18 August 2026 (Tuesday) - Late Shift

I slept for six hours until the pain in my shoulder got too much. I got up and fiddled about until the pain eased off when I went back to bed for another couple of hours.

There was a minor episode over brekkie – the margarine looked as though something had blown up in it. “er indoors ^TM” said it wasn’t her (it was!), and as I scoffed toast so she staged an impromptu dog ear cleaning session. The dogs weren’t happy about having their lugs scrubbed, and sulked as I peered into the Internet. It was much the same as ever. Petty bickering and open displays of ignorance abounded. I really shouldn’t look at it every morning, but if nothing else it reminds me of just how stupid some people are. For example, do people *seriously* expect change out of a hundred quid when calling out an emergency plumber at midnight?

 

I Munzed, and Wordled from “minor” to “strip” in four goes whilst “er indoors ^TM” tried to get Bailey to eat her brekkie. She’s a fussy little dog, and things aren’t helped by Treacle trying to bully her off of every bit of food she’s given.

And then we went to the woods.

 

As we drove the pundits on the radio were a bit twitching about the Russian embassy in London’s announcement that “UK 'will pay' for supplying drones to Ukraine”. I can’t see how anyone can be surprised about that. If a country has no weapons to fight a war, giving them weapons is pretty much the same as fighting the war for them. Isn’t it?

Not having as much time as I’d like we went to Orlestone today. We can go there, walk round and be home all in an hour. Kings Wood takes about two and a half hours. We got to the woods to find only one other car in the car park. Apart from chasing a couple of squirrels the walk was rather uneventful. We saw no-one else, no one rolled in nothing. All rather tranquil for once.

 

We came home. I made us both a cuppa and had a go on the blood transfusion simulator. I got the exercise wrong in that you have to remember how the simulator works, and not how blood transfusions work. A subtle difference…

I then went onto the haemostasis on-lie academy and did one of the little courses on there. I passed that one.

I then phoned the local hospital. When I saw the ENT chap in April he said he would arrange some hearing tests to sort out this ongoing tinnitus. Four months have passed… I phoned three different numbers and just went round in circles. After half an hour I gave up and emailed a formal complaint. In the past I’ve only ever got anywhere by making formal complaints. The ENT chap is really good… *if* you can get an appointment to see him.

 

And then it was time to go to work. I drove up the motorway. The motorway. Not the dual carriageway it has been for weeks.  The "Operation Brock" stupidity has been cancelled (and the motorway re-opened) earlier than planned. Bearing in mind that this has been done a couple of weeks before the busy bank holiday, you really have to ask why the thing was activated in the first place, don't you?

The trouble with "Operation Brock" is that it is brought into play (and shut down) by the Kent Resilience Forum.

The official position of the Kent Resilience Forum is that "it is an operationally independent multi-agency partnership functioning under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, where individual member organizations remain accountable to their own governing bodies, chief officers, and respective central government department". Which means that it wasn't really thought out in the first place, and now it exists, it effectively answers to no one.  Nice work if you can get it.

 

I got some petrol. Today it was six pence per litre cheaper than Ashford. And then went into Sainsburys to get a sandwich. Oh, my piss boiled. Why can't people see that there's dozens of other people in the shop with them? So many of them were just blundering about; totally oblivious of their surroundings and with no care or consideration for anyone else.

I got my sandwich and went to work. It wasn't a bad late shift really.

 

As I did my bit I got a text message. there were reports of a gang of teenagers in Viccie Park, armed with catapults. No one seemed to know what (if anything) they were catapulting at, but the police had been informed. I really can't help but think that a judicious slap and having the brat watch its catapult being destroyed would go a long way to curing the problem. If indeed there is one. 

 

It was dark as I came home... I suppose it should be really. The longest day was two months ago.

