30 March 2026 (Monday) - A Day Off

This “clocks going forward” nonsense means I sleep a little longer than I might usually. Last night was a rather good one – I stayed asleep until nearly eight o’clock.

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. There was a squabble about why society shouldn’t give anything at all to anyone who needed help… Some people can be very right-wing and very anti-commie-pinko social mindedness… right up to the point where they actually need some help themselves. I blame Margaret Thatcher who taught so many people that a house was a financial investment rather than something to live in.

And I found out tha the actor who played Young Mr Grace in “Are You Being Served” and Mr Blewitt in “Dad’s Army” came from my home town of Hastings. I never knew that.

I Munzed, and got ready for the off.

 

I took the dogs up to Kings Wood. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the Great Strike of 1926. It was rather interesting… so much of history would seem to have been interesting. Looking back the history teacher we had at school would seem to have done his level best to have killed the subject stone dead. His style of teaching was to read out the text book, and we would write down what he said. He could have made it interesting, but sadly didn’t seem to want to do so.

We got to the woods and waked our usual route. With my hiking boots on (rather than wellies) we went faster than usual with Map My Walk saying I was doing each mile in less than twenty minutes rather than in about twenty-two (or so) minutes. Not that it was a race.

As we walked we met three other groups and said hello nicely. We didn’t roll in anything, didn’t wallow in any swamps, and didn’t see off any rabbits or squirrels. In many ways an ideal (if dull) walk.

As we came home I saw that the petrol station up the road had put up the price of petrol by two pence per litre whilst we’d been out.

 

We came home for a cuppa, I put a load of shirts and undercrackers into the washing machine then I went into the garden. I gathered a bumper crop of dog turds. How can three small dogs generate so much dung?  I strimmed the lawn’s edges and mowed the lawn. It’s a shame our lawn looks such a state, but my attempts to re-seed to with bird seed over the winter have worked to an extent. I might try that some more next winter; the trouble is that poking each seed in one by one takes an age. I ran out the hose (now that the hose pipe ban is over!) and topped up both ponds and watered the plants which are coming back. The pansies I planted a few weeks ago have come to nothing, but last year’s polyanthus are blooming. I might well get some more of those. Pansies and violas are pretty but they don’t seem to last.

And then I packed up and came in. I was worn out, and it was rather cold outside.

 

I Wordled from “about” via “overt” and “onset” (even though I knew the “o” wasn’t at the start!) to get it right with “comet”. I wrote up some CPD. I tumble-dried the undercrackers, then set about the ironing.

As I ironed I watched episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which everyone was matey and friends right up until the last episode when the fussiest one was shown to be running far and away the poorest B&B.

I do far more on a day off than I ever do at work.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza then went bowling.  I sparked up Netflix and put on a film I’ve been meaning to watch for ages. Sadly “Borderlands” was a load of tripe, and I turned it off half-way through.

I’m going to work tomorrow – for a bit of a rest.

 

Oh – and today would have been my parents’ sixty-ninth wedding anniversary

29 March 2026 (Sunday) - Spring Forward

What with daylight saving it was nearly two o’clock before I went to bed last night. Again I popped to the loo while it was still dark, and again Morgan was on the floor wanting to get onto the bed but frightened of Treacle who was glaring at him. I lifted him up, and both dogs settled.

I got up shortly after nine o’clock which wasn’t really quite the lie-in it might have been. Yesterday that would have been eight o’clock.

 

I made toast and wondered what the Alexa was playing. We usually ask it to play Gold Radio which is quite entertaining. This morning it had decided to play EKR Gold which is some obscure European station.

As the radio played some rather grim tripe I rummaged round the Internet. It was much the same as ever. Had no one *really* been out and done anything yesterday? I’m nosey; I want to see what other people have been up to.

I sent out birthday wishes and had a look at my emails, Some new geocaches in Willesborough. They will make a walk for another day. And one in Hastings… Yesterday I whinged about the ones we found being far more tricky than the instructions would have had us believe. Another such went out in Hastings today. 

To find it you have to go to a given location and using a special torch look for a message written in paint that only becomes visible when you shine ultra-violet light on it. This message gives you another location to go to. You go there and use your phone to scan for a Bluetooth beacon. You then rummage in the technical data it gives you to get some information. You then do some sums with these numbers to get the final location that you are looking for. And this is rated difficulty two (out of five). There’s film pots stuck under rocks that have been rated more tricky.

