22 February 2026 (Sunday) - Rather Tired

Despite a full-on day yesterday I didn’t sleep at all well. It was gone midnight before I staggered off to my pit, but I was wide awake listening to the assorted snoring and dreaming by three o’clock.

I eventually gave up trying to sleep at half past seven and made toast. This time not with the apricot jam; I’ve rather gone off of that stuff.

I had my usual look at the internet. One hundred and eight people had sent birthday wishes, and quite a few others had commented on those wishes. That’s one of the reasons that I like Facebook – it is so easy to keep in touch with people that I don’t actually see from one year to the next.

And I saw that “The Great British Pub Crawl” had been in Hastings over the last couple of days… I’m not quite sure what “The Great British Pub Crawl” is all about. Regularly posting to Facebook, this chap seems to be on a mission to visit every pub in the UK. But exactly how do you finance this? The chap reported on twenty-five Hastings pubs over the last couple of days. If he only had a half-pint in every pub, that’s over seventy quid, and that’s not including his overnight accommodation. Is he being sponsored or paid to do this? 

 

I Munzed, then Wordled from “hurts” through “lumpy”, “fudge” and “guano” to “guava”. I got “guava” because it was the only thing that fitted. Apparently it’s a sort of fruit. One lives and learns.

I then had a look at all the trackables left over from yesterday’s geo-meet. Trackables are little things that get moved on from geocache to geocache. I’ve got quite a few of my own that I’ve set off. In theory you can follow their movements around the world. In practice they tend to go missing. Half of mine have gone missing. People pick them up and forget to log them. People pick them up and have no idea how to log them… I’ve logged all that were left at the meet yesterday and told the system that I’ve got them. There were quite a few, but right now there is only one left logged into the meet. Hopefully whoever has got that will do the secret geo-ritual soon.

I challenged the bots at chess dot com and managed to get one stalemate and one win against a level one thousand bot. I got beaten several times, but this bot doesn’t gloat when it wins, which is polite of it.

 

I had planned on a little dog walk this morning, but the weather was against it. And the dogs were worn out from yesterday. Even on days when we have a decent walk, the dogs still sleep for probably eighteen hours a day. Yesterday they were awake for about three times as long as they usually are during the day, and so were catching up on sleep. They got up late, grudgingly had brekkie, and then slept. Usually they ask to go for a walk, but not this morning. “er indoors ^TM” went shopping, and once I’d gathered the dog dung, filled the bird feeder and run round with the hoover I sat with the dogs and we all had a little sleep.

 

“My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” came round for the afternoon and we had a rather good time on the Infinity Table. “Sorry” and “Trouble” and “Tilez” and “Ticket To Ride”… we had a very good few hours. And when they set off home we played a couple more games of  Ticket To Ride” – the Nordic countries and the Asia versions.

 

For all that I’ve had a very lazy day today, I’m absolutely worn out… Once the washing machine has done its thing and I’ve hung the washing out, I’m thinking about an early night.

21 February 2026 (Saturday) - A Birthday

I had an odd night. I woke in the small hours following a very vivid dream in which “er indoors ^TM” was running a boating lake inside a stolen ridge tent, and once I finally got back to sleep I had another nightmare in which one of my ex-cubs had taken over the world. He was an odd chap who could speak (if he had to) but chose to communicate by making strange grimaces and expected people to know what he wanted according to the contortions of his face. In my nightmare, speech and the written word had become illegal and gurning was the only permissible form of communication.

Have you ever tried pulling strange expressions at a recalcitrant dog?

 

I made toast with some of that apricot jam. It’s a few years since we had any; I can remember it being far better than this stuff. I had a little look at the Internet. I had a few messages from “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”; she seems to be quite keen on emigrating to Mars at the moment. I suspect that given a few years that might be an option for her. I also suspect that what sounds rather glamourous in theory would actually be rather dull in practice.

And I had several birthday messages too.

Steve was on the radio doing the Guess the Lyrics competition. “She opened up her eyes and thought Oh What A Morning” No? – I had no idea either. It was “"All That She Wants" by the Swedish pop group Ace of Base.

