14 October 2026 (Wednesday) - Another Early Shift

I had another bad night’s sleep… not that much sleeping happened. I gave up at half past four, got up and watched another episode of “Lost in Space”, then had a little rummage round the Internet as I do. It was as well that we’d watched last night’s “Bake Off” yesterday as spoilers abounded, but for once there wasn’t a lot else going on. Perhaps that was because it was too early?

 

I Munzed. Every day the Munzee app gives us a daily challenge. Today's challenge was to go get one of the Munzees which only appear once every three days. Yesterday was one of the days when they appear, and they will be back on Friday. But not today.  So why did I get that challenge today? I wonder what the app was thinking about. Still, our Guild has reached the first of this month's targets and we all got credited with all sorts of in-game credits. That was a result if sticking bar codes to lamp posts is your thing.

I Wordled. Starting with "space" I had the "c" in the correct place, and the "s" and "p" in the wrong places. Is there any possible word other than "psych" which would have fitted? Not that "psych" is a word (is it?)

 

I set off to work through a dark morning. My piss boiled as I listened to the radio. There's about ten thousand children in the country who need foster care. There was a five-minute preamble about how neglected these children are... I started screaming swear words at the radio as I know one child in foster care who *certainly* wasn't neglected.  There was then a lot of talk about an initiative to recruit more foster carers... and how various measures are coming which will make it easier for people to foster children.

Perhaps the criteria for rejecting foster carers might be formally reviewed, and the insurmountable obstacles that we faced (such as having dogs, stairs or a garden pond) might not be considered reasons for summarily and rudely rejecting potential foster carers. Perhaps having competent social workers who don't rip small girls from their mothers on the basis of unsubstantiated hearsay, and sacking those who get caught out in their bare-faced lies might be an idea as well... but what do I know? Not that I'm in any way bitter... it's only been eighteen months.

And there was talk about the Pope who's had surgery to remove half of his right lung. So much for the power of prayer, eh?

 

I'd calmed down a bit by the time I got to work, which was probably for the best. I went in to the early shift and did my bit. I quite enjoy doing my bit but having been part time for a couple of years, I do find doing two consecutive days to be harder than it ever used to be.

But there was cake at tea-time. And more than just cake – home-made baklava. It went down rather well with a cuppa.

 

With my bit done I came home. I was on another early but today I avoided the road works in Chart Road and came home through the town centre. I got home fifteen minutes quicker than I did yesterday. I sparked up Meowdoku on my phone… and woke up an hour later.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good dinner of sausages, chips and baking paper which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters”. Mind you when I say “watching more Lego Masters”, there was a not insignificant amount of watching the frankly epic chest of half of the Canadian team. I did have a theory that the more she brandishes her chest, the better her team does, but this evening her jubblies were at full power, and they ended up getting the heave-ho. So much for my theory.

 

And in closing, did you know that today is the nine hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the battle of Hastings?

13 October 2026 (Tuesday) - Early Shift

Treacle woke me at half past four. She’d got off the bed and was whinging that she wanted to get back on. I got up and helped her up, and then Bailey wanted a tiddle. By the time she’d played silly beggars in the garden I was wide awake.

I made toast and watched the last episode of the first season of the re-make of “Lost In Space”. Like the original series it is entertaining enough provided you don’t actually think about it. If you do you realise that the premise is nonsense. It’s somewhat akin to ending up in the Amazonian rain forest whilst taking a wrong turn on your way from the back door to the shed.

I then had a little look at the Internet. It was much the same as ever. No one had done anything of note, but plenty of people were posting poorly written misinformation.

I Munzed, and got ready for work.

 

It was very dark and rather wet as I drove off to work. I completely forgot the road works in Chart Road, but they didn't delay me (much). I drove up the motorway listening to the pundits on the radio who were broadcasting from an oil rig in the North Sea for no reason that I could fathom, but the interviews with the workers there were interesting. They do two weeks of twelve hour shifts, and then have three weeks off. But when off shift there's nowhere to go (as they are on an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea).