I Munzed, and Wordled. “Rated” gave me nothing at all. “Clung” did a bit better, and “chuff” got me over half-way there, and I got it with “chump” on the fourth attempt.

 

I set the washing machine going and we took the dogs for a little walk. We’d looked at the map and seen two sets of geocaching Adventure Labs running along the canal near Hamstreet, so we walked along the canal and walked back again. We had one minor episode when some idiot took exception when Morgan growled at his dog. He got rather abusive and seemed to take offence that I’d been taking photos of my dogs… he even came back after the squabble to shout “dickhead” at me (albeit from a safe distance).

After that, Bailey’s rolling in fox poo and Treacle’s going in the canal were something of an anticlimax.

 

We came home where fox poo was washed off. I hung out the laundry on the clothes horse. I had hoped to stick it on the washing line, but the bright morning was becoming very overcast, and with rain forecast I didn’t want to bring laundry in wetter than it had gone out.

We had a cuppa with the last of yesterday’s coffee and walnut cake, then I had a little look at the geo-map. There’s a meet-up planned in early May near Wilmington. A drive out, a little geocaching in the village, a hike up the hill and a picnic with a view… Could be a plan.

 

And then I went into the garden. A few months ago I had a problem with algae in the fish tank. I popped six Ramshorn snails in last Christmas and the problem is gone… I started with six snails; I’ve now got twenty or more. Would they do a similar job in the small outdoor fish pond… I’ve tried every other algae cure. I took some of the weed from the fish tank with some snails on it and dropped it in the little pond. Will that work?

I then had a look at the big pond. The aerating pump was running very slowly so I took it apart, cleaned it all out, put it back together again and got the thing working perfectly. Sadly the screwdriver I used to fix it is now at the bottom of the pond… I need a magnet on a length of string to get it out.

Or a new screwdriver.

 

I came in and sat on the sofa. I read my Kindle app for a bit… then nodded off for an hour or so. I hate that. I lay wide awake in bed for hours on end, and when I am supposed to be awake I’m sparko.

Once awake I marked trainee work for an hour or so. It’s something I can do and it’s only fair on the trainees that they get feedback on their efforts. I can remember when I started trying to complete a specialist portfolio of my own some years ago, and gave up as it was taking about four months for me to get anything marked.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up bangers and mash which we scoffed whilst watching more “Throw Down”. It made me think - how do you do pottery as a hobby? The wheel and kiln and drying stuff is going to take up a *lot* of space.

I wonder if I could clear up the attic room and have a go?

28 March 2026 (Saturday) - A Rather Good Day

I slept through till six o’clock this morning, but woke aching. I ache more and more these days. I came downstairs to find Morgan in his basket. He said hello and ran upstairs, but by the time I’d had a shave he was back downstairs again. He looked at me and looked at the stairs so I went up with him. Treacle was standing on the edge of the bed glaring at him. He’s scared of Treacle; if she’s on the bed or on a sofa he doesn’t dare go up. He looked at me again and I lifted him up past Treacle. Once he’s up and on the same level as Treacle all is fine; it’s just the getting up that is an issue.

 

I went back downstairs, made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. For once it was remarkably quiet. I sent birthday wishes to my nephew’s three Facebook accounts and then Munzed. I opened a qrate and got a cubimal (as one does) then Wordled my way from “slept” through “grout” to “afoot” as no other word would fit.

I wasted twenty minutes trying to work out how to change my status in the works Whatsapp group to read “The fat bald one”, and then Steve came on the radio. This morning’s “Guess the Lyrics” was “Some people work for a living some people work for fun. Girl I just work for you”. No. I had no idea either. It was Wham – “Everything She Wants”.

 

We drove round to Repton and Dog Club where a good time was had by all. He played chase, we fetched balls, we had treats. All rather simple pleasures, but we all love it.

As we drove away Steve was doing the Mystery year competition on the radio. Quite a few songs that I’d not heard, and the question of when did the first run of Doctor Who end. I knew that was 1989, so why did I say 1990?

