17 October 2024 (Thursday) - Home Alone

This morning’s petty squabble on Facebook was about the national Town Criers’ Championship which took place recently in Rye. No? – it passed off pretty much unnoticed, didn’t it? Traditionally it has been held in Hastings but over the last couple of years it has moved to Rye as Hastings Town Council say they can’t afford it any more. Those who like town crier competitions are up in arms about this. Those who don’t were pointing out that council-funded town crier competitions attract dozens of people whereas self-funding events (like the bonfire parade and Jack in the Green) attract tens of thousands. Time for a change in the way the thing is funded, perhaps? It strikes me that town crier competitions are the Radio Three of public entertainment; only there because someone else is paying for it. I wonder how long Rye town council will carry on shelling out for this event?

 

“er indoors ^TM” was having an office day today so she set off leaving me with the dogs. Yesterday Treacle had a dodgy leg, but this morning it seemed better. We went to the woods and I thought that if her leg was playing up we might cut the walk short and come home. We walked four miles; she seemed fine.

Sadly as we walked we had an “episode”. Some child was toddling along with its father, and on seeing Bailey went absolutely hysterical. I could understand it if Bailey was the size of other dogs, but she is XS of the dog world.

With walk walked we came home; I was expecting the dogs to be filthy; their bellies needed hosing off but they weren’t that grubby at all considering the overnight rain. And seeing how their backs were dry I did the monthly flea treatments. In a novel break with tradition Treacle didn’t run away. All three were as good as gold for a drop on the back of the neck.

 

My plan for today was to screw together all the wooden sleepers of the bog filter. I had a look in the shed and saw I didn’t have quite enough screws. And (to be honest) my drill bit isn’t what it once was. So I ordered up some more from Amazon, and whilst I was at it I ordered some new wellies too. My ones sprung a leak a week or so ago, and they let quite a bit of water in whilst we were up the woods earlier.

 

With plans poggered I cracked on with the ironing whilst watching a DVD. “Quadrophenia” was nowhere near as good as I remembered it. Once it had finished I got up. Treacle leapt up thinking she was missing something and she hobbled after me. Having seemingly been fine whilst in the woods she was certainly struggling this afternoon. I sat on the sofa rubbing her leg for much of the afternoon.

As I massaged I watched more episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which the proprietors of four bed and breakfast establishments competed to see who was best. The loser had the right arse about losing; amazingly he didn’t seem to realise that his establishment’s gimmick (they didn’t actually do a breakfast) would count against him.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home. I fed her Plov Mk II. It was an improvement on what I’d boiled up a week ago. Having said that, it has still got a way to go. Mk III won’t have carrots, and korma might be a better flavour than tikka was.

As we scoffed we watched the most recent episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. I won’t give the game away, but I will say that in this episode the weakest team were eliminated, and I smiled.

 

Oh – and Pigsy died today. He was an absolute hero back in the day. Sandy died from heart issues four years ago, and Tripitaka died of leukaemia nearly forty years ago. When you bear in mind that him who played the horse died seven years ago, there’s only Monkey left.

They don’t make TV shows like that any more.

16 October 2024 (Wednesday) - This n That

As I do on the morning after most vaccinations, I woke feeling vaguely cheated. So many people claim to have such terrible after-effects from injections. I’m sure it’s all in the mind. I blame the people giving the jab. If they were to say that this was a new vaccine and you might just possibly come out in a bright red rash then quite a few people would be reaching for the felt-tipped pens just to be sure they didn’t miss out. I can remember our BCG vaccines at school. We were told that our arms might be sore for a day or so and half our class were supposedly in agony for a week. One lad in particular would go hysterical screaming “mind my BCG!!!” if anyone came within two yards of him for the rest of the year.

 

I made toast and scoffed it whilst peering into the Internet. It was still there. Nothing much had changed really. People were squabbling over trivia as people do. But I had a pang of guilt.

Many years ago (forty-nine) I took a friend along to Boys Brigade. This chap’s father had died when he was very young, and he latched onto every man who came into his life; obviously craving a father figure. Through me, my old mate met the Boys Brigade leader who was a religious nut. And because of that my old mate became a religious nut himself. He’s now the pastor of a big Baptist church in the west country and his church regularly posts up videos of him preaching. One of his videos was on Facebook this morning.