There was then a lot of talk about the government's early release scheme. Prisoners are being released early as there's not enough prison spaces. People who were in the previous government that didn't build enough prisons were queuing up to find fault with the current government who is trying to deal with the mess they have been left. The Conservatives being interviewed felt it unacceptable for prisoners to be released early, and felt it was unacceptable for there not to be enough prison spaces (even though that was their fault). What did they want.. The next ten thousand people who are convicted and given a prison sentence should get executed? Regardless of what they've done, just execute them? That *would* relieve the pressure on an overcrowded prison service.

Or maybe we might just release prisoners early and give them community service or set them to breaking rocks... 

It is so easy to find fault with anything, but coming up with a workable solution... that takes some doing.

Pausing only briefly to avoid getting tail-ended by a French minibus I popped into Sainsburys where I boiled the piss of the pinch-faced harridan who guards the self-service tills. I always empty my loose change into those machines; she really doesn't like it.

I went into work where I was incredibly hungry. I have the same brekkie every day. When not at work it does me fine, and I usually have a four-mile trek round the woods as well. When at work I'm ravenous a couple of hours after brekkie.

Work was work; I skived off mid-morning to get my flu jab. I get it every year. There's those who bang on about how bad vaccinations are; it boils my piss that these people can be so stupid and still be allowed to vote and do jury service, but there it is. A sore arm for a day, and I don't die of influenza. I see that as a result.

Less of a result was that of one of my colleagues who had a phone call during the day to say that her cat had peed on her coat, and had to slip off early to get a new one. Coat that is, not cat.

 

An early start made for an early finish. I checked Google Maps to see what the traffic was like on the way home. Google reckoned that there was less traffic down Chart Road than in the town centre, so I believed it.

There was a *lot* of traffic down Chart Road. I shall try coming through the town centre tomorrow.

 

I got home about half an hour later than I might have done. We did “FEED THE FISH” (to Treacle’s delight), and “er indoors ^TM” sorted pork chops which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters” and then this week’s “Bake Off”.

 

I’m feeling all in. Was it the early start or the flu jab?

12 October 2026 (Monday) - This n That

I’ve come to hate night time. I can’t get comfortable. I’m forever shifting from one position in which I have constant back ache to one in which my left hand is throbbing. And add to that I’m either roasting under the covers or shivering on top of them… Last night was just like this, with what little sleep I did get plagued with nightmares about how it was up to me to finance the visitor’s centre at Adnam’s brewery.

I gave up and got up at seven o’clock, made toast and had a look at the Internet which was much the same as ever. There were a few pictures of what friends had been up to at the weekend, which was good. One chap had been to the re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings, others had carried on their walk along the Thames.

One chap (on a vintage toy site I follow) was sulking that he’d been outbid on an eBay auction. He’d been bidding on a Lego wooden duck (back in the day they made more than building bricks) which eventually sold for over five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars for a wooden duck. Seriously.

 

I Munzed, and with dog breakfast done I took the dogs out. We went up to the woods and walked a bit further than we usually do. Mainly because we had to divert at the start of the walk to avoid horses. Horses in the woods boil my piss. It’s clearly laid out where they can and can’t go. When we walk along the horse-friendly tracks we very occasionally see a horse or a horse turd. When we walk along the supposed no-horses paths we often meet horses and invariably find horse turds.

And there were quite a few normal people out and about today; even though we’d started our walk early to avoid them.

We saw a stag. He was fifty yards down the path from us, and stood still long enough for me to get a half-way decent photo (which I tided up when we got home). The dogs totally missed seeing him. A little later we heard something huge crashing in the undergrowth. We often hear things, but whatever this was, it bothered Morgan. He ran to me and growled at it from the safety of my side, and he stayed by me for the next fifty yards or so.

As we walked I saw something that looked familiar. A few years ago I put out a rather large box as a geocache. It lasted a year or so before going missing so I replaced it with one of my standard pots. This morning I found the thing laying on the path. A path along which we’ve walked at least once a month for the last few years. I wonder where that had been? I brought it home. I can tidy it up and use it again.

 

We came home. I made us a cuppa, tidied up the photo of the stag, then had a pootle in the garden. I harvested dog dung, cleaned out both pond filters and hacked back more of the overgrowth coming over the fence until it got too drizzly and too cold to carry on.

