21 November 2023 (Tuesday) - Before the Night Shift

There was the most amazingly ridiculous squabble this morning on Facebook in which someone or other was claiming that the TV series “To The Manor Born” was far superior to any TV shows made today because of the viewing figures it attracted which were many times more than any TV show gets these days. The fact that today there are over a thousand TV channels to choose from whereas back then there were only two (no one watched the high-brow drivel on BBC Two) never occurred to them.

And there was some very bitter squabbles about last week’s Doctor Who special on “Children in Need” in which Davros is no longer in a wheelchair as that is offensive to those in wheelchairs.

They let these people vote, you know.

 

I got the dogs onto their leads and we set off on a little mission. As we drove there was an interview on the radio with heaven only knows who. Having missed the start of the program I was completely in the dark about who was talking, and consequently very soon list interest. I listen to Radio Four so as to keep up to date with current affairs and to find out about all sorts of things about which I would be completely ignorant, but sometimes they do broadcast crap.

When I could have been broadening my horizons I found myself singing along to Ivor Biggun.

 

We got to Kings Wood and walked the same walk we did the last time we were there. This will probably be one of our standard walks from here on in; three miles which takes us an hour. The only problem is that it isn’t long enough for Morgan; at the end he was rather reluctant to come back to the lead.

As we walked we only met one group of dogs, and the meeting passed off without event. We saw two other groups, and when the puppies ran off toward them they both came back immediately when called. I saw that as a result.

I also got quite a bit of video footage of the dogs running about as a start of getting material together for my entry for next year’s Geocaching International Film Festival. It was a shame that when I got home I realised I needed to hold my phone in “landscape” orientation to get useable footage. All that I’d done was in “portrait”. Ho hum… Still, I learned something from this, and as I always tell the trainees at work, a day when you learn nothing is a day wasted (I’ve wasted a lot of days over the years!)

 

We came home via the vets (for flea treatments), and then had baths. I made a cuppa for me and “er indoors ^TM”, and got some (correct orientation) footage of the dogs sleeping, and worked on the screenplay a little more. I think I have the plot of our film for next year’s Geocaching International Film Festival figured out. I know (vaguely) the scenes I need to film in the woods and the piccies I need to create for the film. I just need music. If any of my loyal readers could clang a piano to come up with any of Brahms’ Lullaby, Yakkety Sax, The Dick Barton theme and general background music it would be gratefully received. The people at geo-HQ are rather hot on copyright and I need stuff which I have permission to use.

 

I then wrote up some CPD because that’s what I do before a night shift, had a shower, and went to bed and despite the hot water bottle and two small dogs, I shivered. The bed is far warmer at night than it is in the afternoon.

 

And so I shall hope for some dinner, then I’m off to the night shift. The last few have been rather hard work…

20 November 2023 (Monday) - A Birthday

I woke at five past three shivering and spent the rest of the night listening to snoring and shivering. An alliance of “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs had secured the duvet and weren't letting it go without a fight.

I gave up at quarter to six, got up and made toast which I scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the second season of "Green Eggs and Ham" which was watchable. To be honest it had the advantage of having episodes which only played for half an hour. So much of the stuff I find myself watching has episodes of an hour, and I watch half an episode at a time and struggle to remember where I'd got to.

With telly watched I had a little look at Facebook, but it was probably still a tad early for any serious squabbling to be kicking off. I got dressed and set off to work feeling rather miserable for no reason that I could fathom. I've been on the morose side for a little while now. Sleep depravation, maybe? I have done a few night shifts recently.

 

As I drove through the rain my journey to Pembury was hampered by unattended road works. Sections of A262 and A21 were bunged up by temporary traffic lights which seemed to have no reason for being there. Am I being hopelessly naïve in thinking that if some company or other cordons off a section of road and puts up traffic lights then that company should not leave it unattended until the job is finished? Perhaps I should write to the county council? Mind you I wrote to my local councillor about the flooded footpath last week and still haven't had a reply.

