19 November 2024 (Tuesday) - It Rained

I woke to the sound of heavy rain. I had planned to take the dogs to the woods this morning, but it’s no fun in the rain.

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. The Wherigo I made yesterday had gone live at half past seven, and two people had already downloaded it. Were they going out in the rain? If they were, let’s hope they were going to do the thing properly. They would have got very wet if they fell for my anti-cheating ruse.

 

There wasn’t much else happening on-line today. There weren’t many squabbles really. I munzed, I got Wordle on the fourth attempt, and got seriously cross looking at the rain.

With nothing else to do I scrubbed the kitchen wall, cleaned out the bathroom cabinet, and seeing the rain was showing no sign of easing up I started writing another Wherigo. Well, not so much writing as re-vamping an old one. Bearing in mind the cheat software looks for pictures of final co-ordinates I’ve put in a dozen into this new one for it to find. That will be nice for it, won’t it?

 

The rain eased off by mid-afternoon so I walked the dogs round the block. As I stood up to do so, they all leapt up as well. I’d got up for various reasons half a dozen times during the day and they hadn’t batted an eyelid. But when I intended to take them out, they were there right away.

How do they know?

I didn’t think the rain had been that heavy, but we all came home soaked. I then went through the Wherigo to give it a final check… and found half a dozen issues with it.

Two hours later I packed the thing off to the geo-feds.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled me up a pizza and she set off to Hastings for a booze-up. I stayed with the dogs; they don’t like being left for any length of time. I scoffed pizza and watched “Star Trek: First Contact” – is that film really twenty-eight years old?

 

Today was dull…

18 November 2024 (Monday) - Perry Wood

I spent most of yesterday evening asleep in front of the telly, and slept like a log last night. I woke at eight o’clock to the sound of Morgan heaving., so I leapt up and bundled him outside.

Finding myself wide awake I made toast and peered into the internet where I laughed at the Christians posting on an atheist Facebook page I follow.  That page is often amusing; today the righteous were gloating that the iniquitous sinners have only got six months left in which to repent. Apparently the world is ending next April. I had a look on Google to see if this is true; apparently some Bulgarian mystic called Baba Vanga has predicted the end of the world starting next year. She also predicted Muslim rule of Europe in 2043, the entire world going communist in 2076 and humanity being wiped out in 5079.

I must admit I’m not unduly fussed. I remember the first end of the world. It was on the first of January 1980 and had been predicted by Nostradamus. Me and my mate Douggie Small spent the day walking round Hastings looking for any signs of the world having ended, and we both had something of a sense of anticlimax about the whole thing. There’s been several end of the worlds since. Only two years after the first one I was rather disappointed that the planet Jupiter’s gravity didn’t pull the Earth apart as had been predicted by some prominent astrophysicist. Halley’s comet didn’t wipe anything out in 1986, the Rapture didn’t come in 1988 (or any time in the early 90s – there were several of these), several predicted nuclear wars and alien-instigated wipeouts failed to materialize, and by the time we got to Nostradamus’s second go in July 1999 I rather gave up on end of the worlds.

There’s a list of most of them on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

 

I had an email telling me that someone had commented on yesterday’s blog entry. People rarely do, but the option is there. However I moderate each comment before it gets published since spambots have tried to use this blog as a vehicle for their advertising. Sadly this is what happened overnight. Someone wrote “It sounds like you had a rather slow start to your day, with the early wake-up and some quiet time before heading to work. It's always a nice surprise when the roads are clear, especially on a Sunday! Sometimes those quiet mornings are a welcome break”. And then they followed this up with two adverts; one for cheap pharmaceuticals and for Rack Supported Mezzanine floors. Whatever they are.

I deleted the comment.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on my third attempt, and took the dogs out. We drove up to Perry Wood today for a change. As we drove I listened to the pundits on the radio who talking about political advisors. Historically they have been unelected buddies of politicians and have been useful not so much to offer advice as to take the blame for unsuccessful policies. The examples of Thomas Cromwell and Dominic Cummings were given. Despite being hundreds of years apart their cases were rather similar, weren’t they?