I had a late Wordle. Starting with “horse” I got to “yodel” in three goes whilst “er indoors ^TM” popped off on an errand. She came back with Belgian buns, and with those scoffed I set about the ironing whilst watching more “Lost In Space” on Netflix.

Despite the rain we did “FEED THE FISH”, then I put some undercrackers in to scrub and wrote up some CPD. Dull, but it needs doing.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pie and chips then went bowling. I tumble-dried the undercrackers (never a dull moment) as I watched more “Lost in Space”.

I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.

11 October 2026 (Sunday) - Bonnington

I had another iffy night. When I finally got to sleep so Morgan trampled over me, then with his head an inch from mine had a vigorous head-shake so his ears whipped mine very forcefully.

He does that from time to time; it really wakes you up.

I dozed on and off, and finally got up at half past seven feeling rather grim.

I put a load of washing in, and had a look at the Internet as I do. It was still there. Some friends had been walking along the Thames yesterday. Others had taken photos of last night’s auroras. It was good to see their photos; that’s what I want to see.

I Munzed, and Wordled from “along” to “uncap” in four goes.

Nice-next-door sent a message – could she straddle the fence with a ladder so’s she could muck about on her conservatory roof? I helped her set the ladder up, then left her to it.

We took the dogs down to Bonnington. We parked up at the church and once we were going the right way along the canal we followed a set of geocaching ad-labs. It was a lovely walk along the canal and back. Treacle went in. Bailey chased a heron and then rolled in something foul. We came back to the car to see an organised bunch of walkers coming down the road. They stopped at the church, and as were having lunch as we drove past. It was probably The Ramblers. I sometimes think about joining them. But I follow the local group on Facebook and their average walks are about twelve miles. Perhaps a tad too long?

 

We came home where “er indoors ^TM” warmed up the leftover Chinese (from last night), and with the oven on she roasted some chestnuts she’d gathered when we were up at Kings Wood the other day. We knew when dinner was ready as the chestnuts started exploding.

With lunch scoffed I cracked on in the garden. There was a definite sense of “work”; Nice-next-door’s boyfriend was up on our bathroom roof painting the back of their house. The roofer was cracking on with the roofing. I was impressed that he was out on a Sunday, but we’ve agreed a flat payment rather than an hourly rate so I suppose it’s to his advantage to get on with it. And perhaps (like I used to when I was full time) perhaps he has a day off in the week. Or perhaps he doesn’t have a day off. Many don’t.

I pulled rubbish out of the gravel, mowed the lawn, and had a little tidy-up of the tat down the side of the shed. I thought about cleaning the pond filters, but that will keep until tomorrow.

I came in and sat on the sofa… and woke up a couple of hours later.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up fajitas (oh yus!!) which we scoffed whilst watching another episode of “Lego Masters”. Her with the chest finally managed to get it under control.

 

I woke feeling rather grim; I’ve felt rough all day. Perhaps I’ll sleep it off?

10 October 2026 (Saturday) - Monthly Geo-Meet

I didn’t sleep very well. I got up, made toast and had a look to see what had happened overnight. That idiot President Trump had made a deal with the Russians to buy loads of Russian oil as his war in the Middle East isn’t going as well as he’d hoped. Only a few weeks ago he was threatening sanctions against anyone who was buying Russian oil. The Ukrainians have got the right arse over the deal, but are their days numbered? Remember when the Russians were accused of blowing up that oil pipeline in the Baltic? Now it would seem that the Ukrainians did it. Did they? Who knows.

A friend of mine was banging the drum of boycotting expensive large music venues and supporting small local bands. An admirable sentiment *if* you can find a small local band that isn’t totally dreadful. Most are.

There wasn’t much else happening on social media.

 

Steve wasn’t on the radio this morning; he was having a little holiday. Quite often his stand-in isn’t the same. Today there was no stand in. There wasn’t even music playing. There was just silence on the radio, the Alexa and via the Internet.

So I listened to Radio Four instead who were interviewing some civil servant about some promise that a politician had made (the details of the promise are irrelevant). The civil servant spoke volumes when he said “I do wish politicians wouldn’t say that sort of thing, it just raises expectations that simply can’t be delivered”.

That speaks volumes about our political system, doesn’t it?