 

We drove round to Repton and dog club where we had a rather good (if muddy) time. And from there we drove out to Biddenden where we met Karl and Tracey. We had a rather good walk round the local area. Very muddy, but good. We found a few geocaches (as we do). And then we went on to the McCann’s brewery for the geo-meet…

Oh dear…

We got to the place to find every single table booked for the rugby match. I explained that we’d arranged to have our meet there. We had. We arranged that a couple of months ago. They claimed to have no record of our booking. I showed them the email on my phone. That didn’t go down well and the woman behind the bar grudgingly said we could stand at the bar or sit outside on the patio, So we sat outside. The people on the next table had pizza. We tried to order food and were told we couldn’t as we hadn’t booked. Even though the people on the next table hadn’t booked and they got food. When I whinged the woman behind the bar said that I could talk to the manager about it if and when she came in. She didn’t actually say “f… off fatso” but it she made it clear that we weren’t welcome or wanted. I pulled out my phone and called the Old Dairy brewery and explained what had happened. They said we were very welcome.

It didn’t take that long to message everyone that the geo-meet had been relocated.

 

Twenty minutes later we were in the Old Dairy Brewery, and it wasn’t long before everyone who had said that they were coming to the geo-meet joined us. I was very relieved to see that everyone had got the message.

We had a rather good afternoon. Pizza, stout, meeting friends… it all became rather vague. Though I did take a few photos.

 

I woke up on the sofa a couple of hours later. “er indoors ^TM” got kebabs and we watched “Mr Bean’s Holiday” which we’d recorded some time ago. And I had a revelation. For all that Mr Bean is funny, he’s a horrible person, isn’t he?

 

As birthdays go, today was rather good.

20 February 2026 (Friday) - Doughnuts (edible and otherwise)

Last night I did that thing I do so often; I woke before two o’clock feeling full of energy and raring to go, and then dozed on and off for the rest of the night. I got up at five o’clock and watched an episode of “Boots” as I scoffed toast. Today I scoffed it with apricot jam. “er indoors ^TM” went shopping last night and came home with the stuff. I can remember it being far better than it was this morning.

With telly watched I had a little look at the Internet as I do. It was still there. For some reason I my Facebook feed this morning was flooded with adverts for the Church of England who were taking the line that because atheists couldn’t disprove the existence of their god, then atheists were clearly wrong. I’m not quite sure how that works? Personally I’d take the evidence of Eric the God-eating penguin which disproves the existence of God (engage logic mode…)

"God can't exist because of Eric The God-Eating Magic Penguin. Since Eric is God-Eating by definition, he has no choice but to eat God. So, if God exists, He automatically ceases to exist as a result of being eaten by Eric... Therefore *unless* you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, God doesn't exist. However *if* you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, then that same proof will also be applicable to God. There are only two possibilities - either you can prove that Eric doesn't exist or you can't - in both cases it logically follows that God doesn't exist".

From that it is a very short step to proving that black is white and getting yourself run over on the next zebra crossing that you see.

 

And then there was a commotion outside. Usually when they come on a Friday morning the bin men make no attempt to keep quiet. They crash about and shout across the street to each other seemingly of the opinion that if they are up and out of bed, then so should everyone else be up and about. But they excelled themselves today by spending about five minutes shouting "f...ing doughnut" up and down the street at twenty to seven this morning. I couldn't determine whether the "f...ing doughnut" was a fellow bin man, or some passer-by who had offended them.

 

I set off to work listening to the pundits on the radio. Apparently the brewing company Brewdog is going belly up. There were all sorts of people being interviewed on the radio about this. Having lost thousands of pounds they were all saying how the company seemed to be a sound investment at the time. I must admit I don't know the first thing about the finances of the company but as a beer drinker I never liked their stuff. To my mind they sold half-pint quantities of mediocre beer at pint prices.

And there was a lot of talk about ex-Prince Andrew who was arrested yesterday. After seemingly endless scandal and rumours about who and what he might have done the dirty deed to, at, or on, it seems he's finally been had up by the Old Bill. But the arrest was made on the suspicion that he passed on confidential financial information when he was acting as a government trade envoy. So far there's been no mention of whatever it was that allegedly prompted his mother to pay Virginia Giuffre  to get her to keep quiet about her allegations that she was forced to have several sexual encounters with him when she was aged seventeen. Will an arrest follow about that?  

