6 June 2026 (Saturday) - Whelnetham

 

I meant to bring a clock… I always feel rather confused and disorientated if I don’t know what the time is… it turned out that it was five o’clock when the dogs wanted to go for a tiddle this morning. Mind you when I say “go for a tiddle” I actually mean “go play silly beggars in the great new garden we’ve got”. But they’ve learned their lesson and stayed away from the swamp which was masquerading as a pond.

After five minutes the novelty of “silly beggars” wore off. I dried their bellies and we all went back to bed. But I was wide awake.

I plumbed the lap-top into the cottage wi-fi and posted up yesterday’s photos. It’s the sort of thing I want to see when others post them.

 

We tuned in to Radio Ashford for Steve’s “Guess The Lyrics” competition. “I thought i could have my cake and eat it too”… no? I had no idea either. It was The Four Seasons.

Karl boiled up a particularly good full English brekkie. Oh, it was good. I contributed by loading the dishwasher afterwards. The plan was to go for a walk, but it was raining, so we sat in the conservatory and I fell asleep…

 

I woke to excitement. The rain had stopped and we were forecast four hours of dry. We hurried off to nearby Whelnetham and had a little walk guided as ever by a series of geocaches. A rather good series of geocaches as it happened. I’ve never found one magnetised to a road drain before. As we walked we saw a rather spectacular red kite. The dogs chased rabbits and came back incredibly quickly (for them). The walk was only marred by some local thug getting incredibly aggressive because Morgan and Bailey dared to run within fifteen yards of his dog. For someone who never wanted dogs I do tend to get rather protective of them… but to be fair the dogs just ran in his general direction, and came back when called. The local by-laws said that dogs had to be under control which mine were. For all that Thugbert was ranting about dogs being on leads, those who insist on dogs being on leads generally know very little about dogs.

 

We came back to base. We had a pint and sat in the garden with it… for about five minutes until the rain hit. Then we adjourned to the conservatory for crisps and another pint. And a game of chess. Not all of the bits were there, but they rarely are.

 

It was soon tea time. Karl boiled up a rather good pasta and chicken sausages and I offered sage advice, and Jess and Charlotte soon arrived.

The dogs got very excited again…

 

I took a few photos today.

5 June 2026 (Friday) - Off On Holiday

I couldn’t sleep last night. I gave up and got up at three o’clock and watched an episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” before going and waking “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs.

They weren’t keen on it.

 

We got on our way shortly after half past six and made really good time right up to junction twenty-eight of the motorway where Google told us we’d found a one-hour tailback. That was an inconvenience. But good old Google told us of a diversion we might take along Wiggly Bottom Lane and pausing only briefly to tiddle in a lay-by we arrived at Duxford McDonalds about thirty seconds before Kark and Tracey.

 

We chuckled at the row the staff were having; we scoffed sausage and egg McMuffins, and drove down to Rede where we went for a little walk. As always our walk was guided by several geocaches…

We started with a puzzle at the church and couldn’t find the information we needed.

We couldn’t find the second one…

Once we’d found the third one we realised what was going on… geocaches all have difficulty ratings scoring them from one to five. These had all been rated at one and a half (really easy to find) They should really all have been rated at three and a half or higher… But we eventually found twelve out of fourteen, and the dogs were rather good off the leads which was a result.

 

From there we went to dinner at the White Horse in Rede. The people were friendly, the food excellent. The dogs all got a treat of biccies and cream. But it was odd that they had no ale on hand pumps. They were getting some in a couple of weeks’ time. Presumably no demand for the stuff?

 

We then divided our forces. Some went to get food shopping. We went to the Nethergate brewery to get beer and cider. An interesting place – it’s got its own bar. Might go back there in a day or so…

 

And then on to the holiday cottage. There’s a pin for the place on Google maps. You’d think the pin would correspond with the actual location, wouldn’t you? But we found it, and once unpacked we had a little look around.

The place has three ponds. As a pond-keeper I rather thought that the smaller two might need a little maintenance. The third looked to be in a very sorry state. Behind a gate and with very thick weed and much all over its surface. So thick that you might mistake it for solid ground if you were as silly as Morgan and Bailey who went charging up… There was a look of total horror on their faces as the ground on which they were running just collapsed underneath them.

They aren’t keen on swimming at the best of times.

Fortunately there was a hose in the cottage garden. They weren’t keen on the hose either but there it was. It was as well we’d brought a lot of dog shampoo along, and it didn’t take *that* long to scrub them.