In these videos he spouts stark staring nonsense and has a bible quote for absolutely every single thing that happens. Going to McDonalds, having a pee, watching “Bake Off”, taking the dogs out… he has a verse for everything. All of which seems perfectly sensible to him and all of which are clearly ridiculous and don’t stand up to any reasoned thought whatsoever. Sometimes when watching his videos I fear for his sanity…and it’s all my fault that he got religion.

 

I Munzed, then got ready for the day. I put washing in to scrub then took the dogs up to Kings Wood. I had “did not find” logs on two of my geocaches. One was there, one wasn’t. I replaced the missing one. As we walked we met other dog walkers; every meeting passed off without incident. It usually does when there is no one to see the dogs behaving themselves.

 

We came home. I had a cuppa then cracked on with the current pond project. I (sort of) levelled up the area at the top of the pond which I had dug out over the weekend, lined the sleeper at the top of the pond, got weed-proof membranes in place and put the sleepers for the bog filter roughly in place. Thirty seconds to type; over three hours to do. As I worked I spirit-levelled every bit individually, but with it all (sort of) together it looked more pissed than a pissed thing. Oh well… if all goes to plan it will all be hidden by rocks and plants anyway.

The plan is that tomorrow I shall attach all the bits of wood together. I wonder if I will.

 

I came in, had a cuppa and realized I could hardly move. I had a look at my bank account, did some CPD, and suddenly remembered that I’d put some washing on the line earlier. I got that lot in, then slobbed about on the telly sleeping through some utter twaddle on the “Blaze” channel about how the Americans stole atom bombs form aliens during the second world war.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters: Australia” as a thunderstorm started. It was as well we’ve no end of stuff recorded on the Sky-Q box as the rain was so heavy it poggered the TV satellite signal.

Let’s hope it comes back.

15 October 2024 (Tuesday) - Late Shift

I slept well. Apparently “er indoors ^TM” didn’t. She was in and out with Treacle several times during the night.

I made toast and had my usual rummage round the Internet. There was a major rant happening on one of the local Facebook groups about a local GP surgery. They open their phone lines at eight o’clock for an hour, but say they might close them early if all the appointments go. Apparently this morning the phone lines closed at five past eight.

Thinking back to yesterday’s rant it is quite clear that the GPs can’t cope, so why on Earth does Lord Darzi want to burden them with more work…?

 

I munzed, I failed at Wordle, and took the dogs for a walk. Not having as long as we usually have, we just walked to the park and back. As we walked we saw “OrangeHead” whose head today was a vivid russet. Back in the day when I used to take Fudge to the park we would regularly meet “OrangeHead” and a gang of her mates. I laughingly called the mates “OrangeHead’s posse” and the membership of the posse would ebb and flow. From time to time I’d see her going in one direction and some of her posse going in another. Chatting with them they would all be falling out with each other all the time. It would seem that in the years since we regularly walked round the park she’s still got a posse. I wonder if they still quarrel.

 

I also saw something that boiled my piss. There’s some relatively new houses that have been built near the park overlooking the river, It would take over six years wages of the average UK citizen to buy one of them. Alternatively you could get one by taking out a mortgage over twenty-five years and paying back over a thousand quid a month. Sitting on the other side of the river from these houses is a tent in which some poor homeless sod had set up.

This isn’t the future I was promised…

 

We came home. Because we’ve got a home to come to. The dogs had brekkie, and on seeing a new geocache had gone live not a million miles from work I set off early in the hope of getting a First to Find.

I didn’t get it.

I went on to work where as well as having a rather busy afternoon I also had both my COVID and flu injections, and came home through the rain.

 

Mind you not getting to be First to Find, being busy and having injections pales into insignificance compared to that poor sod in his tent in Viccie Park in the rain.