His case sums up all that is wrong with the British judicial system though, doesn't it? He might be a villain, he might not. But he's already been tried and found guilty by the opinion of the newspapers, and he will never get a fair trial now, will he?

 

I drove up to Sainsburys where there were several caravans parked in the car park. What was that all about? I got lunch, and some cakes for work in honour of tomorrow including some doughnuts (not f…ing ones though).

 

I then went into work where I started a new book on my Kindle app. I started reading the Harry Potter books between Christmas and the New Year and I finished the last one yesterday. I've now started Arthur C Clarke's "Rama" series.

Arthur C Clarke is (yet) another one who was widely reported to be a sex criminal... even though there was absolutely no actual evidence against him other than the rantings of newspapers

 

As I worked I had a phone call from 07756 004729 who claimed that they were calling from Visa debit cards about a suspicious transaction of nine hundred pounds on my account. I phoned the bank who knew nothing about it... I suppose that these scammers only need to trick one person to be in profit...

And I had an email from Forestry England... who seem to be only too happy for me to stage a Midsummer's Eve event in Kings Wood. That's a result.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up sausages and chips which we scoffed whilst watching this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” which wasn’t bad. Sadly compared with what’s gone before it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad.

 

I’m thinking about an early night… bet I don’t have one.

19 February 2026 (Thursday) - Rostered Day Off

I was sleeping like a log when I woke to the sound of Morgan crying. He was laying next to me, twitching and shaking, whimpering and sobbing. He was clearly having a very vivid nightmare. Dogs *really* do have dreams. I managed to settle him, and I dozed on and off for the rest of the night, finally getting up just after seven o’clock

 

I had a look at the internet. The parody site Newsthump had had its TikTok account permanently deleted as the AI running the site didn’t understand parody. Apparently other satirical sites such as the Daily Mash and Waterford Whispers have the same problem.

AI still has a lot to learn.

And there was a minor squabble on the Kent Weather Forecasts Facebook page. The chap who runs the page had the hump because people were pointing out that his forecasts were at odds with other forecasts, The chap was ranting about how all the weather forecasters have the same data, but the data is open to interpretations.

Well…

No it’s not. If you’ve got accurate scientific data then that’s the end of it. If there’s multiple possible meanings for that data then your means of interpreting that data is fundamentally wrong. Isn’t it?

 

Despite the iffy weather forecast from Kent Weather Forecasts and the BBC (and the not-too-bad one from the Met Office) I took the dogs out. As we drove Robert Jenrick was being interviewed by the pundits on the radio. Like most politicians this chap seems to have an eye out for the main chance and has variously been in charge of housing and health when in government, and was shadow chancellor of the exchequer until he threw it all in and jumped on the Reform UK bandwagon. Listening to him was worrying; he summed up the very reason why I’m worried about Reform UK. He didn’t say that the country needs Reform UK; he said that the country needs Nigel Farage. And there’s Reform UK in a nutshell. It is a cult.

 

We got to the woods where the rain had given way to a foggy drizzle. Being earlier than usual we had a good normal-people-free walk. We mostly stuck to the wider paths and avoided the worst of the mud, it was only on the last half-mile that we saw anyone else.

 

We came home for a bath. I put a load of washing in to scrub, and with “er indoors ^TM” having an office day I made myself a cuppa then had a look in the fridge. I was under orders to chuck out the cheesecake that had been left in the fridge since last week and forgotten about. It didn’t smell *that* bad so I scoffed it.

 

I wrote up some CPD, then did the ironing whilst watching the last episodes of “Harlots” which was a rather good series. I emptied the washing machine (and set the dishwasher going) and ironed the shirts whilst they were wet and then started something new on Netflix. “Boots” tells the tale of a young gay lad who enlisted into the American Marines. It was billed as a comedy, but wasn’t actually that funny. Rather engaging… but not actually funny. I emptied the dishwasher. I ran round with the Hoover. I did the bins. I worried about Treacle who wanted to go into the garden where she ate grass for fifteen minutes.