 

The last time we went to Perry Woods I couldn’t find the place. Today I used the sat-nav and we arrived to find an empty car park. I sparked up my geo-app; there’s one geocache up there that has eluded me for some time, and over the weekend the chap who had hidden it had given me the heads-up on it and had been out to check on it himself as it hadn’t been found for three years. The chap had even put crossed sticks forming an “X” over it but I still took fifteen minutes to find it. Some people who hide geocaches want them found, and some don’t.

Having found it we then went on through the woods looking for the other three geocaches in those woods. We found one of them. We’ll go back for the other two in the spring – it was rather slippery and swampy today. I took a few photos though – Perry Wood is a rather pretty place,

 

We came home where the dogs had a warm shower. I’d rather not wash the dogs after a walk if I can get away with it though. They come home very tired but the shower/bath somehow puts them all in a very hyperactive and excitable mood which lasts for far too long.

Eventually they were asleep, and I then cleaned out the filter in the little fish pond. I need to see if I can find a very small pressure filter for that pond; the current one needs cleaning out every couple of weeks and isn’t the easiest to clean.

 

I then spent the afternoon re-writing a Wherigo cartridge. Over the last few years I’ve spent ages writing fun little GPS games only to have people using cheat software to extract the final geocache locations… and then complain that by cheating they can’t get the hints and tips that I write into them. After a couple of hours I came up with one that isn’t entirely cheat-resistant but does throw people off the scent.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted dinner then set off to bowling as she does on Monday evenings. I settled on the sofa and was soon snoring underneath a pile of dogs. Who were also snoring…

17 November 2024 (Sunday) - Manky Tennis Ball

I’d set the alarm for half past six this morning so I woke at four and lay awake watching the clock for a couple of hours. Eventually I gave up, got up and made toast. I watched an episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” then sparked up my lap-top to have my usual trawl around the internet. Nothing much had happened overnight for once, so I had a quick Munz then got Wordle right on the third attempt. As usual I started off with “table” and only had the third and last letter wrong. I couldn’t think of any other word than “tally”.

 

It was light when I set off to work this morning. Being a Sunday the roads were nowhere near as busy as usual. Normally if I leave home at half past seven the traffic trying to get to the motorway is at a snail's pace from the Matalan roundabout (about a mile from the motorway). Today I sailed all the way.

As I drove the pundits were interviewing an author who'd written a book about the succession of a hypothetical pope. The book sounded rather interesting; it was a shame that having been talking about a book for five minutes the chap conducting the interview said that the film is released this week; speaking in such a way that films and books are synonymous. I suppose in this day and age for most people they are... Everyone knows about Harry Potter. Everyone’s seen the films. How many people have actually read the books?

There was then a round table of various windbags pontificating on who would be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. One of them banged on about how an Archbishop should raise awareness of child poverty and how we shouldn't be dependent on food banks. Another accused the first of being too left wing and said that politics should be kept out of religion. Sadly when the first chap asked the second if he's heard of what Jesus had preached about being nice to each other, it seemed that (despite being some big-wig in the church) the chap clearly hadn't. And then some well-meaning old biddy claimed that Christianity was for the well intentioned and the self-serving alike.

And this was followed by the news that Donald Trump is planning to appoint the head honcho of a fracking company to be in charge of American energy policy. I've lost count of the amount of times I've said what a stupid idea democracy is. Here's another example. Oh well, as I once said (in jest) to “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” "f... the environment. It will probably last longer than I will". I suspect I will actually croak before the environment will, but what kind of a planet are we leaving behind?

 

Work was much the same as ever. Originally I wasn’t supposed to be working today, but I’d had a message asking if I could step into the breach. I didn’t have much else planned for the morning, and stepping into the breach at short notice is what hospital work is all about. I got there a few minutes early so’s I could pop into the canteen for a spot of brekkie, and I was only needed for the morning. I was back home in the garden harvesting dog turds by half past one.