We drove up to Chartham for a little walk. As we’d driven home past Chartham last Sunday so two new geocaches had gone live. Over the week one friend had gone out and couldn’t find them. And still with no one having logged First to Find we thought we’d try our luck. The two of them (and another geocache) would mark out a walk of two miles.

We started badly… Looking for the first cache had us rummaging on a fence just outside someone’s back door. We gave up and went on with our walk. We went up through the village and across fields with a rather spectacular view down to a rusting barn in which there was supposedly a geocache hidden. Having the farmer standing there watching rather put us off searching.

 

We walked along the lane to where the next cache was supposedly hidden. Geocache hides are graded by the hider with a rating from one (rather obvious) to five (fiendishly difficult). This one had been rated as a two. I eventually found it; I think a rating of four might have been more appropriate. But a find is a find. And a First to Find is even better. The cache was named “FTF can name this cache” so I sent in a suggestion for a new name…

Our route took us back past the first cache that we’d failed to find earlier. But having seen the one we did find gave me an idea of what we might be looking for, and we soon found it. And another First to Find too.

And as an added bonus as we drove home we stopped near Wye where a bouncing Munzee garden had landed (as they do) and we Munzed like things possessed until the garden bounced off to somewhere else in the world.

 

We came home. According to the forecast the rain was supposed to have started by the early afternoon. It was rather sunny. As we’d walked we’d gone past a little shop where we’d got a coffee and walnut cake. We had some of that with a cuppa and I counted up the takings form Dog Club. We had twenty-one pounds eighty-six pence. At one pound fifty per dog, how did that work?

I then spent a little while building the Lego hibiscus that I’d got for Christmas. I’m quite pleased with it. As I Lego-ed so we had a hailstorm. The weather forecast wasn’t *that* far out.

 

I planned a little walk for tomorrow, and then Chris popped round. After the little hiccup with the internet connection between our Infinity Tables the other night he thought he’s sort out our router.

It resisted sorting.

But we got out our Table and played all sorts of versions of “Ticket To Ride”. I do like that game…

27 March 2026 (Friday) - Early Shift

With an alarm set I didn’t sleep as well as I might. I was up, scoffing toast and watching an episode of “Derek” by five o’clock, before having a little root around the internet. It was fairly quiet at half past five this morning, but there was a little argument. Someone had made the (patently obvious) statement that out of any twenty people, no matter how they are judged nine will be above average. Not only did most people disagree, most people were very happy to proudly show off their ignorance.

I Munzed. I set the dishwasher going (I forgot that last night), got dressed and set off to work.

 

As I drove to work I listened to the radio as I do.  There are calls for the government to apologize for the forced adoptions that happened after the war when babies were taken away from their mothers simply because the mothers weren't married. Whilst what happened was obviously wrong, as I've said before how can anyone apologize for things that happened before they were born? Are those who were responsible going to be held to account posthumously? Surely it would be better to look at current forced adoptions and stop the totally unnecessary ones before any apologies are needed and sack the people involved. Not that I'm in any way bitter.

And as the doctors prepare to go on strike asking for a twenty-six per cent pay rise their own union's staff are on strike themselves having been offered a below inflation rise of less than three per cent.

I suppose (if nothing else) it made a change from listening to the antics of the demonstrably senile President Trump.

 

I stopped off at Tesco to get myself a sandwich. The shelf fillers weren't swearing at each other. Instead some were leaning against the fridges talking about Lanzarote. Others were talking about how useless they were at using any form of technology; like so many people they took pride in being unable to do the simplest things. The staff supposedly overseeing the self-service checkouts weren't idly chattering though; they were just glowering at the public as though daring them to ask for help.

 

I did my bit… I came home through drizzle. Not bad enough that we couldn’t do “FEED THE FISH” but bad enough to put me off taking the dogs to the woods.

It’s supposed to be chirping up by the morning.

Today has been dull…

 

And after yesterday's debacle I've made a list of what I've used my phone for today.