 

I checked my emails just in case any of the trainees had sent me more portfolio work to assess. It’s only fair on them to give them feedback whilst what they’ve written is fresh in their minds. And there was something for me to look at – a dissertation on the ESR. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate is an absolutely wonderful blood test. I’ve gone into detail about it somewhere else.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home and sorted us a rather good chili which we scoffed whilst watching this week’s episodes of “The Traitors: Ireland” in which the chap I really didn’t like finally got the heave-ho.

I’m still in two minds as to whether I should apply for the next series of the UK version of the show…

18 February 2026 (Wednesday) - Before Another Late Shift

I slept reasonably well, but woke in a cold sweat at five o’clock after a nightmare in which I’d been sent to sort out an alien invasion in which the local buses had been taken over by buck-toothed androids which had doubled the bus fares overnight.

My pleas that I’d not been on a bus for years were totally ignored…

 

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. The local newspaper was pretending to act surprised on the local Facebook pages; following the closure of the local shopping centre the nearby café is looking set to go out of business. Whilst I feel for them, this can’t be a surprise, can it?

I saw our county councillor is no longer part of Reform UK; he’s packed up with them and joined the newly formed Restore Britain party. He posted on his Facebook page this morning “Every speech I gave had to be vetted and re scripted, every vote I gave was whipped and forced on me. To be given to respect to now vote and speak on behalf of my constituents means so much to me”. Perhaps we might now find out exactly why he's been sitting as a back bencher after leaving his deputy cabinet role (environment portfolio) at Kent County Council three months ago.

I suppose it is a step in the right direction; if only because Restore Britain is a political party whereas Reform UK is actually a company pretending to be a political party. There are those who see Restore Britain as a bad thing because of what they stand for. There are those who see Restore Britain as a bad thing because it divides the far-right vote. I don’t know what to think. can’t say I like either of the parties the bloke’s associated with, but from what I’ve seen of the chap he actually does far more for the local community than many other local councillors do. And he’s streets ahead of the Labour MP for whom I actually voted.

 

I sent out birthday wishes to the two friends who were having a birthday today, Munzed, and amazed myself by Wordling from “right” to “mogul” in only three goes. I suppose there’s only so many five letter words with “G” in the middle.

 

 I spent an hour assessing more trainee’s work. I wrote up some CPD, and took Treacle to the vets for her annual once-over. Her eight is down from last year (by nearly a kilogram) and her teeth are good (that’s a result for Doggy Dentals). She’s still covered in fatty lumps though. The vet suggested biopsy, but when I pointed out that in order to be sure they weren’t malignant we’d have to biopsy every one the vet agreed that wasn’t practical. Treacle’s still got a heart murmur, but it is no worse than last year. The vet pulled all her legs about and said there was no flexibility or mobility issues.

All things considered the vet said that Treacle was in very good shape for a (nearly) ten year old dog and that we should continue the long walks round the woods all the time she’s obviously not struggling with them.

 

The plan was then to go for a long walk round the woods… but as it says in the Bible (Proverbs 16 v 9) God laughs when we make plans. The boss phoned and said that due to sickness we were short at work and asked if I could cover the late shift.

I could.

It is rather pathetic really, but it is good to feel needed so once I’d made up both a cuppa I got ready for the off. As I got ready to go to work so Bailey wanted to come with me again. Having disappointed her earlier when I took Treacle to the vets I disappointed her again.

 

I drove round to the co-op where I immediately slammed on the brakes as some idiot woman clearly wasn't watching the cars around her and nearly rammed my car. And then she tried to do it again. Having had to twice stop suddenly because of her seemingly being oblivious to the world around her, I eventually parked despite her best efforts. As I walked to the co-op so she got out of her car. I commented to her that she needed to keep an eye out as she'd nearly crashed into me twice. She smiled and said I was talking to the wrong person because she doesn't drive. What was that all about?

I got a sandwich and went to work up the A20 where I stopped off to do the secret ritual with a rather good geocache that “er indoors ^TM” had hidden there last year. And with that done (together with yesterday's little mission) I've now completed the "Toy Dinosaurs" geo-Treasures.

