I didn’t have the best of nights. The dogs were
fidgety and restless and with an alarm set I spent much of the night looking at
the clock as I so often do.
I made toast and had a look at the telly. I started
watching a new thing on Netflix – a documentary about dinosaurs. It was rather
good, but… many years ago when I kept snakes I read up a lot on reptiles and it
would seem that much of what we know about dinosaurs is really best guesses
based on fossiled bones. But it was a good TV show.
I then had my usual rummage round the Internet. As
well as people proudly showing off their ignorance about meningitis on Facebook
there were quite a few people talking about St Patrick’s Day yesterday. As
happens every year no end of people who’ve never been any closer to the Emerald
Isle than the M25 were claiming Irish heritage and professing a love of
Guinness. Guinness boils my piss. It’s not a bad pint, but when you look at
just how many dark beers are readily available in supermarkets, it’s probably
at the bottom of the range for quality. As I’ve said before (endlessly!)
Guinness is a triumph of marketing.
It would seem I missed a geo-meet-up in Frittenden
last night. Whenever I stage a geocaching meet I make a point of contacting all
the hunters of Tupperware within a twenty-mile radius to let them know and I
usually get a decent turn out. Many
other people make the effort to put on a meet but don’t tell anyone… and no one
knows there is a get-together happening. Ho hum…
As I drove to work I listened to the pundits on the
radio spouting their morning nonsense. The Scottish
Parliament has thrown out the assisted dying
bill. Apparently the whole idea of letting terminally ill people choose to pull
their own plug is fraught with problems in that people might feel pressured to
pull their own plugs and it would be better to force people to carry on suffering
instead.
Can't see it myself.
And there was an interview with some businesswoman
about how there's a new boss at the Disney corporation.
When asked about how this new bloke would affect the company this woman (in
between her hesitation) effectively spoke in a foreign language. She really
did say "erm... meaningless catch-phrase... er... management
buzz-word... erm... more meaningless catch-phrases... um..." and ended
by saying that it was all sixty-forty.
Why do they have these people on the radio?
As I drove I popped in to the co-op to get a
sandwich. I'd not had much luck on Monday but I wondered if they had just
been left with the dregs from the weekend and they might have been re-stocked
by the middle of the week... I got there to find a woman in co-op uniform
standing on a step fiddling about inside the fridge. They had some sandwiches,
but none of the snacks that make up the meal deal. I asked the woman in the
co-op uniform if they had any. She apologised and said that she didn't work there;
she was only doing a stock-take(!)
I then had a stroke of genius - Waitrose would only
be a short diversion as I drove past Repton... I got there to find the
place didn't open for another hour.
I tried the works branch of M&S. A rather manky
sandwich and a rather empty bag of crisps (and a bottle of water) were up for
sale at over two quid more than Sainsburys were knocking out (rather better)
meal deals.
I got something from the hospital's league of friends
shop. I shall go back to Sainsburys next time.
Being on flexible extra hours to help out today I got
to escape earlier than I might usually have done. I came home, and seeing a
rather lovely afternoon I took the dogs out. It was perhaps a tad late for four
miles round Kings Wood so we had two miles round Orlestone instead.
We got to the car park to find only one space free.
I’ve never seen the place so busy. As we walked into the woods so some chap
came the other way with binoculars and a seriously impressive zoom lens on his
camera. He announced that I must be one of the locals who goes to the woods all
the time, and he apologized. Apparently there have been several sightings of
the large tortoiseshell butterfly in Orlestone over the last week or so. These
things grow to three inches across; supposedly extinct in the UK, it isn’t extinct any more, and people have
travelled across the country to see them. I didn’t see any myself, but my
new-found friend had seen some and was only too happy to share his photograph. And I was only too
happy to take the credit.
In between exchanging pleasantries with several other
butterfly-spotters we had an episode…
Some idiot woman came past on a pedal bike with two
large dogs in tow. One of them chased Bailey who sprinted off into the woods
screaming in terror (like she does). The idiot woman started laughing
but before I could react, Morgan flew off in pursuit. About two seconds later
so idiot woman’s dog came sprinting back with Morgan in hot pursuit and with a
clump of idiot woman’s dog’s fur in his mouth. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t
feel that I needed to, but in all honesty I don’t think that idiot woman had
noticed anything..
I whistled to my dogs, and we walked off leaving her
and her dogs behind.
I had hoped we wouldn’t have needed a bath when we got
home, but (as she always does) Treacle had wallowed in a swamp in the
way back to the car.
With bellies and paws washed we did “FEED THE FISH”
and I made us both a cuppa with a lump of coffee and walnut cake. I then asked
ChatGPT to make a picture of Mickey Mouse chairing a business meeting which I
was planning on using for today’s blog photo, but after a few seconds it told
me “We’re
so sorry, but the image we created may violate our guardrails concerning
similarity to third-party content”. I suppose it is right… I suppose
Mickey Mouse is copyrighted by the Disney corporation. So I tried to get the
picture above. I got it to make a picture on the fourth attempt – it kept
giving me the reply “We’re so sorry, but the prompt may violate our content
policies”. I’d given it a picture of Bailey and had asked for a picture of
her chasing a butterfly whilst being chased by a big scary dog herself.
Eventually I think I found that the problem was that ChatGPT doesn’t like the
word “scary”.
In the week or so that I’ve been
playing with ChatGPT I must admit I’m rather impressed with the thing.
“er indoors TM” boiled
up sausages and chips which we scoffed whilst watching The Great Pottery Throw
Down… I’ve not messed about with clay since primary school. I wouldn’t mind
having another go…
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