As I drove I listened to the radio. There are problems with evacuating the hospital in Gaza, the mayor of Manchester was being interviewed about the plight of the homeless... and still the pundits on the radio wasted over ten minutes of prime air-time on (quite frankly) utter drivel about the history of the hymn "Amazing Grace".

 

I got to work; I didn't get *that* wet walking from the car into the hospital. As I did my bit I got chatting with one of the engineers who'd come to do some maintenance on one of our analysers. He mentioned that he was buying a house for six hundred thousand pounds. Once he'd gone we had a little look on the internet and worked out that if he was earning the average amount for someone in his line of work then the monthly repayments on that mortgage would be more than he earned each month.

How can anyone afford to buy a house these days?

 

With work done I came home through all the road works. I stopped off at “My Boy ^TM”’s house; favourite oldest granddaughter has her seventeenth birthday today. Perhaps I’m biased, but as oldest granddaughters go, she’s a good one.

And with “er indoors ^TM” off bowling I settled myself on the sofa underneath a pile of dogs and watched a film on Netflix. “The Wrong Missy” was rather good. It was only a shame that I spent much of the film trying to work out what else I’d seen the wrong Missy in.

She was one of the wardens in “Orange is the New Black”.

19 November 2023 (Sunday) - Geocaching International Film Festival

This morning as I looked at Facebook I saw some friends had been to a bonfire parade just outside of Lewes last night. Friends I met through kite flying, and ones I’ve not met in person for far too long. This is why I love Facebook – I can keep in touch despite being a four hour round trip away. Mind you the flip side of Facebook is all the squabbling. Browsing through one petty argument I learned the term “TERF” this morning – it means “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” and someone was accused of being one on a Facebook page ostensibly about Star Trek (of all things).

 

We got the dogs onto their leads and went out. Up to Boughton Monchelsea for the Geocaching International Film Festival. We’ve not done one of these before. The idea is that hunters of Tupperware across the world make small films about their geocaching adventures and these get shown across the world and the worldwide geocaching community vote to decide the best one. A couple of dozen hunters of Tupperware sat down at the Boughton Monchelsea scout hut and after we’d all said hello the films started. Sadly we left half way through as the dogs were getting fractious. Perhaps we might have left the dogs at home, but having been told that Treacle isn’t averse to barking when left alone, I’m loathe to leave them for any period of time.

It didn’t help that there was some strange child there who sat facing away from the films and staring at the dogs whilst scoffing bowls of popcorn…

 

On leaving the geo-film show, our plan was to drive down to Tenterden to walk a geocaching Adventure Lab, but a quick glance at the map showed we were driving straight past one in Headcorn. So we stopped off there and walked up the High Street doing a rather enjoyable little treasure hunt. We were taken to five places where we had to get the answer to a question. All answers were quickly found except at the fourth location where there was mention of a footpath sign. There were two; we had the wrong one and didn’t see the right one for a minute or so.

At each point we had to count the vowels in each answer, and with all five locations visited we then did a few sums and soon ended up with the co-ordinates of the final bonus geocache which was only a short walk away.

This made for a rather good little walk for the day.

 

We came home and I did my usual trick of watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which three rather overpriced places tried (and failed) to compete with somewhere charging a quarter of what they were asking.

I then had a stroke of genius (I have those, you know). I might put together an entry for next year’s Geocaching International Film Festival.

I’ve already started on the script…

18 November 2023 (Saturday) - Telly

Last night over a late bit of scoff I found myself watching the start of a film. “The Dirty Dozen” was something I once watched with a load of mates at the cinema in Hastings. It’s a good film, but I’d forgotten it played for three hours. I didn’t go to bed until one o clock.

 

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet to see if I’d missed anything overnight. I hadn’t really. Petty squabbles over trivia abounded, as they so often do. Today there were arguments amongst the anti-firework fraternity of Hastings; they’ve now got two rival Facebook groups (can you believe it?). And the often very opinionated and nasty people on the Facebook Garden Ponds group who only last week were advocating keeping pond surfaces as still as possible were today insisting that splashing fountains were a good thing.

