothing needed doing immediately. Which was probably just as well.

 

We came home where I plumbed in the new DVD player. Not that we watch that many DVDs, but quite of few of ours are American ones and the old DVD player can’t play them. The new one seemed to manage on the one I tested it with. It’s a shame that the battery compartment on the remote control doesn’t close, but you can’t have everything.

I did a little CPD, and then seeing a rather bright day outside I thought I might take the dogs for a decent walk.

 

Coming back from the garage and then going back to get the car had been a dull walk, but by mid-day the woods would have been heaving with normal people. I looked at the geo-map and wondered if a little walk along a track in Godmersham might give the pups a little run. We drove out there only to find what I’d hoped was a track was actually a tarmac-ed lane. But it wasn’t busy and we had a good walk, and found a couple of geocaches, and got a couple of virtual dog figurines whilst we were at it.

We came home via Chartham where we totally failed to find a geocache in a derelict barn, but did find one stuck to a gate.

 

Once home I made us a cuppa with a Seal bar for lunch, then I played the bots at chess dot com. You can set just how good the bots are on that website. I’ve slowly worked up to being able to occasionally beat a level seven hundred bot. I thought it might be time to ramp it up a tad more so I took on a level one thousand bot which comprehensively caned my arse. Several times.

 

After a rather good bit of dinner we sparked up the Infinity table and had a little experiment with it. One of the joys of the thing is that you can challenge people on other tables to play games remotely. We can challenge others, but we don’t seem to be able to accept requests from others to join in.

I expect we’ll sort it out…

24 Movember 2025 (Monday) - Walk, Dentist

We’ve taken to putting Gold Radio on the Alexa in the mornings (except for Saturdays) and this morning there were quite a few Christmas songs being played. There are those who go mad for Christmas; as I drove home last night there were several houses locally with their Christmas lights up (including nice next door). It was all rather festive, but as I’ve said before, for me the trouble with starting Christmas too early is that I’ve had enough of it by mid-December. After all, there’s still a week to go before the Advent Calendar opens.

Perhaps this year I might try something different, I might join in, do all the Christmas stuff in early December, and ignore the thing when it actually happens. It’s a thought…

 

I made toast and peered into the Internet to see what else I might moan about (I’m doing that too much). Several people were posting memes about it being Monday; roll on Friday… I quite like my current work pattern. What with no two weeks being the same I don’t get any Monday morning feelings.

I Munzed and then got stuck after my first attempt at Wordle so I got dressed and despite the weather forecast took the dogs out.

 

As we drove to the woods so the pundits on the radio were talking about palm reading. It was claimed that for all that it is a load of old tosh, loads of influential people have believed in it over the years including Sir Isaac Newton.

We got to the woods where the mud had melted. We had a good walk; if a tad muddy. As we walked so a deer crossed the path not ten yards away from me. It calmly looked at me, watched me got my phone out to try to take a photo, and just walked off as I tried to take the piccie.

We came back to the car park to see a pair of normal people shouting at their dog for no reason that I could fathom. Some people spend their entire walk shouting at their dogs; we walked four and a half miles and I didn’t have to tell mine off at all.

 

We came home for a bath… bellies were very grubby. I made us both a cuppa and had a look at the monthly accounts. They could be worse, but they could certainly do with being a whole lot better.

With the dogs settled we needed a little shopping. There was a particular nearby geocache on the way, finding which would give you the first of the next set of geocaching Treasures. I found it (or its temporary replacement) and got a virtual pug for my troubles.

The Tesco clubcard got me a reduction on some bottles of stout, and then it was home for a spot of lunch.

I then had a little look at the geo-map to plan getting more geo-Treasures. The current series is virtual dog figurines which look to be good fun. There’s a few near Winchelsea which might make for a little walk this weekend if the weather is up for it.

 

And then leaving Morgan with “er indoors ^TM”, I loaded Treacle and Bailey into the car and we went to Doggy Dentist. Morgan’s gob seems OK, but the girls’ teeth aren’t what they might be, so every three months they go to the dentist for a scale and polish… much like humans do. Both were as good as gold during their treatments, but both had the thumbs-down in different ways. Bailey has a sore gum and needs cream applying, and Treacle is chomping her daily chicken’s foot on only one side of her mouth and its teeth scraping goodness is only working on that side of her mouth.