 

• Alarm clock
• Checking transactions on bank account
• Making payments.
• Playing Munzee
• Playing Wordle
• Playing Panda Saga
• Whatsapping friends & family
• Checking emails
• Getting logon code for works email
• Checking Facebook
• Counting the calories in dinner
• Reading books (on the Kindle app)
• Checking the weather forecast
• Checking the traffic on the way home
• Logging a geocaching trackable

 

I knew I used the phone a lot but didn’t realise just how much… I’d be rather stuck without it. And today I didn’t use the calculator or camera or do any shopping with it or park my car…

26 March 2026 (Thursday) - A Day Off

 

I was sleeping like a log when the shouty dog woke me just after half past six. Someone locally walks a small dog round our roads from time to time. The dog barks constantly without ever stopping. I wish it wouldn’t. I dozed for a bit, finally getting up just before eight o’clock when I made toast and had a look at the internet. I do that every day.

Social media could be such a boon to humanity…

There were two rather spectacular arguments on Facebook this morning… The chap who I mentioned the other day when he felt he was being victimised on one of the geocaching Facebook groups has now set up his own group. But rather than posting sensible comments and questions to his group, he’s been just dashing out the first thing that comes into his head and pressing send (rather than re-reading and spell-checking) and not only is he posting incomprehensible gibberish, he’s also taking offence when no one understands what he’s going on about.

And there was a rather bitter squabble on one of the fish tank related groups when someone asked a genuine question. Admittedly a bit of a rather basic question, but why can’t people just either answer or ignore. Why do people have to make such supercilious comments?

I Munzed, and Wordled from “scale” through “merry” and “feted” before coming up with “befit”.

 

I got dressed and took the dogs out. We went up to the woods where we had a rather eventful time. Our walk started well, but Morgan will growl at the people he sees that he doesn’t know. He seriously resents anyone being in what he sees as his personal woods. We walked our usual route; at about the furthest point form the car I saw something move in the distance. It was a stag with (at least) four does with him. I stood for a good five minutes trying to get a decent photo. The camera on my phone does its best, but only has a maximum of times ten zoom.

The dogs didn’t see the deer at all.

I saw a few more bluebells then we had a little episode. I heard screaming. Bailey was chasing a small rabbit. Chasing it right at Treacle who caught it and shook it hard. In the time it took me to get to Treacle (about five seconds) she and Bailey were pulling the rabbit about like an old sock. I got it off of them and got them on their leads. I hoped the rabbit would hop off… it tried to crawl away. They’d broken its back.

I did the decent thing for the poor rabbit and dragged the dogs away. Or the two that needed dragging. Morgan had shown no interest in the whole debacle.

After about four hundred yards the girls stopped trying to pull back to the dead rabbit. I walked another hundred yards and let them off of their leads. Bailey went off to see what Morgan was sniffing at; Treacle was like a bullet from a gun. She totally ignored my calls and ran right back to where we’d left the dead rabbit. Once she’d got it she came back. Sort of. She carried the dead rabbit back but wouldn’t get within a yard of me. She simply wouldn’t let me take it from her. So I let her carry it. The thing was dead and carrying it wouldn’t hurt anyone.

And then I saw something that made me smile. As a youngster in the Boys Brigade we would load all of our tents and sleeping bags and kit into our backpacks and go for expeditions. We met a gaggle of young girls who (oh so politely) asked if I could show them where they were on their map. I had the same map on my phone (on my geo-app) so we were able to pinpoint where they were… about half a mile from the car park where they had started about an hour previously. But they didn’t seem disheartened at their lack of progress. They were happy to know where they were, and openly admitted they had no idea where they were supposed to be going anyway.

 

I posted some photos of our walk to the internet, and when we got back to the car I got the dogs onto their leads and told Treacle to drop the rabbit. She’s funny like that; if she’s carrying something she insists on carrying it, but knows to drop it at the end of the walk. We did “boot dogs” and I went to stop the “Map My Walk” app, but the screen on my phone wasn’t working. It’s all very well having a device that works by touching the screen all the time that the screen responds to being touched. Pressing the side button, and various combinations of buttons did nothing.

 

We came home where it was as well we didn’t need baths. With my phone still poggered I walked up to the town. I didn’t drive as with no working phone I had no RingGo app ro pay for parking.