 

After a spot of scran we bundled the dogs into the car and set off to Folkestone. A couple of weeks ago I sorted “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” ‘s patio. Her outside guttering was overflowing but at the time I thought I’d sort that problem another day. So today I went and sorted it. The problem was that the downpipe wasn’t draining the gutter. I took along all sorts of tools… Well… I won’t lie. I took a trowel, a bucket and a length of hose pipe. What more could anyone need?

We got there, and as “er indoors ^TM” farted around making the beds I went and did some plumbing. I rammed the hose pipe up the down pipe in an attempt to loosen the blockage. There was something pretty solid blocking the down pipe, and coming from underneath with a hose pipe wasn’t working. So, using onto a particularly rusty garden chair as a ladder to get at the guttering, I came in from the top with a trowel. After a few seconds of particularly vigorous trowelling I excavated a rather manky tennis ball from the down pipe, and the accumulated stagnant water immediately gurgled away. So I trowelled out the residual muck and then used the bucket to flush the guttering with some fresh water. Trowel, bucket and hose pipe. I didn’t need anything else. Mind you it has to be said that the gutter is still a bit rancid, but gutters generally are. A decent load of rain will wash it through.

 

We then walked the dogs round the Leas for a bit, even though it was dark. So dark that when we came to do “Boot Dogs”, as Treacle jumped into the car boot so Morgan jumped onto the bonnet of the car behind.

I caught him in mid-air going in entirely the wrong direction.

 

Today I spent the morning at work, unblocked a drainpipe, and walked the dogs for half an hour. Why am I worn out?

16 November 2024 (Saturday) - Rather Busy

Despite all its connections to the Internet being turned off, my phone went berserk with a flurry of notification pings shortly after four o’clock. And despite the alarm being turned off, it played the alarm at seven o’clock.

That phone does what it likes.

 

I made toast and peered into the Internet. It hadn’t really changed. Petty triviality and bickering persisted as it always does. There was quite the argument over the term “totty” on a Facebook group about the 1970s. I felt about commenting but decided against it.

There were quite a few people posting the same sort of thing to work-related Facebook groups this morning too. Having spent many years becoming qualified to do the job, people were rather surprised to realise that hospitals operate round the clock, and so many people wanted suggestions for a nine-to-five job for which they could use their existing qualifications and not have to go right back to square one and start again from scratch.

You’d think people would find out what a job entails before spending six years training for it, wouldn’t you?

 

Being Saturday we got ourselves organized and set off to Dog Club. Yesterday we came home from the woods via Pets at Home where I got Treacle a new tennis ball for Dog Club. She lost it within a minute of arriving; just as well I’d bought a spare as well. We had a great time at Dog Club. At one point I counted seventeen dogs. I’m not sure I counted them all (they kept moving about) and three more arrived after I’d counted. Morgan did get a little over-excited, but it is all part of his learning to socialize. He comes when called, and just showing him his muzzle calms him rather impressively.

 

Sadly we missed Steve’s Mystery Year competition on the radio; just as we drove away so Steve was on the radio giving the answer saying that he’d not had an entry from us and that Dog Club must have over-run.

It had.

We came home for a cuppa, then “er indoors ^TM” set off to Hobbycraft for a new glue gun. Hers had vanished. I spent a frustrating hour struggling with a geo-puzzle. If any of my loyal readers know how to reverse a text string in Microsoft Word (i.e. turn “abchef” into “fedcba”) please let me know.

 

We then drove out to Biddenden for the monthly geo-meet-up. Twenty of us met in the garden of the Three Chimneys and spent a very pleasant afternoon chatting about all things geocachical.

 

We came home, and after a little doze Steve and Sarah arrived, followed by Chris. We had a very good evening round the Infinity table playing “Game of Life”, “Sorry” and “Ticket to Ride”. I was rather smug when I won at “Sorry”, and I think I’ll do much better at “Ticket to Ride” next time now that I’ve figured out how the scoring works.

15 November 2024 (Friday) - Bodging a Fence

The dogs let me sleep in until eight o’clock this morning which was something of a result. I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet.

There was something of a theme on Facebook this morning. People in all sorts of groups including work-related ones, baby-boomers and sci-fi (to name a few) were banging on about how they plan to put up their Christmas decorations this weekend, and were rather confrontational and aggressive about it. If putting up the tinsel makes people happy, then good for them. Why not - after all, the Christmas adverts have been in the shops and on telly for some time already.

