7 April 2026 (Tuesday) - More I.T.

For once I had a bit of an early night last night and managed seven hours asleep. I was still up before six o’clock though. I made toast and watched an episode of “Derek” then had my usual look at the Internet. It was rather dull this morning; nothing but adverts for stuff in which I had absolutely no interest.

I had a load of emails – people had been round Kings Wood hunting for the geocaches I’d hidden there. Several people couldn’t find certain ones; that’s tomorrow’s dog walk planned for me.

I had a quick Munz, then got ready for work.

 

What with it effectively still being the Easter holidays the roads were rather quiet as I drove up the "Operation Brock" nonsense. I *really* can't see the point of it; there's the same amount of traffic there always is, just going twenty miles per hour slower. Perhaps that's the point? I did see four cars and a van going along the bit that cars and vans shouldn't be in; there's often cars and vans in that bit.

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Kanye West. Apparently he's some big music star who's seriously upset the Jewish community. At the risk of stirring up a hornet’s nest, it strikes me that the entire "Jewish community" is a subject no one dares to mention. It strikes me that cries of antisemitism are thrown up at the slightest provocation, and the world and his wife live in terror of such accusations. Meanwhile Israel demands that America join it in (from what I can see) an unprovoked war and no one says a word. I'd love to know just what I'm missing here.

And the astronauts are on their way back from the Moon. Not that they actually went to the Moon; just round it. For all that I'm a great fan of the space program, it does strike me that they went a long way to do not very much. Maybe going into a lunar orbit and then leaving it after a few orbits might have been something? Mind you their previously poggered toilet has now been fixed... you know you've got troubles when you are a week away from the nearest functional chodbin (or even tree to tiddle up).

 

I popped in to Sainsburys to get a sandwich as I do. They had quite a few plants; I thought about getting some, but I've done that in the past. They don't survive a day in the car.

And I went on to work. Originally I wasn't scheduled to be at work today, but I'd been asked if I might help with doing more testing on the new IT system.  I had a go... there's no denying I had quite a bit of "Operator Error". The thing would have worked far better had it done what I wanted it to do rather that what I'd been telling it to do but that's what completer systems are all about, isn't it? No? - well, that's the line I'm taking. 

I spent much of the day telling management that if I stuff it up in the testing scenarios then we can see how to avoid subsequent stuff-ups in the future. I'm not convinced that management subscribe to this school of thought, but management rarely does. I never used to when I was a manager.

 

As I drove home down the motorway so I saw a horse bolting across one of the bridges that crosses the M20…

 

We cracked open a bottle of plonk and then finished off the amaretto whilst watching the last episode of “The Hunt: Prey vs Predator”. It was a good show, but would have been better had any of the contestants been likeable.  We followed this with a couple of episodes of “The Other Bennett Sister” in which Mr Ryder turned out to be quite the beast. Men often are…

6 April 2026 (Easter Monday) - Working, Rolvenden

I felt rather rough when I woke this morning, but what could I do? Sulk or get on with it. I got on with it. “It” being laying wide awake far too early hoping and failing to get back to sleep.

I gave up, got up, put a load of washing in to scrub, made toast and watched an episode of “Derek” which was entertaining. I then had my usual peer into the Internet.

 

Our local MP had posted to his Facebook page (or a member of his staff had). Our local MP’s Facebook page has two sorts of posts. Either he’s trying to share in the limelight of that which someone local has achieved, or he’s making personal attacks on the opposition. Having spent years hoping for a Labour MP, this chap has turned out to be something of a disappointment. 

Other than that, hardly anything that wasn’t an advert was in my Facebook feed this morning. And of the adverts, pretty much none of them were of any interest to me.

I Munzed, and Wordled from “rough” to “story” and “score” to “sworn”.

 

With the washing hung out I set off up the motorway where the "Operation Brock" stupidity was still in place. But what with it being a rather quiet Bank Holiday morning I just set the cruise control and keep going. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the ongoing war in the Middle East. On the one hand is the American President who is ranting and raving, and on the other hand is the Iranian bunch who (from what I can see) haven't actually done much to warrant being attacked in the first place.

