30 April 2019 (Tuesday) - Shower's Fixed

Last night’s night shift was rather busy; I was very glad when the relief arrived.

As I drove home my piss boiled as I listened to the radio. Apparently Cambridge university is launching a two-year project to see if the university profited from the slave trade. Does it take a rocket scientist to realise that they did profit from the slave trade? At the time everyone did. That’s why it was a slave “trade” and not a “charity”. The pundits interviewed some professor or other who was banging on about how he was of white British descent and so his history was unaffected by the slave trade, but many of the university’s students histories have been blighted by it.

What bollox.

I’m not endorsing the slave trade in any way, but it happened. More than two hundred years ago. Can anyone alive today realistically claim to have been hurt, injured or offended by what happened over (at minimum) a century and a half before they were born? Certainly do the research. It would be interesting to see the outcome; if only to illustrate another facet of Georgian times. But don’t do it out of some perverted sense of seeking justice. You’re far too late for that.

The pundits on the radio also wheeled on the Foreign secretary who was interviewed about all sorts of things. Again my piss boiled; I cant say I like the chap. But he pointed out an interesting fact. The Japanese emperor is planning to abdicate today. “Abdicate” – it sounds terrible, doesn’t it? The poor chap is eighty-five years old. He wants to retire. His successor will be the forty-sixth international world leader who was educated in the UK.

I came home; "er indoors ^TM" said goodbye, and ten minutes later the plumber arrived. Regular readers of this drivel may recall that two weeks ago I broke the shower. I say “I broke the shower”; the thing really did fall off in my hand. We’ve been messing about with baths for the last two weeks (I say “we”; to be honest I have no idea what "er indoors ^TM" has been doing) and getting in and out of the bath is hard work.

I must admit I’ve been worried sick about the plumber calling. I wouldn’t know where to start to repair the shower attachment. I had visions of the entire bath needing stripping out. I deliberately emptied the washing basket yesterday as I was half-expecting the water supply being permanently knacked after his visit.

It turned out I was rather over-reacting. The nice man had it all sorted in less than an hour. I paid him using the bank’s app on my phone, and we chatted for a while about how useful that app is. He told me how that when people paid him with a cheque it used to cost him time to take the cheque into the bank, but now you can pay cheques into your account by using the app to take a photo of the cheque. Can you believe it? We take these mobile phones for granted – you can do so much with them.

I took the dogs for a little walk. As we went to the co-op field we met OrangeHead who commented on how late we were leaving home. I found myself telling her all about the plumber… is this how she dragoons people into her posse?

And with walk walked I tried out the new shower. A shower, rather than wallowing and struggling to get out of a bath. Heaven.

And then I went to bed for a while. I slept like a log.

I got up at three o’clock, had some toast, and then did the ironing. As I ironed I watched the last episode of “Fleabag”. She had the arse because she did pork the priest after all, but the priest preferred God over her. Priests do that. I also watched the first three episodes of the new season of “Lee and Dean”; I’d forgotten just how much I’d liked the first season of that.

And then I fell asleep until "er indoors ^TM" came home.

I wonder what’s for dinner…

29 April 2019 (Monday) - Before the Night Shift

Finding myself wide awake at three o’clock I got up and watched last night’s episode of “Game of Thrones”. Billed as being an epic blockbuster episode I thought I might watch it to avoid getting any spoilers later.

I wish I’d stayed in bed.

Without (hopefully) giving any spoilers, the strength of “Game of Thrones” is that the characters are all so believable. Some you like; some you loathe, but the show is about the people and how they interact. We all knew there was going to be a battle in last night’s episode. The story had been leading up to it. But the battle scene dragged on. And on. And the whole thing had been deliberately filmed in such low lighting that unless you watched the whole thing with the room lights turned off you didn’t have a hope of seeing who was on screen and who wasn’t. To add insult to injury the special effects were somewhat lacking; I can only describe the episode as a rather poor re-make of the fight scenes of “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” which had been filmed in the dark.

The episode was best described as “tedious”; I found myself having to go on-line to find out who had died and who had survived. But amazingly as I scoffed my breakfast toast four hours later, the world and his wife were raving about what a brilliant episode it had been. I can only assume I watched something different to everyone else.

Sometimes I hate being in a minority of one.

When I checked my emails this morning I read that the Sussex geocachers are staging a geo-rally. It is the sort of thing that we in Kent actually did do a few years ago… but we had resistance from the geo-feds for over two years before they finally relented and let us stage such an event. The Sussex gang do it annually (!)