And there was some supporter of Liverpool FC on the radio who was whinging about some financial irregularity of the Manchester City football team. It struck me that he wasn’t whinging out of any sense of fair play or legal rightness. Like all football fans he had *his* team and all others were just wrong and evil for the simple reason that they weren’t his team.

 

I Munzed, capping a Widdlz workshop (as you do), and Wordled. This morning I started with “radio” which gave me absolutely nothing so I started again. Eventually. Can you think of a word that doesn’t have any of the letters of “radio” in it? Eventually I hit on “blush”. From there I went to “bugle” (as I used to play one) and I got it on the fourth attempt with “bumpy”.

 

We drove round to Repton and Dog Club. There’s been a lot of petty bickering behind the scenes about Dog Club. Basically two of the people at the later group have had a squabble and one has gone running off to the people who own the paddock full of petty tales. Quite frankly I’m sick of hearing about their issues. But we had a rather good session even if Morgan did disgrace himself (as he does).

 

From Dog Club we drove out to Badlesmeere where we met Karl and Tracey. They’d had a “sort it out” email from geocaching HQ qbout one of their geocaches which had had a spate of “did not find” logs. We walked out and found the thing was exactly where it was supposed to be.

But we had a good walk. As we walked Treacle disappeared into a thicket. She eventually returned, and when she did she had a freshly killed pheasant in her mouth. Am I wrong in being rather proud that my old lady is still a dangerous wolf?

 

From Badlesmere we drove up to Oare where the monthly geo-meet was taking place. We got there early and had quite the feat before everyone else arrived. Some very good snacks, some rather decent pints of Late Red, and the chance to catch up with old friends and to meet new friends.

I slept for much of the way home, as I so often do after these monthly geo-meets.

 

We came home. Whilst we were out I took some photos. I do that. I AI-ed some of them. We got take-out from the Chinese down the road and spent the evening on the Infinity Table…

A rather good day.

9 October 2026 (Friday) - Staple

I had a restless night. I had my usual peer in to Facebook as I scoffed brekkie. Over the last few days I’m getting a lot of cartoons lambasting bad management techniques. This morning I saw one whinging about how some companies want to contact their employees at any time (day or night). It made me think… that’s how I’ve operated for the last forty years. That’s how hospitals work. What are you supposed to do if half-way through Saturday, the Sunday early shift gets mowed down by a bus?

I didn’t comment though. Life is too short.

And the Prime Minister had posted about how he was going to recognise health care workers after he’d seen first-hand how they looked after his father. I wonder what he means by “recognise”; I hope it’s not that insulting standing on the doorstep and clapping bollox we had during lockdown. I really did take some of that clapping and tried to use it to pay for my shopping. Would you believe that Sainsbury’s didn’t accept a clap as a payment? If the Prime Minister wants to “recognise” me he can do so with a hefty pay rise. I've been in healthcare for forty-five years. It took me six years to get professional qualifications, one mistake would see me out on my ear (and did), and someone I know earns more than I do by driving a fork-lift truck round. My boss's boss's boss earns less than a train driver... This isn't news

And there was a photo featuring a horse from a TV show from fifty-odd years ago. Was it “Black Beauty” or “Follyfoot”? Oh, the arguments that were going on…

 

I Munzed and Wordled. Starting with “royal” wasn’t a bad move, but “arose” took me no further. “Baron” was a step in the right direction, and I got it with “major” on the fourth go. We then cracked on with the business of the day. This weekend is international EarthCache Day(s), and again my closest unfound EarthCache was in Staple.

Pausing only briefly to pump up the tyres of the “er indoors ^TM”-mobile we were soon on our way. We got to the church, answered a few questions about the building, then went on a little walk. As always our route was laid out by geocaches. We found the first two, but the third gave us grief. To find it we had to solve a puzzle, but there was no checker. We came to somewhere which looked like the sort of place where you might stuff a film pot under a rock, but the hint mentioned a three trunked tree. The only three trunked tree we could see was fifty yards off of where we thought we were supposed to be. We gave up after ten minutes which was probably for the best. (I later established that we were in the wrong place; the right place being three quarter of a mile from where we were, and about a hundred yards from where we walked past later).