Trump is threatening dire retribution if the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened to shipping. However everyone knows T.A.C.O.  and consequently those he threatens are taking no notice. Meanwhile the rest of the world have realized that they can get oil out if they pay the Iranians not to shoot at them and so have started paying.  I suspect that when this all blows over (this time) the Iranians will carry on charging people not to shoot at their oil tankers and will have found themselves a nice little earner. Maybe the Prime Minister might learn from this and start threatening to take pot-shots at anything going through the strait of Dover unless they give the UK a bung.

 

I got to work. I popped into the canteen in the hope that they might have a hot cross bun. They did, and so I had one with a cuppa before I started. I'd rather not have been working today, but it was only for the morning, and unlike how it used to be when I worked elsewhere, I did what I did secure and content in the knowledge that every single thing I did today wouldn't be revisited and inspected tomorrow by a bullying manager determined to find fault everywhere he possibly could.  

And with my bit done I came home.

 

Having spent the entire Bank Holiday weekend so far maintaining geocaches we continued the theme. We drove out to Rolvenden where people who’ve found hundreds of other people’s geocaches but couldn’t be bothered to put out any of their own were finding fault with that which “er indoors ^TM” had done. As with pretty much everything in life it is not what is said but how it is said. “I’m sorry but the thing is rather damp” doesn’t give the offence that “yet another in desperate need of attention” does.

But we had a good walk. It was a shame that the dogs had to be on the leads for much of the way, but there were pheasants shouting seemingly constantly and the dogs seriously had the red mist.

I took a few photos as we went.

With walk walked we popped into the pub at the end of the route. I’ve not been in there for some time… eleven years.to be precise. We had a rather good (and well-deserved) pint, but… a pint of Harveys, half a cider shandy, two bags of crisps… nearly twelve quid. I know I’m getting mean in my old age but that’s about double what I’d pay in the shop over the road, and drinking it in my back garden means I wouldn’t have to put up with all the normal people shouting profanities at each other. Like they do.  

 

Seeing how it was the last day of the Easter holiday today “er indoors ^TM” sorted KFC which we scoffed whilst watching two more episodes of “The Hunt: Prey vs Predator”. Mind you when I say “watching”, I slept through much of the second one. I wonder if I missed much?

5 April 2026 (Sunday) - A Walk, Gardening...

Morgan had got off the bed in the night. When I came back from the loo at five o’clock he was looking hopeful so I lifted him up past Treacle’s glare.

Back in the day I would have got up at five o’clock on Easter Sunday. I would have gone to our local church (just down the road) and set up all the tables and chairs. Friends of the time would then have got the kitchen orgnised and I and others would walk up to North’s Seat; the highest point for miles around. We Methodists used to organise a “Son-Rise” outdoor church service where we would sing and pray. We’d be joined by the local C of E congregation, the local Catholics and the Baptists. The Jehovah’s Witnesses would always be invited to join with us. Every year they sent a little delegation who never joined in, but stood and watched from fifty yards away.

And once the sun had risen we’d take everyone back to our Methodist church where we’d give everyone brekkie. Everyone except the Jehovah’s Witnesses who flatly refused to have anything to do with us.

I wonder if that still goes on in Hastings.

 

But I didn’t get up at five o’clock today. I went back to bed and stayed there until half past seven. I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was much the same as ever… but I chuckled at the adverts in my feed. Yesterday I mentioned the iffy fence panels and that we’d bought some bedding plants. This morning I was inundated with adverts for fence repair kits and plant seeds.

 

 #There wasn’t much we could really do today. Pretty much everything closes for Easter Sunday. Supposedly it is so the staff can have a rest. What a load of tosh. Let’s see how the public react when they turn up at the hospital and get told to shove off because the place is closed so that the staff can have a rest. Why don’t shops and supermarkets and the like open from six in the morning until midnight (or even operate continuously). They could do this by actively looking for people who want to start work very early in the morning, or want to work late into the evening. Or want to do night work. Rather than having the existing staff working more hours, just take on more staff. After all what’s the point of a shop being open when all its potential customers are at work themselves? 