14 October 2024 (Monday) - A Wet and Rainy Day

Amongst other things outside I had planned a walk round the woods this morning and then I wanted to get slabs into the bottom of the area I was digging out yesterday. I was a bit miffed to wake to find heavy rain. Ho hum…

 

I contended myself with making toast and my usual look at the Internet. It was still there, and there wasn’t a lot happening in there. Mind you I did learn something today. The monkey from the 1960s TV show “Lost In Space” apparently had its teeth removed as it kept biting people. There’s a sign of the times, eh? Could you imagine that happening today? Biting people would be the monkey’s inalienable right, wouldn’t it?

 

I munzed, got Wordle at the fourth attempt, and seeing the rain was showing no sign of letting up I put some washing in, and cracked on with CPD. As I did so my piss boiled. Lord Darzi has reviewed the NHS and found quite a bit of fault, and my professional body have published their response to his review.

Is the NHS going to have radical change? Is my professional lot going to change massively?

Short answer – I doubt it.

Long answer… I’m reminded of my grandmother listening to a cousin jabbering on at great length loudly and noisily about the equally pretentious proclamations of the committee of the local fishing club, whilst actually doing nothing himself other than sitting on his bum and finding fault. Gran listened patiently to his ranting then announced “fine words butter no parsnips”.

And this is true of both what Lord Darzi has found and the IBMS’s response.

 

Lord Darzi’s report highlights the rising number of people living with multiple long-term conditions and the strain this places on hospitals. To address these challenges he says that immediate action and a strengthened diagnostic infrastructure are needed to ensure early detection, continuous monitoring, and better management of chronic diseases.

Can’t disagree there.

He goes on to say that a shift in the NHS’s focus from hospitals to community-based care is essential, and claims that expanding the reach of diagnostics into community settings will enable earlier interventions and reduce pressure on hospitals.

We can’t argue with that in theory, can we?

But in practice? Lord Darzi has done reviews of the NHS before. He feels (probably rightly) that the NHS is too big and would work better in smaller units. However at the time of his last review of the NHS pathology services were reviewed by Lord Carter of Coles and he said “big is better”, and successive governments spent twenty years working along those lines. I’m breaching no confidences by saying this; it is a matter of public record. Just read the newspapers or watch the news.

 

If Lord Darzi wants diagnostic testing out in the community with a massive increase in point of care testing he needs to staff it. So he can either de-skill the workforce, and we all saw how that went (on national TV!), or he can recruit a *lot* more biomedical scientists. And he can only do that by making the job more attractive. And that will cost.

And that’s just the part of the NHS about which I’ve got more than a passing acquaintance. The same is probably true everywhere in healthcare.

 

On reflection I can’t help but wonder if Lord Darzi has missed the point. The whole point of a hospital is that it is a centre of excellence. If you’re a tad poorly you go ask the pharmacist for some jollop. If his jollop don’t work you go see your GP. If whatever is wrong with you is beyond him, you go to the hospital. And if your ailment is particularly out of the ordinary your local hospital will send you to a tertiary referral centre. The whole point here is that health care ain’t cheap, and there are massive economies of scale by centralising. It is far more cost effective (and practical) to have a single team of surgeons and the entire operating theatre kit and kaboodle at one central location rather than having one at each of a dozen (or more) GP surgeries in every town.

 

Having said (ranted) that, personally I’m taking whatever Lord Darzi has to say with a pinch of salt. Whatever he says simply won’t happen. At the risk of appearing to be an old reactionary, I really have seen it all before. Many times.

There will be all sorts of meetings at the Department of Health. Meetings, meetings about meetings that have happened. Meetings about meetings that are to happen. Eventually NHS Trusts will get orders from these meetings… and at the very point where something might actually happen, Lord Darzi’s ideas will be superceded by the next great NHS shake-up.

Look at what Lord Darzi is suggesting… he feels that (effectively) those in community-based care will call the shots in the NHS. That’s been done before (at least twice) and abandoned both times because of political ideology rather than any tangible evidence.

 

What the NHS needs is a load more money to recruit and train staff. And having recruited and trained staff it needs to be left alone for whatever is the current review and shake-up to take effect. Realistically this will take a few years.

Then this current review and shake-up needs to be formally reviewed and assessed, and fine-tuned on the strength of verifiable objective data, not the whim of whatever politician is in vogue at the time. As happens all the time.