 

The usual plan for a Saturday morning is dog club, but it wasn’t the warmest of mornings and the fine rain would have had Bailey soaked through within minutes. I drove over to the Repton estate to open up. Ralph and his human were there waiting. I exchanged a few pleasantries and left them to it. I was rather wet after a minute standing in the rain.

Once home I sat on the sofa with the dogs; Bailey was shivering without being cold and wet. We listened to Steve on the radio through the Alexa. In the past the Alexa hasn’t been able to tune in to Radio Ashford; this morning it managed with no problem. I got the mystery year pretty much right away. When was Blackadder 2 released? 1986.

 

With the rain showing no sign of letting up we took the dogs with us on today’s mini-adventure. To be honest we rather needed Bailey along as we wanted to get her a waterproof coat. We spent a little while in the pet section at Bybrook Barn trying on coat after coat. Those marked “small” were too big, and those marked “medium” were too small. Some were too long and not wide enough round the chest. Others would have gone round my chest but left half of her back uncovered. Eventually we got one that fitted.

From there we went down to Hythe where a friend was running a craft stall at a craft fair, but it had the same issue that every event we ran at the scout hut had. Being at the end of a cul-de-sac and being totally unadvertised the only people who were along were friends and friends-of-friends.

As we drove here and there the tyre pressure sensor on my car’s rear left tyre sounded the alarm, but the air pressure seemed fine when I got the pump out. I wonder what that was all about?

 

We came home, and with the rain still hossing down we spent the afternoon catching up on films we’d recorded onto the SkyPlus box. First of all we watched “Police Academy 4”, and then the most recent “Downton Abbey” film. Both were rather good.

We then watched three episodes of “Below Deck”; a reality TV series about life on a cruise yacht that gets chartered out. At a hundred thousand quid for hiring the yacht for three days you really have to wonder exactly who can afford that sort of thing.

 

“er indoors ^TM” popped up the road to the kebab shop to get dinner, and we scoffed kebabs whilst watching a James Bond film. We’d recorded “Spectre” a while ago, and having recorded it we managed to shave forty minutes off the viewing time by fast-forwarding through the adverts.

 

Today wasn’t rally a bad day; we got out for a bit, we watched some good stuff on telly, and with the short winter day and the rain we couldn’t have done much else… but I do feel rather hacked off that we’ve wasted a day. Even though we haven’t.

I wonder why.

17 November 2023 (Friday) - Before the Late Shift

I slept well last night, but still woke at quarter past seven feeling vaguely miserable and “bleah”. It didn’t help that Treacle had barked at someone crashing next door’s metal gate. Several years ago (and several sets of neighbours ago) someone put metal railings round next door, and every time anyone goes through the gate it crashes loud enough to wake the dead. Or the dogs. I’m sure that passers-by bang the thing for fun.

To compound the issue there were some children standing outside shrieking too.

 

I got up, made toast, and had a look at the Internet. A new Lego set had been announced – a model of the Orient Express. A bargain at only two hundred and sixty quid. And an old friend (from over fifty years ago) was jetting off on another foreign holiday. He seems to have a lot of those, not that I’m being judgemental. There are several people on my Facebook list who seem to have an inordinate amount of foreign holidays, but I suppose that by the time I’ve spent out on three vet plans and dog food each month there’s a hundred quid (each month) I could put toward a holiday or squander on Lego.

And there were several of those annoying motivational memes being posted on-line. They sometimes boil my piss. It is very easy to say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade when life has never given you a lemon.

I looked to see to whom I should send my birthday video today. When Facebook tells me someone’s having a birthday I send them a little “happy birthday” video. There were two people on my Facebook Friends list having birthdays today. Mind you I say “people”; one was a pub and the other was the blood transfusion simulator that gives me problems from time to time.