 

I Wordled, and Munzed from “night” to “knave” and got it with “envoy” on the third attempt. I rather impressed myself with that.

I went into the garden for a bit. I cleared yet more dog turds, laid one of the stepping stones that the first fruit of my loin gave me yesterday, cleaned out the filter of the small pond, and gave up on the pansies I planted a few weeks ago. They’ve come to nothing so I dinged their compost into one of the planters, and by then “er indoors ^TM” was ready. Some of her geocaches along the Greensand Way needed attention. We’d sorted some on Friday; we sorted more today. And with caches sorted we had something of a failed experiment. The series of geocaches runs in a straight line. We thought we might add a return loop to make a circular walk… There is a footpath which goes parallel to the geo-series which would be an ideal route in theory…

In practice it was a disaster. The path had half a dozen stiles which were poggered and all but impassable. We got over them but it took some doing. I shall contact the rights of way people… it would be a good walk if you could actually get along it. A mile and a quarter took us over an hour.

 

We came home for a cuppa and the last of the lemon cake, and I went back into the garden. I planted out those bedding plants we got yesterday. I discovered that I’d got a dozen snapdragons rather than six – that was a result. I tested all the water features – the big one isn’t quite flowing like it might. I expect I’ll sort it eventually. Or I won’t. We got a load of rubbish ready for a tip run. And when I finished pootling I took a few photos of the garden.  

We had a cuppa by the pond. Now it’s getting warmer we can sit by the pond. But when I say “pond” I can’t help but feel I mean “big dog water bowl”; Treacle does love guzzling out of it.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up chicken and chips. Once that was scoffed we played the Infinity Table over the Internet against Chris. That thing’s internet connection is odd. “Game of Life”, “Sorry” and “Trouble” all work fine, but “Ticket to Ride” simply won’t play remotely.

 

I’ve got to go to work in the morning…

4 April 2026 (Saturday) - Rather Busy

I slept reasonably well… for the last year or so I seem to have been plagued with very vivid dreams of finding myself at Open University summer schools with no reason to be there… I wonder what that’s all about?

 

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. Yesterday I mentioned that a local councillor was using Facebook to launch personal attacks on another. I made the comment “It is such a shame that local government has sunk to the level of personal attacks on social media” and amazingly no one wanted to quibble with me, and several people had agreed. Another local councilor commented that she agreed with me, and went on to say what a thankless task local government can be. No matter what you do, there will be people (who’ve never actually got off their arses themselves) waiting to find fault.

It was the same back in the day with the county-wide Star Trek club, the snake club and the astro club. Everyone would say “why don’t you…” and never “why don’t we…”. Everything that was done was wrong, but there were never any ideas or suggestions for what might actually be done.

Maybe if the people who run local councils were appointed by lot (in much the same way that people get called up for jury service) then those finding fault would have some understanding of that with which they are finding fault.

And I found out that the actress who played Private Godfrey’s sister in Dad’s Army was in real life the wife of him who played Captain Mainwaring. One lives and learns.

 

I Munzed and Wordled from “hurts” through “scale”, “sappy” and “savvy” to get “sandy” on the fifth attempt.

Steve was doing the Guess The Lyrics competition on the radio as I pootled. “This is a song to all of my friends, they take the challenge to their hearts”. No? – I had no idea either. It was “New Song” by Howard Jones.

 

I drove round to Dog Club and got set up. “er indoors ^TM” followed with the dogs. Dog Club went rather well; we had quite a few new dogs along. The new dogs were a bit overwhelmed at first, but within a few minutes they were all running and playing and scoffing treats with all the other dogs. And the new dogs’ humans were also a bit overwhelmed at first, but within a few minutes were chatting with everyone else and enjoying the fun. We had (I think) twenty-three dogs along today, and we all had a great time.

If only more dog owners could see how dogs can get on so well.

 

All too soon it was time to go. “er indoors ^TM” was off to craft club. The dogs would just keep looking for her, so I took them home when she went.