17 August 2026 (Monday) - After the Night Shift

Last Saturday when I went to bed my watch told me I’d walked three and a half thousand steps. This morning when I walked out of the night shift my watch told me I’d walked over five thousand steps since midnight. There’s no denying that I’d hoped a Sunday night would have been a quiet shift. Back in the day when I first started night work we’d rarely be called on more than half a dozen times. Last night I had over fifty samples to deal with.

 

As I drove home the pundits on the radio were talking about the new Prime Minister who (so it was claimed) had been taken in by a fraudster who had been pretending to be a senior member of the American government. Apparently only a couple of text messages were exchanged before he wised up to what was going on, but the fact that this was in the news was rather significant. A couple of weeks ago the new Prime Minister was being portrayed as the saviour of the universe. Now he’s fair game for digging the dirt.

The honeymoon period is clearly over.

I got bored with the news, and listened to my Adrian Mole MP3 audiobook instead. In the past I’ve been very scathing about audiobooks, but am I turning to the dark side?

 

I got home. For all that the temperature is down on what it has been over the last week, it was forecast to be warm later so I took the dogs out right away. It was only a short drive to Orlestone.

Just lately our walks have been “fox-poo-free”… well, to be precise, probably only seemingly “fox-poo-free”. I suspect that there had been some rolling going on, but what with everything having been so hot and bone dry all the fox turds had been baked dry. However last night there had been rain. Quite a bit of it. And that had rehydrated the fox turds, as evidenced by the frankly massive skid mark that Bailey got up her back within five minutes of getting to the woods.

We walked for two miles and saw two other groups. Morgan grumbled at them; I wish he wouldn’t.

 

We came home. Once Bailey had had a bath (with soap!) I had a shave and a shower and went to bed. Morgan and Bailey came with me. I rather suspected that they’d come up for a fight, but both settled and we slept for four hours. That’s not a bad sleep after a night shift.

 

Eventually the ongoing pain in my arm woke me. About a month ago I whinged about my arm. There’s an almost constant sensation of numbness/tingling/pins and needles in my left hand, and an intermittent sensation of pain in my upper left arm and shoulder. So I went onto the doctor’s website and filled in the on-line questionnaire in the hope that someone might get back to me about it.

Whilst I was at it I had a look at the Internet as I do. A Facebook friend was having a birthday today. The chap used to live just down the road from me when I was at primary school. We lost contact years ago but got in touch through Facebook. We actually met a few years ago when he wanted details of my father’s funeral which was a kind thought.

 

I Munzed (having Wordled at three o’clock this morning), and we did “FEED THE FISH”. Again little Treacle squealed in excitement when I made the announcement. I then voomed round the garden with the watering can, and then my phone beeped. The doctor wants to see me… well specifically wants to see my left arm. They sent me a link to book an appointment. I had the choice of one date (in two weeks’ time). I’m not sure why I had to mess about going through the website if I only had the choice of one date, but I’m now booked in for a fortnight on Thursday.

I wrote up some CPD. I thought about cleaning pond filters (Monday is usually pond filter day) but by then it was nearly five o’clock. The pond will keep for a day or so.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pie and chips and went bowling. I settled in front of the telly and watched an episode of “Stranger Things”. At an hour and a half it was too long; the next episode plays for over two hours. Apparently the writers felt that movie-length episodes allowed them to tell a better story. Maybe it did, but I’m not sitting still for over two hours. I shall watch that next episode in (at least) three separate sittings.

16 August 2026 (Sunday) - Before the Night Shift

I slept reasonably well, but was awake a couple of hours earlier than I might have liked.

I got up and went straight round the garden gathering dung before Bailey could go out and gather it for herself. She worries me. She is such a fussy eater when it comes to dog food, but given half a chance she yums up all the turds in the garden. I had a theory that if she didn’t fill up on dung, she might eat her brekkie.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. There have been several sightings of big cats. Some near Stonehenge, and some near Bexhill. Apparently sightings have increased this year; it was claimed that heatwaves have been the cause. There was also talk of black foxes which are more common than I thought (bearing in mind I’d never heard of them).