I didn’t send either the video…

 

With a little time on my hands I took the dogs to the woods. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman who has announced that the Prime Minister’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is dead in the water. Perhaps it is, but she was singing the praises of the plan a week ago.

It never fails to entertain me that every Cabinet member when sacked suddenly no longer feels constrained to pretend that someone else’s stupid idea (with which they had hitherto agreed unconditionally) is actually a stroke of genius and immediately slag it off. I’m reminded of myself when I was forcibly removed from a position of (admittedly minor) authority some twelve years ago and did exactly the same thing.

 

We got to the woods and had our walk. It was rather wet, muddy and slippery underfoot. Usually once we are away from the car park we walk for ages without seeing anyone. Today we met three “special” people.

The first had her dog on fifty yards of rope (rather than a lead). This dog saw the puppies, tried to play “chase” and made a rather impressive cats’ cradle of rope around the trees.

The next had a barking dog on a lead and was seemingly guarding one of the major crossroads in the woods. As we approached the crossroads she shouted asking us to keep away from her dog (which was on a lead and snarling at nothing that I could see). I whistled and my dogs came back. We backtracked a few dozen yards, but it became apparent that this woman wasn’t going anywhere. We stood and looked at each other from fifty yards away. Eventually I called to ask if she was just guarding the crossroads. She grumbled and wandered off.

And as we came back to the car park we met some chap with a dog the size of a cart horse on the lead over which he clearly had no control.

We walked a rather shorter walk than usual today, but I was surprised to see (from my smartwatch) that we walked half a mile further than we’d walked when going to the garage a couple of days ago.

 

With walk walked we came home for a bath. Treacle particularly needed a scrub; the other two just got generally grubby, but Treacle walks into muddy puddles then stops and looks at me as though showing off how clever she is. And with dogs scrubbed I set off to work via some points of interest (it's a Munzee thing). As I drove up the motorway I tried the cruise control. I mentioned to the nice people in the garage that there wasn't an indicator light to say the cruise control was active. there still isn't. Either they didn't replace the bulb or there isn't one. I wonder which it is.

I went to Sainsburys to get a sandwich for lunch. The car park was gridlocked when I arrived; half empty when I came out.

 

And apart from the cake that was waiting for my afternoon tea break the day was effectively all done by the time the late shift started...

16 November 2023 (Thursday) - Bit Tired

I rather struggled with the night shift; I wasn’t feeling at all on top form and so was very pleased to see the day shift arrive.

As I drove home I listened to the radio as I do. The new Home Secretary was being interviewed… I say “interviewed”; the poor chap was faced with endless statements about how crap the situation he has taken over, and immediately after making a statement the (so-called) interviewer then presented another one. After five minutes the Home Secretary asked why he’d been brought on to the radio. As he pointed out, the whole idea of an interview is that you ask someone a question, listen to what they say, and then ask further more probing questions based on what they said. And also, as he pointed out, a seemingly endless list of the failings of his predecessor could have been read out whilst he stayed at home.

I was rather glad the chap said this; those presenting the news so often give up golden opportunities when they would rather just listen to the sounds of their own voices.

 

I got home, and seeing it wasn’t raining I took the dogs out. Usually I go straight to bed but with more rain forecast for much of the rest of the day I thought we might get in a walk whilst we could. We just walked into Ashford and back again and apart from getting rather over-excited about a squirrel in the Memorial Gardens the walk passed off rather well. Far better than most local walks go. To be fair to the dogs, they really need more practice on the leads. Perhaps they’ve been spoiled by going to the woods so often?

 

We got home as the rain started. It soon became rather heavy. I’m getting a tad fed up with the seemingly constant rain we’ve had for the last few weeks. With walk walked I had a shower and went to bed. I woke after three hours, and as I got up so Morgan and Bailey got up too; they’d come to bed with me.

I saw loads of messages on my phone; apparently a few minutes after I’d left work there had been some incident on the road to work and luckily I’d missed some rather serious hold-ups.