We shall work on those two issues, and hopefully there will be some improvement before their next appointment in late February.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off bowling and I watched an episode of “The Witcher”. I’m now into season three, and I have to admit I’m watching it with something of a sense of “WTF is going on”. There’s some meaty hunk who’s a dab hand with a sword (both metal and pork) and a rather foxy sorceress-woman both of whom are protecting some princess or other. But why they are protecting her, and why the baddies want to capture her is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a little more plot and a little less swordfighting (both metal and pork) wouldn’t go amiss?

 

Meanwhile the mutton chops are now into their last week,  and here’s the links (again)…

https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15453545

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1355423342735210/1355423366068541/

 

23 Movember 2025 (Sunday) - Late Shift

I slept through till nine o’clock this morning. We were up rather late last night what with the novelty of the new Infinity table. I found myself thinking back to one night in the mid-eighties when we got a state of the art games console (Atari 2600) and sat up until six o’clock in the morning playing “Centipede”

As I scoffed toast I saw my aunt had commented on something I’d posted on Facebook yesterday evening. I’ taken a photo of the Infinity table’s version of “Frustration” and mentioned that I used to beat her all the time at that game fifty years ago. And all my cousins had pressed the “like” button and commented. Looking back it would seem that my poor aunt had been playing “Frustration” every single day for years with a succession of nephews and nieces.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle (bunny) on the third attempt which was rather impressive, and then looked out of the window. I’ve complained about the weather forecasts recently… it would seem that they are relatively good at forecasting when it comes to predicting rain. I had hoped to go out for a little walk before the late shift but it was hossing down.

I went into the garden quickly to harvest the dog dung. That’s a job which is best done before the turds get too wet. Have you ever tried harvesting saturated dog turds? Take it from me – you’d rather not.

I wrote up some CPD, did a YouGov survey, did some puzzles on chess dot com, and as the rain stopped and the sun came out so I set off to the late shift.

 

With nothing but tripe on the radio I sang along to the music on my MP3 player as I drove to work. Last week I treated myself to Queen's Greatest Hits Volumes I, II and III so I had something different to howl along to. I stopped off at Sainsburys to get some cash. I was planning to get some tennis balls for Dog Club as well, but the place was heaving, so I didn't.

I got to work, had a spot of lunch, then cracked on. As I started I saw there was a little parcel waiting for me. A few days ago  a colleague was a little bit late for her shift and I'd covered for her. She felt guilty about getting caught in a traffic jam and had got me a little pressie. That will go down nicely. 

 

I got on with work. As I've said before, back in the day weekends really were emergency work only. Now weekends are pretty much like any other day with clinics and all sorts going ahead. As well they should.

As I worked I had a phone call from “er indoors ^TM” to say that Bailey had escaped and had been returned by a passer-by.

And then I had a phone call from nice-next-door. “er indoors ^TM” was using her phone to tell me she'd locked herself out. I'm not quite sure how she managed to do that, but I was detailed to phone “My Boy ^TM” and have him go round with some keys. I did that whilst having all sorts of nightmare visions of what was going on at home. Eventually I got a message that they had they sent for a locksmith... who charged close on two hundred quid for five minutes work.

Also whilst I was out Chris popped round with something that plugs into the router so that the Infinity table can see the Internet.

 

Today’s been rather stressful…

 

Meanwhile the mutton chops are now into their last week,  and here’s the links (again)…

https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15453545

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1355423342735210/1355423366068541/

22 Movember 2025 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Infinity Table

It wasn’t as cold as it has been recently when I got up this morning. It never used to be cold before we had the loft conversion done. For all that the extra space is useful, the loft conversion was something of a disaster. The chap who did it walked away half-way through the job, and it turned out that he walked away from many other jobs too. From what I can work out he only ever finished one, and that was the loft of the friend who recommended him. I looked him up on the Internet this morning… he’s still in business. Can you believe it? He’s spent years talking people’s money, having himself declared bankrupt, then starting up again and it’s all perfectly legal. I suppose I could go poke a dog turd through his letter box…

There wasn’t an awful lot else happening on the Internet this morning really. There was some whinging about the poor quality of careers advice at schools. This is hardly news though, is it? I can remember the careers advice at the Hastings Academy for Budding Geniuses from back in the day. The official position was that if you didn’t intend going to university then you had no business being in that school. The failures who didn’t go to university (and they were clearly seen as failures) were pointed to jobs in banking or as army officers.