Despite pubs closing hand over fist, Shepherd Neame were advertising for people to take over tenancies in their pubs. Who would try to make a go of running a pub these days??

And those who (up till now) have advocated covering garden ponds with metal meshes were bemoaning about how many dragonflies are getting trapped by their metal meshes and then drowning.

 

I had an email. There was a new geocache not a mile and a half away. I’d already had two First to Finds this week. Usually I restrict myself to only having one First to Find a month so as to share the love. However it is painfully apparent that I’m in the minority in doing this, so I leapt into action.

I drove out to a whole new housing estate that I never knew existed, and it wasn’t long before I had the cache in hand. It was a rather good 3-D printed cache; it was a shame that it hadn’t so much been hidden as just put in the grass by a tree. But I was first to find (only thirty-seven minutes after publication) and that was a result. That’s two consecutive months with a First to Find… I wonder how long this streak will last? I once managed twenty-three months.

As I drove home I put the radio on. Being Sunday there was a church service, but rather than being inspiring and uplifting it was just some choir howling. I turned over to Adrian Mole on my MP3; he’s just met Jo-Jo.

 

Once I’d been home for a while the dogs eventually got up. I followed them into the garden and harvested what they dropped (as they dropped it) to be sure that Bailey wasn’t having any pre-brekkie snacks.

I Munzed. I Wordled from “first” to “aspic” in five goes. “Aspic” is basically a trifle but with meat where the cake and custard would be. I’d heard of the word before, but had no idea what it was. One lives and learns.

And then we tested my theory about Bailey, brekkie and turd-eating. She eventually scoffed her brekkie, but (as usual) it took a lot of encouragement and cajoling. So much for my turd theory.

 

We loaded the dogs into the car and went over to Bybrook Barn garden centre. Yesterday gave me a plant, and earlier in the year Karl gave me a lilac tree. I wanted some decent pots for them. I knew what I had in mind, and Bybrook Barn wanted far too much for them. They had some nice pots in the bargain section; I thought I’d get two if they were under a tenner. They were sixty quid each. Sixty quid!!!

I contented myself with a bargain tray of violas (three quid) and we went round to Home Bargains. They had some nice pots. I’d seen similar in Bybrook Barn for thirty quid; Home Bargains wanted seven quid. I got two planters at less than half the price of Bybrook Barn’s. It pays to shop around… not that people do. I found myself thinking back to someone with whom I used to work who loved spending money. He was absolutely adamant that if you had two items which were absolutely identical in every respect except the price, then the more expensive one was the better one. There was no reasoning with him on this – it stood to reason (apparently). His wife was a teacher at a local school and (so I was reliably informed) regularly won the pupils’ “Worst Dressed Teacher” competition.

We thought better of going into Dobbies – Morgan and Treacle have a habit of “unloading” in there.

 

We came home and I shifted plant pots and planters about to work out where to put our new ones. I think I’ve figured out what will go where. The new planters will need lining, but that will be a job for another day.

I had a dunk in the shower, and took myself off to bed for the afternoon where I slept surprisingly well for three hours.

 

I woke to find “er indoors ^TM” had been baking. We did “FEED THE FISH”, I voomed round with the watering can, and then made us both a cuppa to go with our cake slices.

They were rather good.

 

It will soon be dinner time, then I’m off to the night shift. I might grumble but I don’t really mind the night work. What I do mind is spending the entire day seemingly just waiting to go to work. I do much the same (albeit on a smaller scale) when I’m on the late shifts.

I need to shift this mindset of just fretting about “got to go to work later..”  It’s not as though I turn up at work that much these days, let alone do many late or night shifts.