The Prime Minister claims to have a ten-year plan. Perhaps he has. Perhaps he will review and reform the NHS properly. Personally I hope he does and I wish him every success. But a ten-year vision from a politician is a brave thing.

 

I try not to blog about work, but sometimes…

13 October 2024 (Sunday) - A Walk, More Pond

I slept for nine hours last night. Something of a result. I got up, and as I do most mornings, made toast and peered into the Internet. Apparently last night was Hastings Bonfire Parade. I should have known that, and we wouldn’t have gone anyway, but I felt rather miffed that I’d missed it.

Glossing over endless adverts for lengthy holidays in far-away places there wasn’t much else happening on-line, so I went and fetched the car from where I’d parked it after Dog Club yesterday. It started bleating about low tyre pressures; it claimed all four tyres needed a bit of air. So I got the pump out. They all did.

This has left me wondering – I’ve never had a car that tells me about tyre pressures before. Had I been driving round with low tyre pressures for years? I’ll never know.

And with tyres pumped I went into the garden and spent half an hour shifting shingle for the current ongoing pond project.

 

After half an hour we got the dogs onto their leads and drove down to Ham Street. I’d suggested a little walk to “er indoors ^TM”, and “My Boy ^TM”, Cheryl and Ro-Ro wanted to come along too.

As always when looking for a little walk I’d looked at the geocache map and spotted a multi-cache near Ham Street garden centre. This involved going to the given location and solving a little puzzle to find the final location of the geocache. Looking at the map it was pretty obvious that the cache would be on the footpath along the military canal, and whichever way we went would put us near a second geocache… so there was our walk laid out for us.

 

We all met up in a lay-by near Ham Street; I solved the puzzle and sure enough we had a final location a quarter of a mile down the canal. After a quick(ish) find we carried on to a notice board about the construction of the canal. The second cache was a puzzle based on this notice board. We got the information we needed and we carried on walking as I solved the puzzle. It didn’t take me long to realise we’d walked past the cache. So we carried along the canal as far as the railway line then turned back. The second cache was soon found. It was… I won’t give spoilers, but the non-hunters-of-Tupperware in our group were rather impressed.

I was impressed too. Again a silly little hobby had given us a rather good walk along a rather pretty canal where we wouldn’t otherwise have gone. As we came along the canal we saw herons and egrets, swans and cygnets, and even a hawk. We saw some people fishing, and one other group of walkers, but other than that we had the world to ourselves. Geocaching takes us to some rather good places.

 

With walk walked we drove up the road to Ham Street garden centre. The place has rebuilt its car park. We had a nosey round, then on seeing the café was dog-friendly we had a cuppa. I suspect that when they said “dog friendly” they weren’t expecting us to bring in four, but they were amazingly well behaved. A cuppa and a slice of lemon drizzle cake went down very well.

 

We said our goodbyes and came home. I went out to the garden and cracked on shifting shingle, then lifted the weed-proof membranes and dug out the basic shape for my new bog filter. As I dug I realized that two of the garden slabs which had been underneath the old garden tub were exactly the right size to line the hole I’d dug. But getting them level would take some doing. That can be tomorrow’s project…

I came in for coffee and cake (oh yus!) and sent an email to AllPondSolutions – I need a new input thingy for the pressure filter. The existing one seems to have a crack and is dripping.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good curry which we scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the fifth season of “Lego Masters: Australia”. In this season they’ve brought back winners and runners-up from the first four seasons to have a “Grand Masters” contest.

It’s a shame they’ve brought back the opinionated and arrogant idiot from the first season; hope he loses.

(is that wrong of me?)

12 October 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Pond, Games Night

I woke, put a load of washing in to scrub, made toast and had a fight with my lap-top. It didn’t want to look at the Internet this morning. I turned it off and on again, and all was fine. I can remember years ago having similar issues with a video recorder. We called out the nice man who’d only the day before put up an arial on the roof for us. He pulled out the plug, counted to ten and plugged it back in again and all was fine. He didn’t charge us as we’d already spent a lot of money with him that week, but he said that about a quarter of his call-outs involved pulling the plug, counting to ten, and charging twenty quid. And back then twenty quid was a lot more money than it is now. Mind you, back then people would come out to your house to fix your video recorder. These days Sky just sent out a new box and throw the old one away.