As we drove Steve was on the radio doing the Mystery Year competition. When did Freddie Laker get knighted? When was Mr. Blue Sky in the charts? The embarrassingly named Cloppa Castle was on the telly… and there was some cricket match in which someone or other took eight wickets. Or “winnets” as Steve said. He got away with it but I did chuckle… It was 1978.

 

Once home the dogs soon settled. I made myself a cuppa and made some AI photos for the Dog Club’s Facebook page. Then I got busy… I did the dogs’ flea treatments then ran out the lawnmower… and after about five seconds turned it off to harvest more dog dung. I’d cleared it all before I started, but between getting shot of all the turds and getting the lawnmower out, one of them had added a late offering.

With the lawn eventually mowed I had a preliminary zoom round with the garden vacuum. And then I ran out the pond hose and cleaned out the pond’s pressure filter. You really can see how the thing flows faster after a cleaning.

I had a look at the cordyline (it’s a plant). It don’t look too clever. I don’t think it’s dead though. Not yet anyway. I’ll see what a dose of plant food does for it. I had some in the shed and doshed some out to the potted plants which had survived the winter. There were also some weeds in the plant pots. They got chucked… though to be honest it was tricky to see what was wanted plant and what was unwanted weed.

I had a look at the fence panels. They look shabby. I keep talking about replacing them. Mind you when I say “replacing them” I really mean “paying someone to replace them for me”. The actual replacing isn’t an issue; it’s the having the new ones delivered and getting shot of the old ones that would be arse-ache.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home from craft club and sorted us a cuppa and a hot cross bun. We had some Morrison’s hot cross buns… they aren’t very nice.

We then took the dogs out plant shopping. We went to Bybrook Barn where maybe one person in twenty realised that they were in a busy garden centre. Pretty much everyone was blundering about totally oblivious to everyone else around them. We got some bedding plants, but no polyanthus. Apparently they are now out of season. We went on to Dobbies where we got some polyanthus in the “reduced” section. And some little goldfish for the small pond.

 

“My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” called round. They’d been tidying up their garden and had some statues that were surplus to requirement. Did I want them? Yes please!!!  We got them into the garden; I shall do something with them tomorrow.

 

And then, with the Infinity Table not having been put away since last night, “er indoors ^TM” and I had another go at various maps of “Ticket to Ride” which I eventually won (four games to three).

If any of my loyal readers fancy an evening of drinking beer whilst laying virtual train tracks round various maps of Europe, America and Asia, you’d be very welcome…

3 April 2026 (Friday) - Good Friday

I made the mistake of going to the loo in the small hours and came back to bed to find I’d got an eight-inch wide strip down the edge of the bed in which I could try to get back to sleep. I tried to push the dogs over, but there’s some strange feature of canine physiology by which a dog’s weight increases ten-fold when they are asleep.

I managed to get back to sleep, and despite the noise of the bin men I stayed in my pit until after eight o’clock.

 

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. What with it being Good Friday someone had gone onto one of the Lego-related Facebook pages and put up a picture of a Lego model of Jesus on the cross. That stirred up no end of arguments.

And there was (yet another) argument about… well to be honest on the one hand were “women born in the wrong bodies” and on the other hand were “men in dresses” depending on your personal perspective. Whatever you call a trans woman, should that person be allowed into women-only spaces? Various arguments were ranted on both sides, but as is always the way in life the ultimate decision will be made by the one who will make the effort to shout the loudest.

And on those lines a local councillor was on one of the local Facebook pages making a personal attack on another local councillor.

I had an email. PayPal have given Avast Software fifty quid for a lap-top tune-up package which I neither needed nor wanted. I asked for a refund… eventually. The PayPal website wasn’t the easiest to navigate through.

I also went through the Avast site where a bot offered to refund sixteen quid. I told it to get knotted and it offered twenty-seven quid. I told it to get knotted again and it eventually refunded the lot but would seem to have cancelled my antivirus package too.

 

I Munzed. The Munzee Clan War started today. I Wordled from “money” through “saner” and “sends” to “singe”, and we got ready for the off.