15 August 2026 (Saturday) - Bit Dull Really

This morning’s petty bickering on the local Facebook pages was all about a pub near Deal. Some woman had gone there for dinner and either didn’t like her dinner or thought she was up for a freebie. Whichever it was, she made a fuss when it came to pay up and threatened bad reviews on Tripadvisor and Facebook. Fortunately the pub’s owners called this woman’s bluff, and (literally) hundreds of people have posted comments of support. In this age of reviews and social media it is so easy for people to try to pull a fast one. And people wonder why pubs are going out of business. This morning also brought the news that the Red Lion in Biddenden was closing. Not that I’ve been to that place for years…  

I Munzed, and Wordled from “about” to “loose”, getting it on the last attempt.

A new geocache went live. I solved it (well, ChatGPT did) but the final location was about an hour’s drive away. That will keep until we are next over at Staple and the Black Pig. Assuming that pub doesn’t go the way of so many others.

 

As I fiddled on the Internet so Steve was on the radio. The “Guess The Lyrics” competition today was “When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know”. I had absolutely no idea at all. It was “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac.

We drove round to Repton and Dog Club. (About) sixteen dogs had a rather good time charging about as dogs do.

From Dog Club we drove to Godinton. Once we’d done cat duty we had a little walk round the pond. There’s a geocache there that I’ve failed to find three times before. We tried a fourth time and finally found the thing. Probably just as well – there’s a souvenir for finding a geocache today what with it being International Geocaching Day.  Today is my fourteenth International Geocaching Day, and keeping a diary I can see that I’ve actually been at work at some point on eleven of them. There was actually a geo-meet-up this morning, but by the time we would have finished at Dog Club and driven there we would have missed it.

There’s another next weekend…

 

We then popped in to see “My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” as it was her birthday. Sadly as we drove there so she drove past going off to the nail bar. But we left a card and stuff with the first fruit of my loin, and he gave me a plant. His plants have been going mad recently and I was very happy to take a surplus plant.

We came home via the co-op where we got chocolate croissants. I scoffed mine whilst writing up some CPD.

 

I read my Kindle, I played Meodoku, I had a little doze. “er indoors ^TM” set off to visit her mum, I sparked up Netflix and watched more “Stranger Things” but with each episode at the length of a film it was a tad hard going. After one episode I had a vague idea to take the dogs to Orlestone, but we’d been to Dog Club this morning and it was still rather warm outside. Much cooler than the last few days, but still warm. So I stayed in front of the telly watching “Stranger Things”.

Today was dull.

 

14 August 2026 (Friday) - Still Far Too Hot

The dogs didn’t settle in last night’s heat, and with them being restless I didn’t sleep well either.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. That odious Nigel Farage won the by-election in Clacton last night. Having declared that he would let the public judge the actions which put him under investigation it would seem that the good people of Clacton are quite happy with convicted foreign criminals giving five million pounds in bungs to UK politicians.

Democracy, eh? Can’t beat it.

Some rich people of my acquaintance were flaunting their wealth. It must be nice to be able to afford a mansion, a fleet of cars and still be able to fund four children through a school that charges upward of sixty thousand quid a year per brat.

I know I’m not poor, but I’m nowhere near as loaded as I might be.

 

With another hot day forecast we made an early start on our walk today. We walked what I had thought would be a shorter walk round the woods, but it was only about half a mile less than what we usually walk. As we went I gathered litter. You can always tell when it is school holiday; the part of the woods within a couple of hundred yards of the car parks becomes strewn with rubbish. Frutella sweets would seem to be particularly popular at the moment judging by the amount of wrappers I picked up.

We didn’t see any deer, but Treacle found a deer bone, and I found two new sink holes.

And the camera to check people are paying their car parking fees is now in place.

We came home listening to Adrian Mole MP3s.

 

I had so many things I could have done today. The shed needed cleaning out. I could probably have scared up enough rubbish for a tip run. But again it was too hot to do much so I slobbed about instead. I Munzed. I Wordled from “might” to “geode” in four goes. I updated my database of sink holes in Kings Wood. I fed various geo-puzzles into ChatGPT; it didn’t do very well with them. But I did solve a maximum difficulty puzzle. Trouble was I found that the cache was three hundred metres down a drainage tunnel. A few years ago I would have scrambled in to get that. These days… maybe not.

