3 March 2017 (Friday) - Aliens !

I woke to find Fudge had spent the night at the foot of my bed. He’s not done that for a little while. I saw that as something of a result.

As I shaved there was something of a commotion as "er indoors ^TM" and both dogs were swarming around the kitchen. They do that quite impressively from time to time. They then all went back to kip and left me watching my DVD. Mr Stokes was purloining Mrs Lipton’s cherry cake in “You Rang M’Lord” (!)

I sparked up my lap-top to see what was going on in cyberspace. Facebook told me that two friends had birthdays today. I say “friends”; one actually is a friend, the other not so. But other than that, very little else had happened on there. Facebook isn’t what it used to be.

The morning’s haul of emails was better than usual though. I had an invite to a book club. It turns out there’s a book club on the first and third Friday of every month in the local Wetherspoons. I didn’t know about that; if the opportunity arises I might just wander along.

And the astro club had an email from SAGAS (the Southern Areas Group of Astronomical Societies). Apparently someone who’s actually a proper astronomer (as opposed to a random nutter) has photographed a real live UFO in the Ashdown Forest area. You can see the photo above. They were wondering if anyone else has seen the same UFO in Sussex or Kent. For what it’s worth I was in Eastbourne last Sunday and didn’t see any aliens.

As I looked on-line my little dog sat with me. He’s not been his usual self lately; I think his back is getting more and more painful. He rarely sits on the sofa any more, and when I pick him up he clearly winces in pain. He needs to lose weight; perhaps coming upstairs last night and being on the sofa this morning was a good sign.

The puppy then came charging through the living room (like a thing possessed) with my socks in her mouth. I took that as a prompt to get dressed, so I did and then went off to work.

As I drove through the rain the pundits in the radio were interviewing some windbag from the Scottish Nationalist party. I can’t understand how this bunch stays in power up north. They are a one-policy party, and their one policy (Scottish independence) was rejected by the Scottish electorate a couple of years ago. The chap being interviewed this morning was talking about another independence referendum because the Scots want to remain part of an ever-more-integrated Europe whilst leaving the UK. It struck me that the chap being interviewed didn’t want independence at all; he just wanted rid of the English. A shame he couldn’t be open about this.

I stopped off at Sainsbury’s to get petrol. I say “stopped off” – I used to ”stop off” at Morrisons in Canterbury. I actually now “go out of my way” to get to Sainsbury’s. I filled the car with petrol. I could be wrong but I think the car’s fuel economy is much worse following last week’s service.

I then went on to work via Aldi where arguably the world’s most miserable checkout girl took my money. I’ve come to like Aldi if only for the utter disinterest exhibited by their staff.

Work was good; I now have a locker. And whereas yesterday evening it took three quarters of an hour to get out of the hospital car park, today it took less than a minute.

Once home we ran the dogs round the road. As we walked I looked at the clouds. I had something of a wry smile; there was total cloud cover. I’d had a Facebook invite to an astronomy event this evening at Downe House. Usually I would have gone to that, but having been told by the organiser of the Facebook event that (amongst other failings) I was lacking ambition and direction, that I was embarrassingly irreverent, that I was subversive, manipulative and a leader of negativity I thought I would give it a miss this time.

With dogs walked I phoned to get an update on mum’s progress. Getting an update isn’t easy as my dad isn’t the most clued-up person when it comes to using his mobile phone. It seems she’s doing incredibly well having had half a lung removed.

I put some shirts on to wash whilst "er indoors ^TM" boiled up a rather good bit of scoff. She does that…