I was pleased about that.

I then had a look through something I signed up to yesterday. Bearing in mind that I’m hoping to take semi-retirement soon I thought I might use the dogs as guinea pigs. Yesterday I signed up to a course with the Dog Training College as Facebook said it was free, and I had this idea that I could use the dogs as test subjects in this free on-line course. However I’d completely forgotten about the fifty-ninth Rule of Acquisition: “Free advice is seldom cheap”. The course wasn’t free at all. The information pack and introductory video was free. The course itself would set me back two thousand quid.

Sod that.

 

As usual after a night shift I spent much of the afternoon doing the ironing whilst watching episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which some chap who considered himself to be a “big businessman” was running far and away the shabbiest establishment; seemingly unable to even clean his rooms, and putting instant coffee into a cafetiere. But isn’t this typical of those who advocate “business” and “management”; all full of important-sounding words but rather short on actually delivering that which they should deliver.

 

Meanwhile “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” has seen a UFO whilst taking Pogo for a walk, and “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction ^TM” is creating new life forms. I wonder if God realises he’s got competition?

15 November 2023 (Wednesday) - Floods, Car Service

The Old Bill flew down our street at twenty past two last night with sirens blazing. I didn’t think they were supposed to have those on in the small hours? I then lay awake for much of the rest of the night.
I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there, but for once not a lot was going on. I sent out four birthday messages, and each time Facebook warned me that the birthday video I send out hadn’t been fact-checked. There are those who worry that AI will take over the world… it may well do but not out of any sort of malevolence, but through random actions from frankly idiotic programming.
 
I popped the leads onto the dogs and we drove over to the garage where the car was booked in for a service. As we drove Michael Howard (the ex-leader of the Conservative party and Folkestone MP) was being interviewed about the sacking of Suella Braverman who has written a rather damning letter to the Prime Minister following her sacking a couple of days ago. For all the hot air being blown out of the radio this morning, it will all be forgotten in a week or so.
 
We got to the garage, dropped off the car and walked home. The walk wasn’t one of our best ones; the lead brings out the worst in Morgan. He was pulling for over half the way; pulling hard enough to be walking on his hind legs for quite a bit. I wish he wouldn’t. When we see another dog in the woods when he is off the lead he just sniffs and walks past. Today there were two episodes of barking and snarling. As I apologised to the other dog walkers they smiled and said that their dogs are the same. Fine off the lead; a nightmare on it.
We had to take a minor diversion as we came home. The underpass under the railway at Asda was flooded. I can remember it flooding when I used to cycle under there to where I used to work in the early nineties, and thirty years later nothing has been done. I’ve sent my local councillor an email about it. I wonder if she will do anything.
 
Once home I raked up the leaves that were littering the lawn. There is a *huge* sycamore tree four gardens down the road and every autumn our garden fills with its leaves. And with leaves raked I sat on the sofa with the dogs and wrote up some CPD, failed to solve a geo-puzzle about cabbage, and watched the last three episodes of “Silo”. Then I had a look on Wikipedia to see what “Silo” was all about. Despite having killed off the lead character, a second season is being made. Mind you killing off lead characters has never been an issue ti telly programmes before, has it?
With all the dogs on top of me on the sofa and all of us very comfortable I didn’t go to bed for the afternoon. I just pulled a blanket over the top of us all and we dozed for a couple of hours until the car was ready.
 
Having walked two and a half miles coming home from the garage this morning we walked another two and a half miles back there, taking care to avoid the flood at Asda.
It was good to get the car back; not so good to spend out a couple of hundred quid though. But that’s the “joy” of having a car. With a sixty-mile round trip to work every day I need a car on which I can rely.
 
“er indoors ^TM” is planning to go deploy a Golden Carrot (it’s a Munzee thing). Hopefully she’s planning to cook my dinner too. And once I’ve scoffed it (if I get any!) I’m off to the night shift. I can’t say that I’m keen on the idea, but I rarely ever am.