 

I felt tired… I woke up a couple of hours later. I had a cuppa and watched an episode of “Stranger Things”. At an hour and twenty minutes the episodes are a tad too long.

We did “FEED THE FISH”, and then I sat by the pond and read my Kindle for a bit.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off on cat duty. I perused the geo-map to plan a small mission for tomorrow after Dog Club.

We had burgers and watched the first two episodes of “Celebrity Hunted”. Mind you when I say “celebrity” I’d only heard of one out of the twelve so-called celebrities. And again I couldn’t help but wonder if the contestants were either deliberately stupid, or were under orders to give the hunters some clues.

 

13 August 2026 (Thursday) - Far Too Hot

We stayed up late last night to see the meteor shower. Sadly, like all meteor showers, it was a bit crap. At its peak we were seeing maybe one or two a minute. That might sound a lot, but each shooting star lasted for about a second so you had to be looking in exactly the right direction to see it, and it wasn’t long before I got neckache.

 

I slept through till half past five. Bearing in mind we had a hot day forecast I made an early start. Dog brekkie was done and we were at the woods by eight o’clock.

We arrived at the car park at the same time as an odd woman with her two dogs. She saw us and quite obviously stood and waited for us to get out of the car. Morgan and Treacle started barking at her dogs; she didn’t care. She just stood blocking the way to the main path out of the car park. I smiled at her and told the dogs we were going a different way today, and the odd woman looked vaguely disappointed.

We went the different way and walked round the woods keeping out of the sun and in the shade as much as we could. Unlike yesterday we only saw one squirrel, but we did see deer.

 

We got back to the car at about half past nine and I checked the Internet. Yesterday a new geocache had gone live in Faversham. It hadn’t been found at brekkie time, and it still hadn’t been found. Bearing in mind that we were already half-way to Faversham my phone said that the cache was a twelve minute drive away, So we took a twelve minute drive, and it wasn’t long before I had the thing in my hand. And another First to Find as well. Result.

 

By then it was ten o’clock and things were warming up. We drove home where my parcel was waiting for me. About six years ago I spent twenty quid on a pair of trainers which lasted six months so I spent a hundred quid on a pair of walking shoes that looked the same. These lasted five and a half years. Last night (about ten o’clock) I ordered a new pair from Amazon. They were waiting for me when we got home. Delivery had taken about twelve hours. They arrived quicker than I could have gone to the shops, and were cheaper too.

We also arrived home to see the window cleaner had been. We don’t ask him to come; he just turns up unannounced, hoses down the front of the house and sends us a bill for a fiver. The front garden was awash. So much for drought orders and hose pipe bans, eh?

 

I made myself a cuppa and put a load of washing in to scrub. I Munzed, and Wordled from “night” to “crash” in three goes. Bearing in mind how hot it was getting I stayed inside with the curtains pulled and watched a film. I tried to find our DVD of “Quadrophenia” a few weeks ago but couldn’t. It was on Film Four the other day so I recorded it, and then found the DVD the next day.

As I watched I ironed shirts, then put the undercrackers in to scrub.

I’d hoped it might have cooled down by the time the film finished, but the Alexa said it was thirty-six degrees. I treated myself to a tub of ice cream from the shop over the road and watched a couple of episodes of “Stranger Things”.

 

By the time I’d watched telly, scoffed the ice cream, loaded (and run) the dishwasher and sorted the undercrackers three hours had passed and the temperature had dropped… to thirty-five degrees. It was two hours past “FEED THE FISH” time and Treacle was getting twitchy so despite the heat we fed the fish. And then the dogs went back to sleep. I would have done too if it wasn’t so hot.

I did a YouGov survey instead.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home from a day in the office. She’d been to the shops on the way home and had a bag of watercress for me. That went into the pond’s new floating pots.