 

As I fiddled about, Steve was on the radio. The “Guess the Lyrics” competition “I got a funny feeling when she walked in the room”. No? – “Oh What A Night” by the Four Seasons.

Steve’s weather forecast was interesting. He read out that the morning would be good, then commented about how grim it looked out the window. He did say it would be dry this morning, and if I can’t trust him, who can I trust?

 

With “er indoors ^TM” off to craft club I took the dogs round to Repton and Dog Club. It was cold, but Stave had said it would be dry, and he was right. We started off with a minor issue – there was three quarters of a dead hawk on the field… if we’d left it there the dogs would have had it, so with no better suggestions being forthcoming I suggested we chucked it on the toolshed roof. It’s probably still there.

The dogs had a great time; despite the cold there were about fifteen dogs along. There was a minor issue when little Bailey got trampled by the bigger dogs; she found herself in their way as they played chase. She did scream rather loudly, and the screaming continued long after the bigger dogs had charged off. I was rather worried that she’d been hurt, but she soon calmed. There didn’t seem to be any obvious harm done; I think she was frightened rather than hurt.

As we drove home I got the Mystery Year competition on the radio right… When did Princess Anne get divorced and Frankie Howerd die? 1992.

 

Once home I put my trousers into wash. Trousers get very filthy at Dog Club. I counted up the Dog Club takings, and had a look at the geo-map before making myself a cuppa and watching a couple of episodes of “The Witcher” until my delivery arrived.

It wasn’t cheap, but I’d been putting a bit aside over the last month or so and waiting for the Black Friday deals. On Thursday seeing the price was reduced by over a hundred quid, I ordered us a small Infinity table. I sparked it up, and it immediately wanted to update its software. It wouldn’t (couldn’t) do anything until it had got that done, so I spent a couple of hours trying to connect it to the Internet until “er indoors ^TM” came home. She spent an hour trying as well. Bearing in mind Chris had managed it with his I begged help.

Chris was a star – he popped round and after a couple of hours fiddling about he established that our Sky router appears on the networks as the Sky router, but is actually transmitting internet things at two different frequencies. We got round this by connecting it via a mobile hot-spot from my phone. The thing still can only connect to the Internet via my phone, but we’ve got a fix for now. We can sort it properly later – we can’t be the only people with an Infinity table who use Sky.

 

We had a quick bit of dinner, then spent the evening playing with the new Infinity table. We’ve downloaded quite a few games. Old favourites like “Game of Life”, “Sorry” and “Trivial Pursuit”, and we’ve tried some new ones. “Trouble” is basically the old 70s favourite “Frustration” and “Tilez” is “Blokus”.

As we played we had a bag of pretzels that went out of date a month ago… or that is we opened the bag. Treacle had far too many of them, and is now farting.

21 Movember 2025 (Friday) - The Last Snow Globe

Last night I did that thing that I do oh-so-often. I woke full of energy and raring to go only to find it was ten past two.

I dozed on and off and eventually nodded off just as the bin men came crashing up the road. I gave up and got up at seven o’clock, made toast and rolled my eyes at the Internet. Apparently calling someone bald can be construed as sexual harassment, and all those looking to argue on-line were arguing about it. Not many of those getting hot under the collar realized that this wasn’t news; the court ruling on this happened three years ago.

And there was a lot of talk about the by-election in Hastings. There were a lot of people banging the Reform UK drum… not because of anything that might have been good about Reform UK but because of how bad the opposition was. “Vote for us – we’re not as bad as they are” is only a valid political stance all the time “us” isn’t as bad as “them”. Bearing in mind the platform on which Reform UK stood at the last county council elections, it is rather ironic that they’ve awarded the contract to maintain all of Kent's roads for the next twenty-one years to a French owned company.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle (vowel) on the fourth attempt, and looked out of the window.