I carried on to work... and again had to slam on the brakes as I drove up the motorway because the lorry in front hadn't noticed the broken-down car in the slow lane, and had left emergency braking far too late. As I pushed on the brake for all I was worth, the lorry in the rear view mirror looked awfully close as well...

When my previous car packed up on the motorway I'd had the sense to freewheel onto the hard shoulder rather than abandoning it in the slow lane, but what do I know?

Work was much the same as ever. I can't pretend I actually wanted to go in this afternoon, but the boss had asked me to, and according to the thirty-third Rule of Acquisition, it never hurts to suck up to the boss.

 

I was glad to see the night shift turn up. As I drove home the pundits on the radio were repeating the same program I'd listened to yesterday morning about the hacker who'd tried to blackmail thousands of people. Much as I like Radio Four, there's an awful lot of repeats on there. I suppose they've done their homework and I suppose they try to schedule repeats so that different people hear them at different times... It's just a shame that I seem not to hear them all. I turned the radio off and sang along to the strange tunes in my MP3 collection

 

I’m feeling rather worn out – I’ve worked three of the last four days. So much for being semi-retired…

17 February 2026 (Tuesday) - Before the Late Shift

I slept well, but ached when I woke up. I put washing in to scrub, made toast and had a little look at the Internet in the desperate hope that something might have happened overnight.

It hadn’t really.

I Munzed, Wordled from “shite” (it took that word !) to “squad” and had a little look at the geo-map. I didn’t have time to get the dogs round Kings Wood and back and bath them, and Orlestone would have been a swamp. So bearing in mind that some new geo-Treasures were going live today I planned a little circuitous trip to work to get some of these Treasures.

 

As I got ready to go on my little mission so Bailey wanted to come with me.  Of all the dogs she seems to get most excited at the prospect of going out, and I didn't like to disappoint her. But I did.

As I drove off the pundits on the radio were talking about the criminal hacker Julius Kivimäki  who in 2018 gained access to the treatment records of about thirty thousand patients and went on to demand ransom payments from both the company he hacked and individual patients. He ended up with over twenty-one thousand charges of attempted aggravated extortion, nearly ten thousand counts of aggravated invasion of privacy, and twenty counts of aggravated blackmail. Apparently the chap openly played solitaire and read books during the trial; showing no remorse at all..

There was an interview with the people who defended him in court... they said that they were in an impossible position of having to defend the indefensible. 

 

I got to my first geo-target... or the designated parking for it. I should have realised this was going to be a bad one when my RingGo app went belly up, but I thought I could pay when I got home and I persevered. I walked through quarter of a mile of thick mud only to find someone felling a tree on top of where the geocache was hidden.  That someone got rather aggressive when he saw me minding my own business walking past...  and after a little "conversation" (for want of a better word) I decided to cancel my subscription to his employers (Kent Wildlife Trust).

 

The second and third geo-targets were quite painless in comparison... I just followed the sat-nav to where it said to go, stopped the car, got out, did the secret geo-rituals and drove off again.

 

The fourth was simple enough. Go to a car park and find the sign with six lines of text. After ten minutes I was about to give up when I turned round and saw the sign had been behind me all the time. Dur (!) But once I'd found the sign, solving the puzzle was easy enough and I soon knew where to go.

 

The fifth eluded me... I had to find mentions of half a dozen people in a graveyard. I *think* one of then was mentioned on a plaque which had fallen off one of the benches.

The sixth involved solving a simple puzzle based on the stained glass window of the local Methodist church, and having solved the puzzle the cache itself was easy to find. Or it would be easy for anyone else to find. I made something of a meal of it...

 

By then the morning had flown by so I headed off to the petrol station in Aylesford where cars were queuing back to the road. But as I arrived one or two drove off from the same pump and I was able to drive straight in. So I did.

 

I went on to work... I really should have a lie-in when on the late shift, but I don't. I do stuff in the morning. Usually too much stuff. And by the time I show up at work I'm ready to go home to put my feet up. But I did my bit (as I do), and eventually got home about thirteen hours after I set off this morning…

 

Oh and it’s five years since my mum died.

16 February 2026 (Monday) - This n That

I didn’t feel too good went I went to bed last night; I didn’t feel much better this morning, but I could sulk or get on with it I got on with it.