“er indoors ^TM” had reports of issues with her geocaches in Hamstreet woods, so we took the dogs there for a look-see. The dogs were mostly well behaved but there were a few issues with rolling in fox poo and eating horse poo. Geocaching-wise we sorted the issues, but as usual there wasn’t anything wrong that couldn’t have been put right in less time than it took to whinge that there was an issue.

We came home via the garden centre at Hamstreet. They didn’t have any polyanthuses. What was that all about?

 

We had a cuppa. “er indoors ^TM” wrote up the geo-admin stuff from the morning’s excursion. I wrote up some CPD, and looked at various options for antivirus software. Like with everything there were as many options as there were people to suggest them. But one bit of advice was useful – don’t go with the “auto-renew” option. Let the company prompt you at renewal time; threaten to go to a competitor and you’ll get a bargain. Like I’m hoping to get by not continuing with my current antivirus supplier.

We did “FEED THE FISH” and when I topped up the fish food tub I saw that I’d emptied our back-up supply. Good old Amazon will send some more in the week. Hopefully.

 

We got the infinity Table out and spent the evening playing “Ticket To Ride”. There was a minor hiatus for kebabs and dog dinner. At half past eleven the score was declared. Ten-nil. I lost…

 

“Good Friday”… it wasn’t bad really. Back in the day Good Friday would have been one big booze-up at the Chambers beer festival in Folkestone. Those were good days, but I would (quite literally) piss over a hundred quid up the wall every time. After a few years of doing this, Good Friday became a five mile geocaching walk with over forty friends followed by a few hours in the pub.

COVID and lockdowns put paid to the social side of geocaching (it is slowly recovering)

More recently Good Friday has been either working, a hike or gardening. The plan for today had been a hike, but with friends being unwell we postponed that plan. And it was too cold for gardening…  I might do some tomorrow.

2 April 2026 (Thursday) - Doing Overtime

Another bad night. I got to sleep quickly, but “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs came up shortly after. Treacle settled; sadly Morgan and Bailey decided to have a pitched battle. And once they finally shut up and I nodded off again I found myself in a nightmare in which I was trying to force-feed ham sandwiches to the American ambassador.

I got up at five o’clock, made toast, and once I’d watched an episode of “Derek” I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. The Artemis II took off last night and is now on its way. And not a lot had happened on Facebook overnight, which was probably for the best. I posted out birthday wishes to the two Facebook friends having birthdays and got ready for work.

 

I set off up the motorway only to find the "Operation Brock" stupidity was back. Here's a thought. Last year our Reform UK councillor said that Reform UK would be putting a stop to Operation Brock. I wrote to him and in his reply he was crystal clear that Operation Brock was a thing of the past. Hasn't happened, has it? And they put the council tax up when they said they wouldn't, but that's another rant.

As I drove (at about forty-three miles per hour) the pundits on the radio were talking about the Artemis II launch. For all that I'm excited about it, the rocket went up, and that was it (for the moment). It could be announced in about fifteen seconds; they did go on about it at length without actually saying anything.

I think there was some talk about how the world is lunging into economic disaster; the so-called expert brought on to talk about it couldn't speak very good English and so the five minute interview was frankly incomprehensible. 

And there was talk about ex-Prince Andrew who's still in trouble and is going to be interviewed by the rozzers again.

 

I stopped off in Sainsburys for a sandwich. I got a couple of bottles of beer whilst I was at it. The self-service till said I had to be age-checked. You'd think the machine's camera which films the entire process would be able to tell I was old enough to buy a bottle of beer, wouldn't you? The moody old bat who had to get off her arse and come over to press the "he's old enough" button made no secret of her displeasure at having to get off of her arse. I've mentioned her before. She really shouldn't work in any customer-facing role. She clearly hates the general public and never speaks, though occasionally there's a bad-tempered grunt *if* she's in a particularly good mood.

I went on to work. Today was an extra day - I'd offered to help out with the new IT system.  In order to test the thing we need to have created various dummy patients on the system. Personally I use "KIRK - Captain" as my test patient. Others use "FROG - Kermit The" or "POTTER - Harry"... Occasionally someone will use "PATIENT – Test”, but I don’t hold with such normality There's probably something that a good psychologist might make of this.