However (as I’ve said before) personally I get fed up with it. This year I think I would enjoy Christmas were it in the first weekend of December. However it isn’t. It’s in the fourth week of December and I suspect I will be fed up with hearing about it by then.

 

I munzed, and amazed myself by getting Wordle on only the second attempt. I always start with “table” and today got the first two letters right first time. I could only think of one other word starting with “ta”.

I then drove the dogs up to the woods. As I drove the footballer Ian Wright was on “Desert Island Discs”. He sounded rather interesting, but does he *really* listen to opera?

We got to the woods where there was chaos in the car park. When we get there the dogs stay on their leads until we are a little way away from the car park. Today several people had arrived at the same time and just thrown their car doors open. Dogs were running wild round the car park, and the queue of cars waiting to get in was growing. No one wanted to drive in for fear of running a dog over.

 

When we eventually parked we had a good walk. We walked for four miles and once away from the car park we didn’t see anyone else at all. The dead deer was still there but the dogs didn’t see it. I had half a mind to drag the thing home and see if I might flog it to a local butcher, but according to the British Deer Society that would be illegal. According to the Internet if you find a dead deer on Forestry England’s land you should phone them and tell them.

So once home I gave Forestry England a ring.

 

I then looked at the clock, got out all the pond filter cleaning kit, cleaned out the pond filter, put all the kit away and looked at the clock again. It took less than fifteen minutes and I wasn’t left with a seriously aching back and smelling of fish poo like I used to be after filter cleaning. This pressure filter is so much better than what I used to have.

I then took a hammer to the front garden fence to repair the poggered panels. In theory the fence belongs to next door. In practice the thing has been falling apart for years. I bodged it back together, then popped over the garden centre to get one of those plastic plant trellis things to cover it over. It’ll do for now. It needs a proper fix, but I’m loathe to do anything major that will upset hibernating insects and bugs until they wake up next spring.

That’s my lame excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

 

I made us both another cuppa then had another look at the Internet where Facebook showed me a memory. There’s a local path that floods regularly. A year ago I contacted my local councilor about it. She eventually replied saying it wasn’t her problem. And a year later the path still floods.

 

Over a dinner of pie and chips we watched more “Taskmaster” which was rather good.

I’ve got a minor guts ache now…

14 November 2024 (Thursday) - Plov Mk IV

With no alarm set I slept like a log last night and had been hoping for a lie-in this morning. But about ten seconds after “er indoors ^TM” got up so Treacle got off the bed to follow her with the biggest crash you ever did hear. And then Morgan and Bailey embarked on a rather vigorous game of chase in which there were two play areas – on the duvet and under the duvet.

I got up.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. Yesterday I got a trophy-thingy from work for forty years service. This morning over a hundred people had clicked the “like” button. That was nice. Personally I’ve half a mind to either bin the thing or sell it on eBay; I’ve really taken against it. Perhaps had it not been three years late in arriving and been presented to me rather than posted to me, I might be a little more grateful.

There were several people posting to Facebook this morning about how they were abandoning Twitter/X as it has become very political. Apparently BlueSky is now the way to go. Personally I abandoned Twitter years ago as I couldn’t get my head round all the # and @ nonsense. And I was already spending far too much time in Facebook. I didn’t need another social media to complain about.

Will I follow the herd and get a BkueSky account? Probably. I suppose I’d best find out something about it first.

 

“er indoors ^TM” set off to work. I took the dogs up to the woods for a walk. Being rather misty I hoped we might see deer. We saw one – or that is I saw one. A dead one laying on the side of a path. Fortunately the dogs didn’t see it. Seeing the dead deer reminded me of an old friend though. Thirty years ago back in the days of the snake club my old mate Bob used to live in Challock and was gamekeeper on some of the land that backs on to the top end of Kings Wood. He once told me that part of his duties was culling the deer. He claimed that he had to shoot one deer a day every day of the year to keep their numbers in check. That sounded a tad excessive to me. Sadly Bob’s no longer with us to confirm or deny this...