 

I had my weekly weigh-in; my weight is holding constant which is better than going up I suppose. I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do most mornings. I hadn’t missed much. The political squabbling continued… the Labour party is seen by pretty much everyone as being a load of old tosh and the only way forward is seen to be Reform UK… Even though it’s only a year or so since the Labour party was voted in with a massive majority because the electorate were sick of the failings of the Conservative party. And now I personally can’t see how the current government is much different to the previous Conservative one and everyone wants a new Reform UK government which (in large part) will be made up of the ex-conservatives who now infest Reform UK and who they all voted out in the biggest defeat in electoral history only a year or so ago.

Democracy, eh?

I saw the son of some old friends had a birthday today… Twenty-seven. Where to the years go?

And I saw that yesterday some people had been walking round looking for some of the geocaches I’d hidden in Kings Wood and didn’t find two of them. That immediately gave us today’s dog walk.

I Munzed, made up two little replacement geocaches, and we set off.

 

As I drove there was some utter tripe on the radio about someone who used to work for an oil company and had now written a book that supposedly had to be explained before you could read it. I was reminded of all the books we read at secondary school that were supposedly allegorical of all sorts of stuff which were absolutely nothing at all to do with said books.

We got to the woods and set off on a different walk to our usual one. We walked out to the geocaches that had been reported as missing. One was, one wasn’t. And from the last one we wandered through part of the area of the woods where we would be more likely to see deer… but we didn’t.

As we walked we saw some of the other dog walkers that we know by sight. And we saw Frankie.

Oh dear…

Frankie was a very small dog who was absolutely fine with us, but the woman with him was terrified of Morgan and Bailey, and she acted surprised to find out that when she got out the dog treats for Frankie, Morgan and Bailey wanted one as well. And Treacle would have been up for a treat as well…

If you don’t want other dogs swarming round your precious princess, why open a bag of dog treats when the other dogs are about five yards away?

But despite the attraction of a bag of dog treats, my three came away when called.

 

We got back to the car to see that my MapMyWalk app said we’d covered a few yards over five miles, and that my watch said we’d covered a few yards under six miles. I wonder which (if either) is correct.

We came home where bellies got washed, and I made us both a cuppa with a lump of cake too. As I’d driven home from work yesterday I’d stopped off at the little shop in Sissnghurst and got a butterscotch cake.

I filled the bird feeder, I harvested a crop of dog dung from the garden, I put a load of washing in to scrub. I then emailed the geo-feds about an idea I’ve had. About thirty years ago a whole load of poncey artwork was set un in Kings Wood. Most of it has since fallen apart and is long gone, but there’s one bit still there – an avenue of yew trees planted in such a way that if you stand at one end and look west (ish) on midsummer’s eve then the sun appears to set at the other end of the avenue of trees. It would be nice to see that, and it would be nice to share it. So I thought I might set up a geo-event for the occasion. But would I need formal landowner permission? If I do I probably wouldn’t have time to sort it out between now and June…

I sent an email to see what the geo-feds had to say.

 

As the rain (and thunder) started I resorted to my fall-back position of watching episodes of “Four In A Bed”. In today’s episodes the chap who charged twice as much as everyone else and was critical of everyone and everything turned out to run somewhere which was nowhere near as good as the opposition, and he came in last. I didn’t laugh much.

I hung out the washing, put a load of undercrackers in to scrub, and spent an hour assessing a trainee’s work on haemolytic anaemias until I got a replay from the geo-feds. Any kind of organised activity on Kings Wood would need formal permission. It’s really daft. There’s nothing stopping me going up there with a gaggle of mates to watch the sunset. That’s fine. But if we want to do it as a geocaching event we need formal permission. I suspect that with four months to go I’ve left it too late for this year. If only the paid staff of Forestry England could work as fast as the unpaid volunteers of geocaching dot com, eh?

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza which we scoffed whilst watching a couple of episodes of “Small Prophets”. It was rather good; even if I did spend much of the time watching it trying to work out what I’d seen the cast in.

 

I’m feeling a bit better than I did this morning… but still not one hundred per cent.