 

For all that I whinge about Operation Brock, my journey home today was easier than yesterday’s. Yesterday I had to emergency stop to avoid the cars reversing (without looking) out of farm tracks, the cars coming head-on at me on the wrong side of the A262, and the cyclists randomly blundering all over the A28. Today I just set the cruise control and kept going in a (more or less) straight line.

 

One home I gathered up the dogs and took them down to Orlestone where we had a good walk. We didn’t roll in anything, or wallow in anything. We did find a dead squirrel, but it was that rank that no one wanted to carry it.

And with walk walked we came back home where we did “FEED THE FISH”. I harvested another bumper crop of dog dung, and had a fight with Microsoft Copilot. I asked it to make a picture of Captain Kirk, Kermit the Frog and Harry Potter sitting in a hospital waiting room. It refused because that would be a breach of copyright. So I asked it to make a picture of a man in a Star Trek uniform, a frog and a boy with glasses sitting in a hospital waiting room and it produced the picture above. Go figure.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more episodes of “The Hunt: Prey vs Predator” which has taken a novel twist. For all that it is effectively a game of chase, there’s only one in the chasing team capable of speeds in advance of a brisk walk.

I’ve got a day off tomorrow (it’s a Bank Holiday). I’m not liking working these extra days…

1 April 2026 (Wednesday) - Early Shift

I was sleeping like a log when my phone went absolutely mental in the small hours with no end of notifications despite its internet connections being switched off. Just as I was nodding off again so “er indoors ^TM” took Treacle for a “quiet” tiddle. I wasn’t getting back to sleep after that.

I got up, made toast and had watched an episode of “Derek” before having a look at the Internet. Nothing much had changed overnight. I had some emails… people had been out in Kings Wood looking for my geocaches. I’d replaced a missing one a couple of weeks ago – these people had found the original.

There wasn’t much else happening on-line at half past five this morning so I got ready for work and set off.

 

I drove west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens. It was rather dark and rather foggy this morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the war in the Middle East which Donald Trump now claims will be over in a couple of weeks. That bloke says a lot of things… sadly much of which turns out not to be the truth.  Is he bending the truth to suit his agenda? Is he deliberately lying? I realised that my experience of the bloke is purely that which I see of him in the news, but he reminds me of the more feeble-minded cub scouts with which I dealt with as a scout leader many years ago. The rather simple children would just spout the first things that came into their heads. It can be rather endearing in an immature eight year old, but it is rather worrying in a world leader.

I suppose (if nothing else) it is yet another example of the ultimate futility of democracy.

There was also talk about the Artemis II which is supposedly going up later. I hope it does. There was someone on the radio from the Open University being interviewed on the radio this morning who echoed what I said yesterday; the Americans are running scared that the Chinese will get to the Moon first (this time).

 

I stopped off at Tesco where I got a sandwich and filled the self-service machine with all the change from Saturday’s Dog Club. The staff didn’t care today, but the old biddy in the queue behind me wasn’t happy about it. She was giving a running commentary to anyone who would listen about how much change I was putting in the machine and how long she’d been waiting to use the machine herself. For no reason that I could work out it was (apparently) vital that she had to use the machine I was using; the other seven just weren’t good enough for her.

 

I got to work and had a very busy day. I’ve mentioned before that I wouldn’t recommend working anywhere that regularly has “Red Alert” declared. Unlike Captain Kirk’s our Red Alerts don’t involve coming under phaser fire from irate Klingons, but I’d still rather not have them.

I was glad when it was home time. And being on the early meant I got home much earlier than usual.

 

I had a vague idea of taking the dogs to the woods, bit once we’d done “FEED THE FISH” they all went back to sleep, so I didn’t bother.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up Katsu chicken which we scoffed whilst watching “The Hunt: Prey vs Predator”. It’s a rather good show not entirely unlike the wide games I used to play with my mates in the sand quarry at Fairlight with my mates fifty years ago. And the kit they wear puts me in mind of the seventies sci-fi show “Logan’s Run”.

 

I’d like to stay up to watch the Artemis II launch, but I’m falling asleep and it don’t go up till nearly half past eleven…