Mind you, it could be a good fun event. And (by random chance) I’ve booked the day off work anyway so I’m keen to join in. The idea is to meet up in Reigate at four o’clock in the morning. At sunrise the organiser shouts “GO!!!” You then have sixteen hours and thirty-eight minutes (the hours of daylight on the longest day) to find as many geocaches as you can before ending up in the back end of nowhere in Sussex at half past nine that evening (as the sun sets).

It might be a good day out; it might not.

I got the dogs on to their leads and drove out to Kings Wood. One of the geocaches I’d hidden there was broken despite only having been there for a couple of weeks. We soon got out to it and replaced it, then dawdled slowly back to the car. Some of us dawdled slower than others. Fudge was particularly slow. I chivvied him a few times; at one point he seemed to be worrying his paw. Had he hurt it? I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

Just as we were getting close to the cars I saw a couple of people looking at their phones and looking at a rock under which I knew there was a film pot. One of them had a trackable number on her fleece. We got chatting; they had come over to the UK from Belgium for a week of hunting Tupperware. They seemed rather pleased to meet the dogs. My hounds would seem to be famous (or notorious) in geo-circles.

We came home. Bearing in mind the walks we’ve done recently, a couple of miles round Kings Wood seemed to have seriously tired the dogs. They were all soon snoring.

With them asleep I phoned the hospital’s arse clinic. They’d sent me a letter telling me they’d made an appointment for me to have a bowel screening. I couldn’t make the date they’d planned, so I re-scheduled for a week next Thursday. They are sending me an enema in the post with a view to shoving a camera up my jacksie shortly afterwards. That will be something to look forward to.

I took myself off to bed for the afternoon, then ironed some shirts whilst watching last week’s episode of “Jamestown” in which Jocelyn’s bosom obstinately refused to heave at all. With ironing done I watched an episode of “Fleabag” then looked at the letter from the arse clinic people. Apparently I can’t do any foreign travel in the fortnight after they shove the camera up my jacksie… I’d booked an appointment for a week before "My Boy ^TM"’s stag do in France. I phoned the appointment line. This morning they couldn’t give me an appointment on the week I’ve got off work in June. This afternoon they could.

"er indoors ^TM" will be home soon. I’m hoping she’ll feed me before I have to go to the night shift.

I’ve spent the entire day with a sense of feeling very guilty about something. I have no idea why. I wonder what that is all about?

28 April 2019 (Sunday) - Lazy Day (!)

I slept like a log last night even if I did have to fight for my share of the duvet. I eventually got up at nine o’clock. Nine o’clock – that was a result.

I made some toast and peered into the Internet. Facebook told me three friends were having birthdays today – I sent my usual birthday message. Seeing how nothing much had changed overnight on that website I had a look at my emails. I had forty-three emails about finds a couple of friend had made on the series of geocaches I put round Godinton last month. Forty-three? There are twenty-two caches there and two people… that should be forty-four emails?

I then looked at the geo-map and got a bit cross. Planning for next weekend’s adventure I saw a geo-puzzle on the map. I saw that I’d written something in the notes section, so it was plain (from what I’d written) that I’d solved it before. Such a shame that I hadn’t written down the actual solution… Eventually herculean brain-strain came up with the answer.

​I went into the garden and harvested the dog dung. I fetched in loads. Then I found some more. Having fetched in a second load my furry associated realised what I was doing, and they all created some more for me.

Finally having cleared the lawn I went round the edges pulling out weeds. A simple enough task; it took over an hour to do. "My Boy ^TM" then called round and drove us round to B&Q. I needed some new bedding plants for the garden pots. I wanted to replace the palm tree that never really took off last year. By the time I’d also bought a new outside light I’d squandered over sixty quid.

It was ironic that we came home just as the rain was starting.

We had a spot of lunch, and I geo-puzzled until the rain stopped. Bearing in mind that the wolf-pack was getting rather fractious we took them round the park. Perhaps it was having "er indoors ^TM" along, but the walk passed off without incident. There were no itinerant nutters roaming the park, we had no fights… the walk was as every walk should be.

We came home, and I cracked on in the garden. I got the new plants potted, I trimmed the lawn edges and mowed the lawn. I even got the new solar-powered motion-sensing light into place.

After six hours effort the garden looked just the same as when I’d started. Have I ever mentioned that I hate gardening?

"er indoors ^TM" boiled up a very good bit of dinner, We washed it down with a bottle of plonk whilst watching last week’s episode of “The Orville”. Again “The Orville” took a story which had been done twenty years ago in “Star Trek” and did it better.

For a day with nothing planned, I’ve been rather busy.