We went back to the car.. but via a circular(ish) route which took us past the Black Pig. The dogs could do with a drink, so we popped in for a bowl of water, a pint, some pork scratchings and a plate of cheesy chips, Very nice.

And the car was only half a mile down the road.

 

We came home to find the new Viz had arrived. I shall read that over the course of several “downloads” over the next couple of weeks. We did “FEED THE FISH”, we had a cuppa, and I had a message. I had an email with my shifts up until February. I made a note of them, and immediately started trying to swap some.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner. As we scoffed we watched more “Lego Masters” in which one half of the Canadian team really needs to put her chest away, and then we watched this evening’s episode of “The Traitors”. Some people are rather disparaging about the show; the trouble with it is that to play it properly you have to be quite clever. And most of the contestants are rather thick, but not thick enough to realise that to play it properly you have to be quite clever and so anyone who isn’t a doombrain gets the heave-ho fairly early on. 

8 October 2026 (Thursday) - Scaffolding's Up

My piss boiled as I peered into the Internet this morning. The leader of the Conservatives had the gall to be finding fault with the state of the nation. She talked a good fight and completely overlooked that the country’s woefully undersized army and police force, complete lack of space in the prisons, the rise of five million on the NHS waiting list and increasing the national debt from seventy per cent of GDP (which it was in 2010) to pretty much one hundred per cent (which it was when her lot were comprehensively thrown out at the last election) was all down to the previous government. And then she had the gall to say what a success privatising all the nation’s infrastructure had been. And if anyone thinks it was a success, maybe they could explain the endless drought orders and why we can pump gas across the country but not water. I’m not saying the current lot are perfect, but the Conservatives have had their chance and been found wanting.

I also saw that you can now find the price of petrol in various filling stations from the Google app, and can you believe it is six years since Argos last printed a physical catalogue?

And I had a message from the NHS app telling me what they’d told me in a letter yesterday.

I Munzed – our Munzee Guild had reached the first of our monthly targets. I Wordled from “guild” (which gave me nothing at all) and I eventually got it on the last attempt with “strew”.

 

There was a knock on the door – the roofer was putting the scaffolding up. That woke the dogs. We left them putting scaffolding up and set off to Kings Wood. It was a shame that Morgan had to be an idiot around one of the dogs we saw. Mostly he is fine, but sometimes he is just stupid.

As we walked we found ourselves behind a couple of women walking along chatting. I say “chatting”; “bellowing at each other” might be a better description. I could hear them from two hundred yards away. But they eventually went off in another direction and left us to enjoy the peace and quiet. We saw a deer as we went, but (as they so often are) it was too quick for me to get the camera focussed in.

We met one of the normal people who had a rather posh camera and proudly announced that he was photographing mushrooms.

We had a (mostly) good walk. A shame the same couldn’t be said about the drive there and back. I hadn’t realised that today was “drive like a dildo” day. As we drove out of the end of our road so I slammed on the brakes to avoid a mobility scooter the driver of which had randomly decided to veer in front of our car with no warning whatsoever.  And on the way home I had to do another emergency stop to avoid a taxi who just stopped dead for absolutely no reason. Add to that the arrogance in the traffic in the filtering by the new McDonalds…

 

We came home via Sainsburys where we got Belgian buns for lunch, and I had a stroke of absolute genius. I’ve got a geocaching adventure lab credit and no idea what to do with it. Saturday is the monthly county geocaching meting – I could put out an ad-lab at the pub based on previous monthly meets. So I set about downloading the web pages of the previous one hundred and eighty-two meets. Doing so wasn’t as easy as it might sound. It took over an hour to get what I wanted, and when I finally had it I had a problem. The idea of an ad-lab is a bit of a quiz… and I had no idea what questions I might ask.

So I took a deep breath and (would you believe it) had another stroke of absolute genius. I just devised a generic geocaching quiz with a few silly pictures and jokes. Hopefully it will make the punters smile.

 

We did “FEED THE FISH”, or that is me, Treacle and Bailey did. For all that Morgan is the greediest dog, he’s not at all interested in the dried rice that the fish have.

 

“er indoors ^TM” had been house-sitting recently. She took the keys back and then we settled down to watch “Celebrity Traitors”, and met with disaster. The scaffolding was blocking the satellite signal.

I-player to the rescue…