I eventually got at the Internet and found it much the same as it ever is. I munzed as I do, and amazed myself by getting Wordle right on only the second attempt.

 

Being Saturday we set off to Dog Club. Even though it was raining. I must admit I wasn’t keen on going; there’s one dog who started recently who Morgan seriously doesn’t like and has taken to nipping. Last weekend we got him a muzzle, and he wore it today. Together with his coat. All three wore coats today.

With the muzzle on, Dog Club passed off rather well. Several people felt sorry for poor Morgan, and whilst the muzzle stopped him nipping, it certainly didn’t stop him getting treats.  

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off to craft club. I took the dogs home. As we drove I caught the end of Steve doing the Mystery Year on the radio. I thought it was 1974, and I sent in my answer. And then “Annie’s Song” came over the airwaves which told me I was right. I can remember it coming out. In 1974.

That was a tune I once learned on the piano about twenty-five years ago when I was taking piano lessons.

 

We got home. I hung up wet coats and gave the dogs a once-over. They were dry and clean under their coats, and were soon fast asleep. I went into the garden and cleaned the small pond’s filter. I did want to do more outside. I had plans for what I wanted to do, but the rain was still persisting down. So instead as I listened to Steve on the radio I made a cuppa and counted up the Dog Club money instead. I count it every couple of weeks, pocket it and transfer the same amount from my account to the Repton Centre’s account… there’s not as much in the pot these days as there used to be. Either people are paying their money to the Repton people directly or people aren’t stumping up. Should I be worrying? I don’t see why I should… for all that we enjoy Dog Club I’m still not sure how I’ve ended up being the go-to chap for it? I suppose it’s a case of the old adage “if you want a job done, do it yourself”.

With money counted I then strained my brain on a geo-puzzle. Despite the name it isn’t actually about cabbages… or so I am reliably informed.

 

Once Steve’s radio show finished I still hadn’t solved the puzzle, but the rain had stopped. So I went into the garden and made a start on the next phase of the pond. A couple of months ago I sawed up sleepers in readiness for replacing the bog filter with a bigger one. The job is simple enough:

• Drag out the tub at the top (which I spent months finding and getting just right).
• Disassemble rockery and shift about twenty large rocks.
• Scoop up a couple of cubic metres of shingle.
• Empty the plants from the splash pool into temporary storage.
• Lift out the splash pool.
• Lift up the weed-proof membranes.
• Dig out a hole for the new bog filter.
• Re-lay membranes.
• Put (and screw) sleepers into place to make new filter area.
• Put pond liner into new filter area.
• Test it is all watertight and not overly splashing existing sleepers.
• Put plants back.
• Rebuild and landscape the rockery.
• Replace and landscape the couple of cubic metres of shingle.

I naively thought I might get it all done in a couple of days. After two hours I’d dragged out the top tub, shifted maybe half of the rockery and a quarter of the shingle. I stopped at that point. Rather than cracking on and physically knacking myself, this might be a project best done in smaller sittings.

 

I stopped and had a little rest. It wasn’t long before Chris arrived with the Infinity table, and very soon after Steve and Sarah were with us. We had a very good evening playing Game of Life, Sorry, and Ticket to Ride.

I do like our games evenings; must have another soon…

11 October 2024 (Friday) - Currency Conversions

I was rather later to bed last night than I might have been. There was talk all over social media last night about the Northern Lights being visible in the South East so I went out into the garden, and they were. I took a few photos.

This morning loads of people had posted photos of what they’d seen last night. At the risk of appearing to be an old misery-guts I don’t know what I was expecting from the Northern Lights, but I was expecting more than what I saw. Having often considered going on one of these trips specifically to see the aurora I’m glad I didn’t spend hundreds of pounds. Perhaps they are more impressive closer to the pole? I suppose having been waiting for over fifty years to see the lights, they were never going to live up to my expectations.