I had planned to take the dogs out… but for all that the weather forecast said it would be sunny with a seven per cent chance of rain, it was snowing. So I put the radio on where the pundits on said radio were talking about the COVID enquiry which has released its findings…  It’s no surprise that it was critical of the government of the time. To be fair to Boris Johnson (and that takes some doing) whatever he did would have been wrong. Had he brought in lockdowns earlier then the enquiry would have whinged about how much money that might have cost the country.

 

And then Sir Tim Berners Lee (inventor of the Internet) was wheeled on to be the castaway on Desert Island Discs. He was rather interesting, but his choices of music were… let’s just say they wouldn’t have been my choices.

By the time he’d finished the heavy snow was but a memory, and the rain which followed it had stopped. It was rather bright outside. By then it was time to collect “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and drive her about. I loaded the dogs into the car and took them with me. We got to where we needed to be a few minutes early and I thought I might walk them for a little while… Suddenly they started barking. I got out of the car to find a half-wit grimacing through the boot window at them. The half-wit commented on how noisy they were. I told her that the dogs were barking at her. She carried on grimacing through the back window. In the end I had to tell her (in no uncertain terms) to go away so that I could get them out. She wasn’t happy about that.

 

“Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” soon arrived. I drove her home, then as we were in the area and it had stopped raining we went to Radnor Park for a little walk. The place has been seriously expanded. Forty years ago we lived just round the corner and the park was just one big field by the railway station. There’s now a rather pretty area down the bottom. I didn’t like to let the dogs off the leads as we walked, and the squirrels knew it. The squirrels didn’t run off up the trees like they do in the woods. They really did sit on the edge of the paths taunting the dogs.

As we were passing it, I hunted out a geocache which qualified for the current virtual snow globes series of Treasures. That’s all the snow globes now found. It’s Dog Figurines and Origami Animals next.

 

We came home where the dogs were soon fast asleep. I emptied the dishwasher, watched an episode of “The Witcher”, then remembered that I’d intended to put a load of washing in. Woops. So I put the washing on, and watched another episode.

As I watched “My Boy ^TM” came to use the shower. His boiler is still poggered. The council sent someone to fix it the other day… the fix-it man arrived at ten to six in the evening and brought the wrong parts with him. There’s talk of the fix-it man coming back on Monday, but we aren’t holding our breath…

 

I had a little doze underneath the dogs. “er indoors ^TM” then boiled up some pizza which we scoffed whilst watching David Jason’s Secret Service in which Sir David Jason presented a documentary about the history of spying. There was (apparently) a *lot* of secret service activity in Folkestone during the First World War.

The show was surprisingly good…

 

Meanwhile the lifetime mutton chops are now over two thirds done,  and here’s the links (again)…

https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15453545

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1355423342735210/1355423366068541/

20 Movember 2025 (Thursday) - Cold

With no alarm set I slept reasonably well. I would have slept better had I got up for a tiddle at four o’clock rather than thinking I’d manage, and shifting about every half hour to get comfortable.

I got up half an hour after I started working yesterday, made toast and had a look at the Internet. Facebook was alive with whinging this morning. One Facebook group supposedly about NHS wages was embroiled in a major argument about the Gaza situation. Flat Earthers were trying to hijack an Australian astronomy group. Flat Earthers boil my piss because they are truly stupid. They really are. Just go to the beach and look at the horizon. You can see the curvature of the Earth. It’s not massive, but you can see that the horizon isn’t flat.

And there was a lot of quarrelling about cheating in geocaching.

The Internet has turned out to be something of a disappointment, hasn’t it? With all of human knowledge at our fingertips and instantaneous communication, all the Internet has done has allowed us to engage in fruitless petty bickering with half-wits that we will never meet.

I Munzed, got Wordle (grave) on the fifth attempt, and sent out birthday wishes to oldest granddaughter. Back in the day we’d go out to dinner with her and her mates. Now she’s grown up she does her own thing.