 

We had some rather good pizzas for tea which we scoffed in a conservatory. Have you ever scoffed in a conservatory? I’d not convinced about them.

The beer gave way to port, and it all got rather vague…

 

I took a few photos of the day… sadly nowhere near as many as I usually do.

4 June 2026 (Thursday) - Rain, Puzzles, Packing

I slept for nine hours last night; that was a result. Mind you I did spend all of yesterday feeling like death warmed up. That’s night shifts…

I got up and made toast. I scoffed it peering into a dull Internet. Not a lot was kicking off really. Some left wing crackpots were posting to Facebook ranting about people canvassing for the Restore UK party who were wearing some sort of uniform. Some were saying it was a good thing, some were saying it was illegal, some were likening it to the Brownies… I’ll just say that nothing has divided the country quite as much as the recent rise of the nationalists.

As I stared into the Internet so not-so-nice-next-door came and took our garden waste bin. I popped out to see what was going on. The bin men had swapped our bins over. We swapped them back; I remarked about how the bin men never put the bins back properly and she smiled. That’s a step in the right direction.

 

Despite the weather forecast I took the dogs out. We delivered cards then went up to Kings Wood. We got about a quarter of a mile when the heavens opened. We got about a couple of hundred yards more and I was soaked to the skin, and the dogs all looked miserable.

We gave up and came home for a warming shower. I made a cuppa for “er indoors ^TM” and myself, and the sun came out.

I spent an hour trying to solve a series of geo-puzzles that were published this morning. I didn’t solve any.

I amazed myself by Munzing from “rainy” straight to “alloy” … I couldn’t think of any other word ending in “y” that had an “a” in it..

 

I had a look at packing for our holiday… You wouldn’t believe the amount of pairs of trousers that I found. I was rather twitchy about getting today’s trousers ready after their earlier soaking, but I’ve got three pairs packed that I didn’t know I had, and will be wearing a fourth pair that I had no idea that I had either. How is it possible to be so blissfully aware of how many pairs of trousers you’ve got

I ordered up some beer for tomorrow, and had another look at the geo-puzzles. I solved all of them. Well, Gordon told me the answer to one.

 

Seeing the rain had stopped I went into the garden. We did “FEED THE FISH” and I re-potted one of the pond plants which had got too big for the floating basket and was threatening to topple it.

And then it started raining again.

 

Once the rain stopped we got most of our luggage loaded into the car ready for tomorrow, and the holiday started with a KFC dinner which we scoffed whilst watching an episode of “The Orville”

I’ve (hopefully) figured out where we are going tomorrow…

I should have an early night as we’ve got an early start tomorrow. 

3 June 2026 (Wednesday) - Rather Tired

Last night was a typical night shift really (I suppose), but I did find myself reflecting on how night shifts have changed. The first one I ever did was some time in August 1985 when we were called in from home as needed. I did maybe half a dozen blood counts that night and was finished by half past midnight.

Last night I spent the entire shift in the department (when I wasn't on the loo). I cleared up the work that the day shifts couldn't complete and then had over sixty blood counts, a couple of dozen coagulation screens and was going (quite literally) all night long.

Some days I don't get to my daily step target of six thousand steps; I'd cleared that by half past six this morning.

 

The pain in my back eased a little overnight which was a result. I did something to my back over the weekend. On Monday  I thought I'd got a trapped nerve as the pain had moved to my right arse cheek, and yesterday it slowly moved its way down my thigh. I Googled my symptoms (which is never a good thing to do) and ended up wishing that I hadn't.

However the Bombay Bad Bot pot noodle I had for lunch yesterday had worked its way through, and I spent the last half of the night wishing I'd had toast and jam for lunch instead.

I was glad to see the early shift roll in, and I was even gladder to drive off homewards.

 

As I drove home the pundits on the radio were talking about the riots sparked by the death of Henry Nowak. Having been stabbed to death by some maniac, the chap’s family called for his death not to be made a political issue, and so no end of people have deliberately made it just that.

As I came up Brookfield Road I saw that petrol was five pence per litre more expensive than what I'd paid in Maidstone to top up last night, so that was something of a result. Mind you the pundits on the radio had said that petrol in America was four dollars per gallon... that's  two pounds and ninety six pence per gallon which is about sixty-two pence a litre as opposed to the one pound fifty-six pence per litre I paid last night. You have to wonder why the Americans get their petrol so cheaply, don't you?

 

I got home, went to bed and woke up five hours later feeling like death warmed up. I had a vague idea to take the dogs to Orlestone woods for a walk, but it was hossing down.