Back in the day there used to be loads of little phone repair shops. Nowadays most of them have been replaced with nail bars. As I searched for a shop I’d all but decided that I would be coming home with a new phone which would cost a fortune and need no end of setting up. But what choice did I have? Without a phone I couldn’t pay for a car park. I use the phone as a camera and to play various silly games. Its Kindle app means I can read books without having to carry a library about. It tells me which birds are singing when I hear birdsong. I can’t pay bills without it, and if I couldn’t post bollox to Facebook I’d go stir-crazy.

And I use it to communicate with people too.

I eventually found that the phone shop I’d used before was one of only two that are still in business. The nice man asked if I’d tried restarting it. I said I’d tried everything… it turned out that I’d not tried pressing the side button and the volume down button together. That re-started the phone and all was well. Pulling the plug and plugging it back in always works – all the time you know where the plug is.

What a sense of relief… But as the nice man in the shop said, the phone is old. I got it in March 2021; is it time to get a new one? I suspect I shall ponder the idea for a day or so, and as soon as I stop getting adverts for new phones in my Facebook feed I will forget all about it until it packs up again.

I came home past the corner shop where I got us celebratory almond croissants for lunch.

 

I made myself a cuppa and had that croissant whilst cracking on with one or two little jobs that needed doing… whilst feeling rather relived that I wasn’t having to set up a new phone.

I told the admin people at work that I’ve just done two days overtime.

I struggled with the FTP uploader for mankybadger.co.uk – Apparently now I’ve upgraded I need to upload to a new IP address… I would if I could. In the end I messaged the nice lady to ask for help. Eventually we got it sorted.

I had a little fight with my NHS app. I’ve now installed a passkey (whatever that means)

I updated my ever-growing list of passwords – it is as well to have that somewhere safe *before* my phone dies again.

I wrote up some CPD.

And I cartoon-ised the photos I’d posted from the woods earlier. Personally I thought that people would be getting fed up with my obsession with Microsoft CoPilot, but yesterday at work several people said that they really liked the happy cartoon pictures I’ve been posting up recently.

 

After three hours of sitting on my arse I thought I’d better get up. I’d originally planned to do a tip run today, but what with Ashford’s tip still being closed that wasn’t an option. I announced that I was going to “FEED THE FISH”. I had hoped to make the dogs jump up with a start, but they knew that we feed the pond fish in the late afternoon every day, and they’d all been watching and waiting.

Whilst I was at it I harvested dog dung.

 

We had pie and chips for dinner, then sparked up the Infinity Table and played Chris across the internet… or so we thought. After a while it seemed to us that Chris had picked up the French version of “Ticket to Ride” really quickly and was very fast at doing his moves. However it seemed to Chris that we were taking forever to make a move. The connection had dropped and the Table was doing Chris’s moves for him. But the connection held up for other games.

Odd…

I’ve had a good day off… it’s back to work again tomorrow.

25 March 2026 (Wednesday) - Ker-Ching!!!

I slept far better last night than I did the night before, but was still wide awake at four o’clock. I gave up trying to sleep (as I so often do), made toast and watched an episode of “Derek” then had my usual peer into the Internet.

There was a lot of talk about proposals to move the tank in the Town Centre. Gifted to the people of Ashford over a hundred years ago there are suggestions that the tank should be moved to some museum in Dorset… Supposedly. Everyone was up in arms saying the tank should stay where it is. The council has said they won’t do anything without a full public consultation. No one would actually seem to have made a formal suggestion, but everyone was incensed about what looks to be baseless rumours.

And I saw a friend was celebrating a tenth wedding anniversary. Is it really ten years ago? Yes - it was.

I Munzed, and taking care not to disturb anyone I got ready for work.

 

As I drove I noticed that a local petrol station was knocking petrol out at six pence a litre cheaper than it had been a couple of days ago. I’d seen quite a few angry posts on local Facebook groups naming the petrol station and threatening never again to buy from those who were blatantly profiteering… I wonder if this price reduction was the result of a social media campaign or just market forces in action… after all if you are going to sell petrol at six pence per litre more than the other local garages, people are going to go elsewhere.

 

I headed west-wards to Pembury. This morning the pundits on the radio were talking about nothing but oil prices. President Trump is apparently still claiming that the peace negotiations are going well; so well that the Iranians have given him some big gift (but he was rather vague on the details)

Meanwhile the Iranians are still saying there's no negotiations going on. The sensible money seems to think that President Trump is wasting time until the US armed forces get to the Middle East when he will then use them to kick some arse.