And then I turned on the telly. An old friend was on BBC1 this evening. I first met him in 1975. I have a vague recollection of him at a Boys Brigade camp in Tunbridge Wells going by the sobriquet of “Fast Goose”. In the years after that we walked to and from secondary school. Over the years I rather lost touch with him, but through the wonders of Facebook we got back in touch, and this evening he was playing a prison governor on Eastenders.

I’d not seen EastEnders for years – I won’t be watching it again.

 

Being Thursday we watched this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”. It wasn’t the best but certainly wasn’t bad.

12 August 2026 (Wednesday) - Solar Eclipse

 I slept through till nearly five o’clock this morning, and then lay dozing with Bailey for a while before giving up and getting up. I made toast and had a look at the Internet.

On the one hand I should stay up to date with current affairs, on the other hand it boils my piss. This morning people were ranting about the early release of prisoners, the ongoing drought… People were ranting about the current sad state of affairs and blaming the government for everything. A lot of the furore was being stirred up by the opposition politicians whose policies led to the current state of affairs and who did nothing about it when they were in a position to do so.

I Munzed, and hearing the dogs getting up I turned off the lap-top and got ready for the off.

 

We drove up to the woods listening to the pundits on the radio spouting their usual drivel. Once parked we set off in the general direction of the geocache of mine that had been reported as missing.

It was.

It had probably been trashed during the recent coppicing so I popped out a new one. The people who reported it as missing could have done the same in less time than it took them to report it missing, but there it is.

We carried on round the woods. For some reason the squirrels were active today. Certainly more so than usual. The dogs chased several. But for all that we saw squirrels we didn’t see much else. No deer, and once out of the car park no one else at all. We did hear someone a hundred yards from the car park shrieking at her dog, but that was all.

 

We came home listening to Adrian Mole’s diaries on my MP3 stick. He’s now moved to London and is in love with Bianca. I know how that is going to end… I realise Adrian Mole is a made-up fictional character who doesn’t exist, but I do think that Sue Townsend (his creator) was rather mean to him in all of the books.

 

Once home I made us both a cuppa and sorted a slice of that walnut cake we’d got at the weekend. My mother and aunt used to make walnut cake all the time when I was small. I can remember never being that fussed about the stuff then. It’s my favourite now.

I Wordled. “Round” gave me nothing, and neither did my second go (table). “Picky” was a step in the right direction and I got it with “wimpy” on the fourth attempt.

 

I went out to the garden. Yesterday I mentioned that we’d been given some pond plants in floating baskets. Late last night I’d hoiked the biggest one out as “er indoors ^TM” had spotted that it was top-heavy and had capsized. This morning that big one got re-potted into the bog filter, and I secured its now empty floating pot to the other floating pots. I then sat for a while alternately reading my Kindle and watching the fish eating the new plants which were overhanging the floating baskets.

 

I came in as it was rather hot outside. I wrote up some CPD. I spent a little while running some puzzle geocaches through Chat GPT to see if it could solve them. It solved maybe a third of the ones I tried.

We did “FEED THE FISH”, I watched an episode of “Stranger Things” and we then loaded the dogs into the car for the evening’s adventure.

 

Once we’d done the evening’s cat feeding we drove down to an obscure lane on the Romney Marsh. This evening was (probably) the last solar eclipse that I would be able to see (the next one will be in 2081). Looking on-line it seemed that the masses were descending on Lydd and Wye downs to get a good view. I suspected no one had considered Ham Mill Lane, and I was right. With no one else around for miles (and we could see around for miles) we had a good view of the western horizon. We cracked out the pinhole camera and had a look.

As we fiddled about so my phone was beeping. The works WhatsApp group was going mad; we had quite the virtual eclipse party swapping photos. It had to be said that the best photo was from a colleague who was on holiday in La Coruña (in Spain) where the eclipse was total.

 

It was gone eight o’clock by the time we got home. Too late to cook – we had KFC for tea…