Whilst Morgan ate “er indoors ^TM” ‘s sock I phoned Sainsburys helpline to whinge. I went into the petrol station at Aylesford last night to get exactly the same experience that I had a couple of weeks ago when I wrote: “It turned out that despite every single food item being labelled as "meal deal", only certain items were actually in the meal deal. The woman behind the till felt that it was rather obvious what was and what wasn't in the deal, and seemed to think that the labelling was some sort of advertising or artwork”. 

I got through to someone whose first language obviously wasn’t English. I outlined the problem and he’s going to investigate it for me. That will be nice. I’ve whinged in the past… there’s a simple issue in that they simply need to make their signage clearer, but they seem to want to blow it out of all proportion.

 

I then spent quite a while making today’s blog piccie, doing CPD, and downloading geocaches for next week’s excursions. I downloaded about ten thousand – hopefully that should be enough. As I downloaded I watched the first episode of the third season of “The Handmaid’s Tale”. I can’t help but wonder if the writers have run out of steam; the characters have completely changed from what they were in the previous season. But I suppose it makes for dramatic telly all the time you don’t think too hard about it.

We did “FEED THE FISH” and I gave my new hair trimmers a first trial run. I might have been a bit vigorous with them.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good bit of scoff which we washed down with a bottle of plonk. But not just any old bottle of plonk; the cheapest one I could find in Sainsburys last night.

It wasn’t too shabby at all… And with it scoffed the dogs amazed me. Rather than going over to the other sofa with “er indoors ^TM”, they all looked at me expectantly. It took me a minute to realise that they’ve realized that after our having a bottle of plonk I usually share a packet of cheesy biccies with them.

They are rather clever…

2 June 2026 (Tuesday) - Before The Night Shift

I woke in the small hours to the sound of Treacle squeaking. She’d got off the bed and couldn’t get back on… until I got up to help her when she jumped up easily enough. As I was up anyway I went to the loo, and then dozed on and off listening to the sound of the rain. The heatwave has finally given in to rain. Ho hum…

I got up and made toast. As I scoffed I had my usual rummage round the Internet. I was presented with quite a few adverts for an upcoming psychic fair. It will be run by someone claiming to be “a renowned Tarot practitioner and intuitive healer who empowers others by illuminating their path with deep insight and spiritual clarity”. 

She’s also a “Usui Reiki Master and Teacher, who practices on a intuitive & spiritual level”.

Am I being unfair trying not to laugh out loud? Fifteen years ago when times were hard I used to try to sell oil paintings at these psychic fairs. The same old people would come to them, and hand over not inconsiderable amounts of money. One chap would rub their heads another would have them lie under a blanket and wave what he claimed was an eagle’s wing over them…  and they would all turn up a month later at the next psychic fair with the same ongoing maladies.

I’ll just make the observation that *if” this stuff actually worked, why do its proponents go to doctors and hospitals when they are ill?

And there was whinging from Hastings. The old building that used to house the printing works of the local newspaper has opened a rooftop bar with spectacular views… and spectacular prices. One gin & tonic and a tin (tin!) of cider was eighteen quid.

 

The weather forecast said the rain would ease so we went to the woods for a walk. Either the rain or the threat of parking prices had put people off of going to Kings Wood – there was only one other car in the car park when we arrived.

We walked a different walk to our usual one. With reports that one of my geocaches had gone missing we arranged our route to go past it and have a look. The thing was exactly where it was supposed to be. I always thought that one was rather easy to find, but people have struggled with it. I’ve amended the hint.

From there we meandered our way back to the car. It was a shame that Morgan had to rill in fox poo, but there it is.

 

Once home I hosed muddy paws and muddy bellies (and fox poo), did monthly flea treatments, put a load of washing in to scrub and made myself a cuppa. I Munzed. I Wordled from “toast” to “basis” via “scram” and “ashen”. I wrote up some CPD, and went to bed for a few hours.

It was too hot to sleep properly.

I got up and watched a few episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale”. At an hour long the episodes are loo long, and the characters aren’t really believable; seemingly changing their attitudes and natures every two minutes depending on the twists of the plot.

 

I’m off to the night shift in a minute… 

1 June 2026 (Monday) - Work, Ironing

I woke after an hour’s sleep, and then saw every hour of the night. I finally gave up trying to sleep at five o’clock, got up and watched an episode of “The Handmaild’s Tale”. It’s a rather thought-provoking show. How do these totalitarian states run by religious crackpots actually work when the entire thing is based on a system of religious crackpottery in which no one actually believes.