 

“er indoors ^TM” got the dogs into their coats, and leaving her working I took the dogs up to the woods. It was rather cold this morning; as we walked so the mud was starting to melt. As we walked we saw another dog walker. On seeing us the chap was clearly gripped by panic and frantically tried to get his dog to come back to him. I did an about-turn and went back the other way; people like that are best avoided.

About half a mile further on we saw something odd… There was a chap twenty yards off the path acting rather oddly… When I looked closely I was shocked. The chap had a deer carcass hanging from a tree and he was butchering it. In the past the Forestry England people have had organised deer culls in the woods, but they’ve had vans and lorries up there, signs warning to keep dogs under control, and the carcasses all went into a trailer and were taken away. This morning’s performance all looked a bit dubious to me.

 

Having had coats on the dogs didn’t need baths when we got home. I made us both a cuppa and phoned Forestry England to tell them about the chap carving up the deer. Not that they would have been able to do anything about it; he would have been long gone by then. It might all have been above board; the chap might well have a licence and permission… but it all seemed a bit dodgy compared to the previous deer shooting that I’ve seen up there before.

 

I then sparked up my lap-top and tuned into work despite being on a day off. One of the transfusion practitioners was giving a talk about transfusion related circulatory overload. Being able to tune in to a useful talk when I’m not in at work is what the Internet is for; not for quarrelling with strangers.

I then had a quick go in the garden. I harvested a bumper crop of dog dung and topped up the bird feeders; the poor little things will need food during this cold snap. And now that we’ve had two very cold nights both ponds will be rather cold so I turned the pond pumps off. That’s the ponds shut down for the winter. There’s work that needs doing in both… but in the spring when it is warm, eh?

 

Having cleared up some shelf space last weekend I spent a little while this afternoon putting together a Lego set I’d got as a pressie last Christmas. I’m rather pleased with it.

 

We watched the third episode of “Celebrity Race Across the World” in which the two previously rather useless teams seemed to suddenly realise that they were in a race.

 

And the birds haven’t touched the seeds in the feeder…

19 Movember 2025 (Wednesday) - Another Early Shift

I had a restless night, waking shortly after one o’clock and seeing every fifteen minutes for the rest of the night. I gave up trying to sleep and got up far too early. I made toast, but I didn’t fancy watching the telly, and with nothing much happening on-line I thought I might have a little geo-adventure before work.

 

I got dressed, and set about the ice on the car with the new ice scraper, then drove off through the dark to Maidstone. As always the lorries on the motorway were a nightmare; they either don’t see the cars that they nearly run off the road, or they don’t care. It really could be either option.

As I drove the pundits on the radio were all getting rather over-excited about the allegations that Chinese spies are chumming up with MPs and their lackies (via LinkedIn). Is this really a threat to national security? Surely MPs and their lackeys aren’t stupid enough to pass state secrets to any old person who sent them a friend request on LinkedIn, are they? I’m rather amazed that the Chinese embassy has taken offense at this; to my simple mind the whole thing reminds me of Wun Tun and Too Tun the Chinese Spies from “The Dandy” from fifty years ago.

And there was talk of George Osbourne. Once Chancellor of the Exchequer, he’s currently being billed as a serious candidate to be head honcho at HSBC, or el supremo at the BBC, or the next British ambassador to the USA. Personally I would have thought that each job would have had very different requirements, but what do I know?

 

I got to South Maidstone where I had my eye on two geocaches. The first one was a multi-cache. I had to go to a bench on a street on which there was a key safe containing information about where the final geocache was hidden. It turned out that the thing was hidden in the nearby library which didn’t open for another couple of hours. Ho hum…

I went for a short drive and found the final part of a puzzle geocache which I’d solved months ago, then went in to work where I had a rather good day.

 

Being on an early shift meant I got out before it got too dark. Bearing in mind how busy the way home from work was last night I wondered about taking a different route home past that library before it closed.

What a silly idea…

If took nearly forty minutes to drive across Maidstone, and when I got to the library I very nearly turned round there and then. The place was in a rather run-down precinct where various teenaged scratters were trying to pull wheelies trying to impress any passer-by who might be feeble-minded enough to be impressed by a scratter who can’t quite stay on a pedal bike.

