27 December 2016 (Tuesday) - Walking the Dogs

I had a rather traumatic night plagued with inexplicable dreams about various scandals involving the cast of "Thunderbirds". I got up early, tiddled the puppy and dumped her onto a sleeping "er indoors ^TM". I then had some toast as I watched a Christmas "Dad's Army" special from years ago.

I left for work in the dark; and I had to spend a few minutes scraping the frost from my car. As I drove the radio was still spewing its usual blend of news. I was rather amazed at one news article. In order to avoid election fraud it has been suggested that when you show up to vote at national or local elections you need to bring some proof of identity. Personally I've been amazed that for as long as I've been voting I have just marched up to the desk and announced who I was and been given a ballot card. No one has ever checked who I am, and there is absolutely nothing stopping me from coming back ten minutes later and claiming to be my son, my son in law, my next door neighbour. However it turns out that this has caused consternation. There are some communities where the head of the household sees it as his right to cast all the family votes. This has been recognised for years, and returning officers have not dared to say a word for fear of giving offence. But now the entire family are going to have to turn out to vote how they are told rather than having Father vote for them.

Have I ever said I'm not convinced by the idea of democracy?

And our old friend Science has found aliens again. Science does that a lot....

I stopped off at Morrisons on the way to work. The place was lit up; staff were busying about. the door was locked. Some spotty oik came to the door and said they were closed. He didn't actually say the words "piss off, fatso" but his tone conveyed the sentiment very well.

I went to their petrol station to re-fuel. It too was lit up and looked open for business but wasn't.

I got to work; the leaving night shift was pleased to see me. They'd had a busy night and were glad to get away.

I wasn’t overly keen on working today… one of the drawbacks of working in a hospital is that the place never closes. Obviously one realises that when first taking up hospital work, but I still get a tad resentful of everyone else whose firm shuts up shop a day or so before Christmas Eve and doesn’t open again until the New Year. I set off to work this morning whilst most people were still sleeping off the excesses of Boxing Day. Mind you I had three clear days off work this Christmas. I’d worked all night long on Christmas Eve last year, and did a twelve hour shift the year before. I had a good break in 2013, but I’d worked on Boxing Day in 2012… One of the advantages of regular blogging is that I have a record of things like when I worked at Christmas. In fact I’ve only had four proper Christmases off work in the last eleven years.

But I did this year’s bit today.

I got home to find "er indoors ^TM" was off out sorting out one of "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM"s Christmas presents so I took the dogs round the park. "Furry Face ^TM" likes his walks and "Furry Shark ^TM" is getting the idea. As we walked I did a couple of live videos on Facebook. Now my mum is back on Facebook she loves that sort of thing. I was amazed how many viewers I got whist broadcasting live. And in the five hours since I posted them they’ve been watched over seventy times each.

Once home I played back the videos. I was shocked at how breathless I sounded. I seemed to be gasping for air. That can’t be right.

With the walk done the dogs played for a while before completely tiring themselves out. We all then dozed until "er indoors ^TM" came home. Turkey curry went down well as we watched telly, and for the first night in a week I didn’t have a pint of stout…

26 December 2016 (Monday) - Boxing Day

Just before I went to bed last night I saw the announcement of the death of George Michael. Over brekkie social media was alive with people who were claiming to be distraught at the news. Admittedly a *lot* of celebrities have died this year. But bear in mind that everyone dies. Sad as it is, death is unavoidable. And (what *really* boils my piss) is that over the last year most of the heartfelt eulogies I read on social media came from people who have hitherto never expressed the faintest interest in whichever celebrity it is that has croaked.

We spent an hour or so getting the living room tidied, then "Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM" and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM" arrived (with Sid and Pogo) and we went round the park for a walk where we met "My Boy ^TM" and Rolo. We had quite a good walk with the entire family wolf-pack before coming home to find Sam and Charlie waiting for us.

Little Charlie had to go home to Folkestone, so I drove him back. Whilst out I popped into Tesco for some supplies, and then it was home for stout. You can’t go wrong with stout. There was only time for won pint, then it was roast dinner time. "er indoors ^TM" did a rather good dinner. And once entirely stuffed we spent the afternoon playing cards whilst the five dogs were amazingly well behaved. I must admit I was expecting mayhem with five dogs, but they were really well behaved.

All too soon the fruits of my loin had to go home. We don’t all get together that often, and when we do we make the most of it. But they both have little ones of their own to get to bed.

It didn’t take long to clear the carnage; we watched the second Christmas Bake-Off (which was good) and then five minutes of some supposedly sciencey-thing with Professor Brian Cox. It was dreadful; we turned off after ten minutes.

I’ve got guts ache again…

25 December 2016 (Sunday) - Christmas

Another night with far less sleep than I would have liked. Mind you "er indoors ^TM" was up before me and had "Furry Shark ^TM" in the garden when "Furry Face ^TM" and I came down.

We opened some pressies, and then disaster struck. Just as the puppy piddled on the carpet "er indoors ^TM" announced we’d run out of tin foil. Seeing the shop over the road was closed I set off on a mammoth drive round the town to get some. As I did the Grand Tour of Ashford I popped in to "Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM" as we’d mistakenly addressed one of Cheryl’s pressies to Charlie and needed to sort it out.

I eventually found tin foil and got home to find the shop over the road was open, and that we had tin foil all along.

We took the dogs round the park for a walk. I’d never seen Viccie Park so empty. We saw maybe half a dozen other people as we walked.

Once home we settled the dogs and drove round to "My Boy ^TM". We got there a little later than planned; there was nowhere to park. However once there we had a really good time. Lacey unwrapped pressies, we drank beer, Christmas music was on the telly. Cheryl had cooked a rather good dinner and we stuffed ourselves silly.

I settled myself on the sofa and woke an hour or so later to find “The Wizard of Oz” was on the telly. We used to watch that on Christmas afternoons at my gran’s house when I was my granddaughter’s age. And it now occurs to me that Dorothy must have been rather thick. How can she get lost like she did? There is only one road in Oz and it is bright yellow.

It turned out that everyone had been waiting for me to wake up; we then had Christmas pudding and spent an hour or two playing various card games. Great fun.

By the time the early evening came we really had to get home for the dogs. It had been a really good afternoon, and it was good to have a lazy evening watching the Christmas “Doctor Who” and “Bake Off”. One was good; one was awful…

I’ve got guts ache again…