I had my usual look at Facebook… perhaps I shouldn’t. The Reform UK councillor for one of the wards on the Romney Marsh was ranting about the proposed solar farm which might or might not be built on the Romney Marsh. His position was that he was for it and against it and would go with whatever opinion would seem to get him the most votes. I suppose that’s as good a position as we can expect from any politician?

I got ready for work.

 

As I drove up the motorway the pundits on the radio were talking about how parliament was going to be discussing the "Single Patient Record"; a plan to combine GP, hospital and social care data records so patients don't have to keep repeating their medical history time and again at appointments, and so that clinicians can access anyone's medical history. Needless to say the conspiracy theory crackpots are up in arms about it, but from my personal perspective it would be invaluable for me to know someone's blood transfusion history if they didn't live locally and didn't feature on our works IT system.

I was rather amazed to hear that parliament was going to be discussing it for the first time; this was first tried nearly twenty years ago. The project dragged on and on, and wasn't the glowing success everyone had been hoping for.

My diaries of the time mentioned the DCW which was rather fundamental to the project. Perhaps if we had ever found out what DCW stood for, things might have turned out differently.

And there was talk about a load of midwives in a hospital in Nottingham. Supposedly having been guilty of everything possible bad thing under the sun, it was suggested that they were actually massively overworked, with administrators seemingly unaware of what staffing levels actually were supposed to be. Rather ironic when you think that NHS Trusts are trying to get staff to go, isn't it?

 

As I drove I managed not to crash into the van of "Orchard 2 Office" ; a company which specialises in delivering fruit to workplaces. As I have said so many times, if you are going to drive like a mania, it is best done in a vehicle that doesn't have your company's name and logo emblazoned all over it.

I stopped off at Sainsburys to get lunch, then went in to work. Today was supposedly a non-working day, but what with having had a minor hiccup over the weekend I'd been asked to go in for an extra day. I was happy to do so. As I said only two days ago, bearing in mind how I was treated where I used to work, it is rather good to be asked to help. 

 

With my bit done I came home. We had pizza and “er indoors ^TM” went bowling as she does on Mondays. I put more episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the telly and got on with the ironing as the dogs slept.

 

Somehow or other I’ve managed to trap a nerve in my leg today. It really hurts….

31 May 2026 (Sunday) - Lazy Day

Being wide awake at half past five I put the washing machine on, and having got up and done something I then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. When I got up I had a rather bad backache; I wonder what set that off?

I hung out the washing, made toast and looked at the Internet. Yesterday when I was at work “er indoors ^TM” hid a geocache in Boughton Aluph. This morning I got an email telling me that it (and others locally) had gone live at seven o’clock this morning. There’s a chap who lives up the road who seems obsessed with being the first one to get to any new geocache. He found “er indoors ^TM”’s one within an hour of it being published. Having found that one five miles away in Boughton Aluph whilst I was asleep, he took a couple of minutes to get back to the car, had a twenty minute drive down some incredibly narrow country lanes where he found another new one at Charing. And then got the hat trick by driving on to Pluckley where he found his third one. For an encore he got two more in Tenterden and was on his way home before ten o’clock on a Sunday morning…

Each to their own I suppose…

There was an interesting squabble on one of the pond-related Facebook pages that I follow. It was claimed that your water bill is only payable on water that then goes back down the drains and sewers, and consequently any water that goes into a garden pond is free. It was claimed that you could set up a water meter on your garden hose to measure how much water goes into your garden ponds and claim a refund.

Can You? I don’t know. I’m not even on a water meter so it’s no skin off my nose, but you should have seen the bickering this suggestion provoked.

 

I Munzed, Wordled from “water” to “etude”. “Etude” !!! After “teeth” and “elite” I knew I had et—e and looked up what five letter words might fit. There was only one. Apparently it is a short piece of music. One lives and learns.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went to brekkie with friends. I stayed home and pootled. I sorted undercrackers, pulled weeds from flower pots, cleaned out the fish tank filter, cleaned out the small pond filter, swept round, gathered dog turds (four times!). By the time “er indoors ^TM” came hone I was worn out.

 

“My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” popped in. They’d been tree shopping at B&Q and looking at materials for making a pergola for their garden. We had a rather good bit of dinner and put the world to rights.

When they went I then ran the hose out to top up the big pond, and whilst I was at it I cleaned out the pond’s filter. It is *so* much easier to clean the pressure filter than the old box filter that we used to have,

I had a little kip. I’d far rather sleep during the night than during the afternoon, but there it is.

 

I’ve had a rather lazy day today… not a bad thing occasionally.