18 January 2018 (Thursday) - This n That

I had rather expected to have had a day’s sick leave yesterday as an after-effect on Tuesday’s flu jab. Yesterday I had no side-effects at all. This morning I woke feeling like death warmed up. Tuesday’s flu jab or last night’s wine and amaretto? Back in the day I really could drink a gallon of ale and not have a hangover the next day. Nowadays I am *such* a lightweight.

Taking care not to wake the dogs I got up and over brekkie I watched another episode of “The Good Place”. I liked the first episode; I wasn’t too sure about this morning’s one. The characters seem a little too formulaic. But I shall stick with it. The episode length is just right for brekkie time.
I then sparked up my lap-top as I do most mornings (my mornings generally follow the same rituals).
There was a pitiful posting on one of the geocaching pages. Someone had declared themselves too thick to do a Wherigo cache.
That annoys me.
It’s not just Wherigo caches, it’s foreign holidays, setting up a lap-top, driving a car, reading a map, downloading an e-book… most people take one look at a set of instructions, declare that it is beyond them, and give up without trying. Why are people so defeatist? People seem to take pride in declaring themselves too thick to do anything.
I had a look at my emails. My piss boiled there as well. Another of the world’s supposedly top one per cent of geocache hiders had been announced. This chap has hidden four caches; none in the last five years.
It is probably as well that the parent company of geocaching relies so heavily on volunteer efforts; their paid staff clearly aren’t up to the job.

It was quite light when I left for work this morning; and windy too. I took my usual route to work, wondering if Pot Kiln Lane might be blocked by fallen trees.
It wasn't.
However, I suspect that road often gets blocked by idiot motorists losing control of their cars whilst flying over mud at break-neck speeds. I expect I shall find out.; hopefully not head-on.

As I drove I listened to the radio as I do.  I'm more and more feeling that we should have a second Brexit referendum; not so much to reverse the decision, but just to be clear on exactly what the nation would be voting on. As time goes on it would seem we have been seriously misled. Far from getting millions of pounds every week to spend on the NHS, leaving the EU is costing about forty billion quid. All the talk about the UK being beholden to European laws is clearly rubbish as anyone can clearly see from a little holiday to any EU country. And now take today's news. One of the major reasons many people voted for Brexit was because they didn't want the British armed forces to be subsumed into a pan-European military force. Today there was all sorts of talk about British and French forces working together and being mutually dependent. French forces have been battling a jihadist insurgency for five years. They've asked for British help, and now they are about to get it. Britain is to send three RAF Chinook transport helicopters to support the French operation in Mali, along with fifty-odd support staff. For some time the French have helping the British effort in Estonia (I didn’t know there was one!) and the Royal Navy has been dependent on French aircraft carriers for years.
Is this what people voted for? I suspect not.

My journey to work was perhaps better than it has been for the most part. I did have to queue on the dual carriageway section of the A21 for five minutes, but you can't have everything.
I got to work and did my bit. Today I was helping out with an evaluation. it is good to be asked to do this sort of thing.

With "er indoors TM" visiting "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM" I got the collars and leads onto the dogs. This is a tricky undertaking because as well as their usual collars they have to have their light-up collars too I we go out after dark.
As we walked I nosey-ed into people’s houses. Very few people in Francis Road pull their curtains. One house still had their Christmas tree (and decorations) still up.
As we came to the end of the walk we met up with nice-next-door who recognised the dogs long before they recognised me. The dogs are funny with nice-next-door. When they are going in and out of their house or are in the back garden, both Fudge and Treacle bark and growl at them. But when we meet them away from home, the dogs love them. Perhaps it is a territorial thing?
Nice-next-door were bringing their cat home from the vet’s. Moggie had recently had a spell of vomiting, and they’d paid the vet nearly two thousand pounds to be told that the cat had been sick.

I hope "er indoors TM" comes home soon. I want my dinner…


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