It would seem that no one had done much else other than look at the northern lights overnight as there was very little else on social media this morning. Mind you I still had seemingly endless adverts for escorted holidays on my Facebook feed. Since we went away a couple of weeks ago I’m being bombarded with adverts for holidays. One caught my eye; an overland tour round Africa. Pretty much all of Africa. Starting at the end of this month you can tour all round from Morocco to Egypt via Cape Town. It is billed as a “singles” holiday with a target age range of eighteen to eighty and is a tour lasting forty-seven weeks. It only costs ten thousand pounds. I would ask who could go on holiday for a year, but I suppose enough people must do that sort of thing to make it worth the company’s while running them.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on the sixth attempt, and took the dogs to the woods. As we walked we met several dogs in the depths of the woods still on their leads. One chap commented that my dogs weren’t on leads. I replied that he was correct and that they weren’t. He then told me that my dogs were running loose. I pointed out that the reason for that was that they weren’t on their leads. As this bloke glared at me I whistled and walked off with all three dogs following me.

 

We came home. Surprisingly all three dogs were clean. No muck or mud. No need for a bath. So, leaving the dogs with “er indoors ^TM”, I set off to Canterbury. Having taken far too much money with us to Uzbekistan I had quite a few American dollars to change up. I could have changed it up in any one of several places but having changed it into pounds I wanted to put those pounds into my bank account. And seeing how forward-thinking and switched-on my bank is (!), I had to go to the Canterbury branch to do that. At first sight I was rather miffed at how much commission they were charging, but from what I could see on-line, pretty much everyone doing currency conversions was wanting a comparable bung.

With dollars converted and in my account I then asked about the Uzbek money I’ve got left over. The nice bank man asked his boss… it turns out that my bank doesn’t deal in Uzbek Soms, but they said that the bureau de change in the High Street might. I couldn’t get there though – the High Street was cordoned off. Apparently there had been a murder.

Instead, I went to the Post Office where (sadly) all the competent staff had gone for a break and left the village idiot in command. In a rather condescending tone she asked what I wanted. I explained that I wanted to exchange Uzbek soms for pounds sterling. She arrogantly announced that she could easily do that, and snatched my wad of soms with a flourish. She then looked at them. And looked again. And asked what they were supposed to be. I told her that, to the best of my knowledge, they were supposed to be Uzbek soms. She asked where they came from. I replied Uzbekistan (leaving off the “dur!”). She fiddled with her computer, and again asked where they came from.

We went through this four times, after which she told me (rather arrogantly) that she’d been through the “H” section on her computer four times, and there is no such country as Uzbekistan. I took my wad of soms back and told her that I would take my custom to somewhere that can spell “Uzbekistan”.

Sadly it turns out that there isn’t anywhere that I can really take my custom (and soms). I’ve found a couple of places that will change them to pounds, but they want ridiculous amounts of commission. I’ve got about twenty quid’s worth of soms; if any of my loyal readers are going on holiday, let me know…

 

From Canterbury I drove out to Staple. This weekend sees international EarthCache Day. Anyone logging an Earthcache gets a special souvenir.

To the uninitiated, an Earthcache is effectively an unholy combination of a geocache and your geology homework, and having found over a hundred of the things, there’s not many unfound ones left within spitting distance. In fact when I checked the geo-map there was only one within twenty miles of home. Fortunately that one was in the general direction of Canterbury. Now that I’ve logged that one, my closest unfound EarthCache is in the general vicinity of “er indoors ^TM” grandmother’s old house near Bexhill.

 

With EarthCaching done I got out the pressure washer again and had another blat at the area just outside the back door. Really I should do it more often than I do. Little and often, rather than waiting till it gets amazingly filthy and then having to seriously scrub. After all, that pressure washer does generate quite a lot of really dirty water, and I always make the schoolboy error of using the pressure washer to unblock the drain… which sprays muck everywhere.

I then bionically burned the garden path. I must admit I’m quite pleased with that bionic burner. Provided I remember to wave it round once every few weeks it is making a far better job of controlling the weeds than getting on my hands and knees and pulling ever did.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up fish and chips and we scoffed it whilst watching the final of “Bake Off: The Professionals”. That series was rather good, but I was rather distracted by one of the presenters whose skull appeared to be one size too big for her head.

I wonder what we’ll watch next…