It was rumoured that through the reptile keeping Bob acquired a rattlesnake. Shortly after the rumours started he was found dead in his house having died of a heart attack. When one of the snake club was called to collect and re-home Bob’s snakes no rattlesnake was found, but one of the vivaria was open. Heart attack is one of the results of a rattlesnake bite. Did he have a rattler that had him?

There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

 

We came home. Although the dogs hadn’t rolled in anything they were a bit whiffy and so had a bath. I then mowed the lawn and whilst I was at it gave the new strimmer its first go. It seems to do the job.

I put washing in to scrub and got on with the ironing whilst watching all of the second season of “The End of the FXXXing World” which featured the chap who had been shot dead at the end of the first season.

 

I then started making dinner. It bubbled and simmered until “er indoors ^TM” came home. We scoffed it whilst watching more “Bake Off”. Sadly Plov Mk IV was also a tad bland and had far too much rice, but I have plans for Plov Mk V.

But the plonk wasn’t too bad…

13 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Three Years Late

Another night with an alarm set, and so another restless night. At least I stayed asleep until after three o’clock this morning. After a couple of hours I gave up and got up. I made toast and watched another episode of “The End of the Fxxxing World” in which our heroes travelled to the Isle of Sheppey. There were some spectacular aerial shots of the Kingsferry bridge; I do like seeing places that I’ve been on the telly.

As that finished I caught the end of an episode of Bullseye in which two rather greedy idiots from the 1970s gambled some frankly rubbish prizes in the hope of getting a speedboat, and lost the lot. Personally I could never see the attraction of winning a speedboat. The things are utterly impractical. Where are you going to keep it? If you store it on your drive or in the garden you’ve got to find a slipway from which to launch it. Have you ever tried to get a boat out of the water and back on to its trailer? And if you are going to keep it moored somewhere, harbour fees ain’t cheap.

I’ve experience of boats. An uncle once persuaded my father to go half-shares on a fishing boat they kept on St Leonards’ beach and I can remember my dad constantly griping about what a load of arse-ache that was.

 

I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. It was still there. Today’s petty squabble on Facebook was about why people should leave cash tips in a restaurant (of at least twenty per cent of the cost of the meal) because the waitresses are so poorly paid. Others were taking the line that it is up to employes to pay staff, not customers. People were getting rather nasty with each other on the matter.

If I’m going to leave a tip in a restaurant I’d not leave a cash tip. I’d pay it on the card so’s everyone working in the place could get a share. I used to work in the kitchen of a seaside restaurant. My basic wage was the same as the waiting staff. My take-home was a fraction of theirs. They got tips and I never did.

 

I set off to work on another dark morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting their drivel as they do. There was more talk about the Archbishop who resigned yesterday over the ongoing scandal, and talk of four more bishops who should resign. The Archbishop of York said that those who "actively covered this up" should go but he said those were not bishops. I suppose he would, wouldn't he?

As I said yesterday, in my experience bishops are a dodgy lot.

Meanwhile President Trump is planning who is going to have the top jobs in his new government. He's giving senior positions to the world's richest man Elon Musk, and to Fox News pundits and (so it was claimed) those who'd supported him in his campaign. There was quite a bit of consternation that he wasn't appointing people who'd been elected to public office but was appointing those who'd done him favours despite their having no political experience. It strikes me that Mr. Trump hasn't really got any political experience, and that's never stopped him, has it?

 

I got to work where I did my bit. In between this and that I did an external quality assessment blood film. Periodically NHS Head Office send out slides from obscure cases to check we don't miss anything important. It was in one of these that I saw some trypanosomes today.  Trypanosomes are nasty little things that get into your blood and cause sleeping sickness. I've never seen them outside of external quality assessment exercises, but I live in hope.

And I got a certificate and award for forty years service. It came in the post. Bearing in mind I hit forty years in September 2021 I can only assume it got delayed on the way somewhere.

 

I came home to find the Christmas "Viz" magazine had come in the post as well. That hadn’t been delayed.