Armed with the information I needed to find the geocache I went into the library. I asked for the book I needed and said it was for the geocache. The nice lady smiled and said that she was under orders not to help anyone looking for it… Fair enough. After fifteen minutes searching I gave up. The nice lady said there were two copies of the book I was looking for… she went to the shelf and also found there weren’t any. Having fallen at the first three hurdles I was all set to give up and go home, but the nice lady said that*if* I’d found the book (that wasn’t there) there was a note inside which would tell me to randomly hunt round the library looking for a locked box. And seeing that I’d clearly lost all interest in the silly idea the nice lady showed me the box.

It was sealed with a padlock… but nil desperandum… in the information I’d found earlier was the combination to the padlock. It was strangely apt that the combination didn’t open the padlock.

Having wasted forty more minutes I thanked the nice lady for her time and help and set off home-wards.

 

Getting home took some doing; the roads were rather busy. We had a very good bit of scoff whilst watching Sandi Toksvig getting all archaeological at Hadrian’s wall. I’ve never been there… that might be a road trip. Two days going up, a day there, two days coming back again… I might just start planning.  

18 Movember 2025 (Tuesday) - Early Shift

Another restless night… if only people and dogs could lie down and stay put for the night; I don’t spend the night stomping about the place, falling off the bed and whinging to be helped back up again, do I?

I made toast and had a little look at the Internet. A Facebook friend was having a birthday today. One of my ex-cub scouts; he’s thirty-six today. Thirty-six. How did that happen? I can remember giving him a stern telling off in a field in Ruckinge which only seems to be five years ago at most. Where did all that time go?

I had emails; both my Credit Karma and Experian scores have gone up this month. I have no idea why… perhaps buying a year’s worth of house buildings and contents insurance is a good thing in their eyes? But if so, who has told them about it? I’ve made a point of telling the bank that they are absolutely *not* to share my financial information with anyone.

Mind you, I take what these credit agencies say with a pinch of salt. Credit Karma did suggest I might reduce by energy bills by eleven quid a month by changing my energy supplier. They suggested I move to the company with whom I’m actually already with. And Experian have since emailed asking me about my experience of looking up my credit rating.

 

I went out to the car and saw that winter had officially arrived. In my world the first day od winter is the first day that I find the car covered in ice. I would have scraped it off if I had been able to find the ice scraper... some cold water did the trick and I got myself a new scraper from the garage when I paid for petrol.

I got a little wound up in the garage this morning. They were short-handed with only one person on the tills, and the chap at the front of the queue was obviously lonely. The petrol stations seem to attract lonely people in the early mornings, with massive queues of people wanting to pay forming as the chap at the front chatters on about trivia.

 

Narrowly avoiding being splattered by a huge lorry as I tried to get onto the motorway I listened to the blather from the pundits on the radio. There was a lot of talk about how hospices are funded. I can remember ranting about this when my mother was in the hospice.  The places are clearly needed, but about three quarters of their funding comes from charity donations. If ever there was something that should be funded by the NHS, it is hospices.

And there was also talk about how the law is changing so that tickets for concerts cannot be bought and then sold on at a massive profit. It will be illegal to charge more than the ticket's face value. Mind you, the expert being interviewed said that this new rule would change nothing. People with tickets for a sold-out concert would still charge extortionate amounts for it and get it from people who wanted to see those concerts. It's called market forces.

 

I got to work and did my bit. Not having been in to work for a couple of weeks my colleagues hadn't seen the Mo in all its glory. Everyone was complementary about the thing... and I think people were genuinely impressed with it. Can't say that I am, but there it is. 

 

Being on the early I finished early, but it was still getting dark as I came out. I took a little diversion to a nearby carpet shop to see if they had any lino with a dark rock design. They didn’t. There were two nice men in the shop who were both very helpful, but both agreed that if I couldn’t find what I wanted on-line then it probably doesn’t exist. That’s a pain in the glass…

Another pain in the glass was that as I got home my car told me that it would like a service. I’ve booked one for next week, but that’s more expense I could do without.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good cauliflower cheese which we washed down with a birthday pressie bottle of plonk whilst watching the third episode of “Game Of Wool”. For a show which is “Bake Off does knitting” it is rather good. In tonight’s episode the Team GB swimming team modelled knitted swimwear.