With absolutely nothing else being reported on, presumably there's nothing going on in Gaza, and ex-Prince Andrew hasn't porked anyone recently?

 

I stopped off at Tesco to get a sandwich. Their meal deal is ten pence cheaper than the one in Sainsbury's, but I did have to contend with the young lads filling the shelves who were rather passive-aggressively swearing at each other. It also bothered me that rather than having staff operating the tills, it is all self-service with two or three members of staff standing watching the customers with obvious contempt.

 

I got to work early and carried on with the IT testing I’ve been doing recently. It was perhaps a tad frustrating at times, but it made a change to my usual routine.

I came home. We did “FEED THE FISH”. “er indoors ^TM” sorted us a cuppa, and I did a You-Gov survey about this and that. It gave me two hundred points to my account, and as that put me over five thousand points I got to redeem them. I chose to have fifty quid in cash which has already been transferred to my bank account.

You-Gov isn’t the biggest of earners, but each survey takes about five minutes, and I get fifty quid once a year or so, which has got to be better than a poke up the bum with a sharp stick. If any of my loyal readers fancy jumping on this gravy train let me know; I get points for recommending people (I think).

 

We had a rather good dinner of enchiladas which we washed down with a bottle of plonk whilst watching an episode of “Throw Down”.

I might regret the two glasses of amaretto I had for dessert…

24 March 2026 (Tuesday) - Bit Dull

Having been awake for most of the night I gave up trying to sleep and got up at half past four. I made toast, watched an episode of “Derek” on Netflix. It passed the time.

And with time on my hands I had a look at the monthly accounts. I wasted quite a bit of time talking to the bank querying some suspicious activity… Why do so many companies use such stupid names? My monthly direct debit to the dentist isn’t recorded on my bank account as “dentist” or anything remotely like that. It comes up as “Tabeo Plans”. Similarly the monthly bung I give to the goat sanctuary comes up as “DS16JAN”. Why?

I got the accounts done and accounted for all that I squander each month. As always my accounts are far better than they might be, but as always I wish I had far more money in there. So many people I know don’t go through their bank statements every month accounting for every penny. Am I really as skint as I think I might be, or am I just mean?

 

As I drove up the motorway so the pundits on the radio were talking about the ongoing war in the Middle East. President Trump said that the peace negotiations were going well; the Iranians said there weren't any peace negotiations going on. What was that all about?

And there was talk about a report coming out today on the bills charged by vet surgeries. Not that anyone felt they were overcharging (much!) but there was an interview with some woman whose dog had a lump. She claimed the UK-based vets had wanted one thousand six hundred pounds whilst a vet she saw in Italy vet charged her one hundred and forty quid for the job.

 

I took a minor diversion to the petrol station at Aylesford's Sainsburys. There petrol was far too expensive, but was five pence per litre cheaper than Ashford's.

As I was there I got a sandwich. The Aylesford Sainsburys petrol station don't stock up on sandwiches until mid-morning so I had to rough it with the leftovers from yesterday. I tried smoked salmon with cream cheese; I won't be trying it again.

 

I was in on an extra day (doing IT stuff) today so (within reason) I could do the hours that suited me. So I started early and finished early. I came home and took the dogs to the woods for a walk. A week ago the car park at Orlestone was heaving with people coming from far and wide to see the no-longer extinct butterfly. I think it’s fair to say that the novelty has worn off; we got to the car park which last week must have had fifty cars in it. This afternoon we were the third car.

We had a good walk, but as always in Orlestone the dogs were more adventurous and less inclined to come when called. It was a shame that Bailey had to reprise her fox poo episode of yesterday, and that Treacle had to wallow in the swamp when we were two minutes from the end of our walk.

We came home for a bath.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching some episodes of “The Other Bennett Sister”. It’s rather good, but I suspect that unless you are quite up on what happened in “Pride and Prejudice” a lot of the story might not make sense.

We’ve caught up with the show now, and we’ve got to wait for the next episode to come out. I’d far rather binge-watch the lot in a few days rather than spreading it out. 

 

I was up silly-early this morning and I’ve got another early start tomorrow. I really should have an early night.