Finally managing to have a decent night’s sleep I got up and as I walked to the stairs I felt that unmistakable squelch of a humungous dog turd under my foot. As I hopped to get some bleach and a bucket of water from the bathroom I found another epic pile of turd at the foot of the stairs. I have no way of knowing for sure which dog was the culprit, but I doubt whether Sid, Fudge or Treacle could ever create such massive dumps.
With carpet cleaned and slippers in the bin (they were turded beyond redemption) I made some toast and watched the last episode of the current season of “Big Mouth” on Netflix. Netflix was working this morning. Not that I thought it wouldn’t be, but yesterday evening there was a minor hiccup in that the SkyPlus box had lost its internet connection and we seemingly had no way to restore it. Personally I was happy to let it go as we’ve got a Sky-Q box coming in a couple of weeks’ time but "er indoors TM" was having none of it, and got stuck in. I’d left her fighting with the thing when I went to bed last night.
Seeing I had a working internet connection I used it to see what was happening on Facebook. There was quite a lot of blame being assigned on the local Facebook groups. Be it Brexit, the ongoing pandemic, the weather, or the cat’s guts-ache, everyone was blaming everyone else for the ills of the world.
Pausing only briefly to magnetise the tree house and the Skyland (it’s a Munzee thing) I had another search for errant dog turds, set the dishwasher going and got myself ready for work, glaring at a sleeping Pogo as I dressed.
I wandered down the road to find my car, inadvertently walking straight past it. I'd walked a few hundred yards before I realised my mistake. It wasn't *that* far to back-track.
Fortunately the traffic lights at the end of the road were working (they had been broken since Saturday) so getting out of Beaver Road was a lot less stressful than it has been.
As I drove there was a lot of talk on the radio about how mental health services are struggling with the upsurge in demand that the pandemic has generated. I won't go into details, but mental health services have been a major part of my life (for reasons that I have glossed over) during this last year. Sadly in-patient mental health care in Kent consists of very little more than locking up the patients and drugging them, and formal complaints getting replies of "what more can we do?" Hopefully mental health care will be improved as a result of this pandemic; it could be improved locally by the instant dismissal of two consultant psychiatrists (who I won't name here) whose only medical ability seems to be to increase the dosage.
This was followed by the "Thought for the Day" section in which some vicar or other cautioned us against wishful thinking and putting our hopes into not breaking chain letters and reading horoscopes. Somehow those were just a load of old tosh, but all the Nativity stories are real. Go figure.
There was also talk about how the French have opened their borders. Being in the European Union certainly never removed their control of their borders, did it? But for all that the Port of Dover was back in business, lorries were still queued ten miles or more up the coast-bound carriageway of the motorway as I drove to Maidstone.
I got to work where I realised that what with all the excitement of dog turds and having a working internet connection I'd forgotten to do my COVID test.
I booked a vet appointment for Fudge (ongoing kidney stuff) and got on with that which I couldn't avoid.
Despite the lorries having been supposedly moving across the Channel all day, there were still lorries queued back as far up the motorway as Maidstone this evening; a twenty-five mile journey home took over an hour. As I came round the cows roundabout in Ashford there were loads of lorries going round it to use the A-road, One of them got rather close to a car. Too close. I watched the car shaking and heard the noise of the lorry scraping up the side of the car. The car’s driver leapt out of the car – the lorry kept going.
Once finally home I told the world about the penultimate Advent adventure (of this year) and once the dogs had been fed "er indoors TM" popped up to the KFC for dinner. We scoffed it whilst watching “Bake-Off”.
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