Knitted swimwear – is that a thing?

 

Meanwhile we’re now over two hundred quid and here’s the links (again)…

https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15453545

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1355423342735210/1355423366068541/

17 Movember 2025 (Monday) - Walk, Ironing, Dentist

I woke to the sound of Morgan jumping off of the bed in the small hours. When he gets up there’s no hanging around. If he can’t get out of the back door, he unloads as close to “out of the back door” as he can.

I got there in time, but came back to bed to find my warm spot had been annexed by Pogo. I shoved him over, but then had to contend with Morgan stomping up and down because Pogo was in his usual space. Some nights everyone sticks to their own bit of the bed and all is peachy. Other nights it is one big squabble. The obvious answer is to have the dogs sleep in their own beds… but I said that years ago.

 

I had a bit of a shave and tidied up the mutton chops, then stood on the scales. I’ve lost a couple more pounds; I’m now exactly three stones lighter than I was at the start of the year. I’m seeing that as a result. But, as I always say, weight loss is easy. I’ve done it before. Keeping the weight off – that’s the tricky bit.

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. Someone had reported a post on the “Upstairs Downstairs” Facebook page that I help moderate. Someone else had posted mucky photos on there. That’s the second time that’s happened over the last few days… that’s another person who has got themselves banned.

 

I took the dogs up to Kings Wood where my piss boiled. Last year I spent months trying to organise a litter pick but the officials at Forestry England were awkward and obstructive and making all sorts of problems and objections. Over the weekend there was an organized orienteering event which left the grassed areas by the car park little more than a sea of mud, and left the woods awash with blue paint, and their direction signs have been left behind too.

We started our walk earlier than we have done recently. Being there shortly after sunrise there were only two other cars in the car park, and we only saw one other group on our way round. It was a shame that Pogo had to scream at them, but that’s Pogo.

We walked our usual walk. As we went so the dogs nibbled on horse poo (as they do). But we did see some deer; if only fleetingly.

We came home to find no parking anywhere near home. I parked two streets away, and as we parked so everyone else had driven off. We walked back from the car past six parking spaces. Ho hum…

 

Now it’s winter, baths after a walk are the done thing. Bellies get rather muddy when we are out, and get rather crusty as the mud dries on the drive home. With bellies washed I popped down the road to the dentist to see if they could fix the tooth that broke at the weekend; they made an appointment for the afternoon.

“er indoors ^TM” wasn’t in the office today so I made us both a cuppa, and we had a lemon curd bun with it. Very nice.

I Munzed, getting six bouncers out of a tree house. I’ve often mentioned that there’s never a dull moment in Munzee. Eventually I got Wordle to work and got “clamp” on the fifth attempt. I watched a couple of episodes of “The Witcher” whilst doing the ironing, then did some CPD. The bots at chess dot com then gave me a free lesson, and I then played them with various degrees of success.

I went into the garden where I gathered dog dung and pulled dead leaves out of the pond.

 

And then to the dentist. I was in and out in fifteen minutes. The dentist smoothed off the sharp edge of the broken tooth and put in what he called an “intermediate filling”. He said to see how it went. There’s very little tooth left for him to fill, and he didn’t seem to want to be drawn on what happens if and when this intermediate filling gives up the ghost. I suppose that now the sharp edge has gone, if this fix fails then the immediate urgency to sort it won’t be what it was.

 

I then spent a little while looking at lino. Last year when I built the expanded bog filter for the pond I put up some stone-effect pond liner to cover where the water goes from the filter to the main pond, but it looks a bit crap in that it is far too light in colour. I really need some sort of pond liner/lino that is much darker. I couldn’t find anything on-line, so I’m left with going old-skool and actually going to the shop to have a look. I’ll do that tomorrow.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up cheeseburgers then went bowling. I settled on the sofa underneath a pile of dogs and watched another episode of “The Witcher”.

I’m thinking early night after last night’s restlessness…