31 January 2021 (Sunday) - Rather Dull

After a rather good evening yesterday I slept like a log last night, finally being forced out of the bed as Pogo and Fudge made themselves comfortable. Last night was originally supposed to have been a night shift for me, but a colleague had asked if he could do it. I was only too happy to let him.

I came downstairs to find a pile of turds on the foot of the stairs. It wasn’t Sid – his turds were on the lino. Judging by the size I suspect Treacle. It comes to something when you can match the turd to the dog.

 

With multiple dungs gathered I had a little look at Facebook – there wasn’t a lot going on, so whilst “er indoors ^TM” Zoomed at her mates I went back up to the attic room. Yesterday I sorted Lego and had created a huge box of what I could only describe as “assorted crap”. Today I went through the “assorted crap” and started taking out that which is worth having. I’ve got about a third of the box of “assorted crap” now sorted.

 

After a couple of hours “er indoors ^TM” stopped Zooming, so we took the dogs out for a walk. We thought we might try Hatch Park which is a public park in the Brabourne estate. We’d heard good things about the place… I wasn’t impressed. For me the top priority for somewhere to take dogs is that the dogs can be allowed to run off of the leads. But we arrived to see signs insisting that dogs be on leads, and every other dog in sight was on a lead. It wasn’t *that* muddy really, but there was deer dung as far as the eye could see, and Fudge reprised his trademark move of rolling in fox poo.

For all that it wasn’t *that* muddy it was very cold. I was glad to get home for a warming cuppa.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off shopping at Dobbies; I stayed home and watched a load of episodes of “Four in a Bed”. I do like that show, but some of the contestants are a bit thick. Take some of today’s entries. Four bed and breakfast establishments…

The one that has you cook your own breakfast was more expensive than one that cooks it for you. And the one that doesn’t cook the brekkie tries to make out that not cooking brekkie is a feature and so warrants the extra price.

There were two B&Bs that were identical in every respect except cost; one was twice the price of the other, and the expensive place couldn’t work out why people preferred the cheaper one.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we washed down with a bottle of chardonnay. The dinner was rather good, the chardonnay not so. As we scoffed we watched more “Junior Bake off” in which some rather talented kids made some rather good food.

I will probably regret the amount of amaretto that I poured down my neck…

30 January (Saturday) - New Shelves, Bingo Night

I had another good night, waking five hours later than I usually do when I have an alarm set. Bearing in mind yesterday’s weather forecast failure I was hoping today’s would have been wrong too. A day which had been forecast to be sunny was rather wet yesterday. But today’s forecast for heavy rain turned out to be correct.

 

I made toast and had a quick look at the Internet. I sent out some birthday wishes and then had a look-see at what was happening. Someone on one of the (relatively) local geocaching Facebook pages was asking for some help. She has a series of caches in the Chichester area which need a little maintenance. Could anyone help as Chichester isn’t that local to her. There are those who say that if she can’t maintain them then she shouldn’t put them out. But those who say that are those who don’t actually put any geocaches out themselves at all. It’s a rant I’ve done to death… I expect I will do it once or twice more before giving up.

There was also an advert on Facebook from my local dentist featuring a grinning bimbo; the implication of the advert being that if you spent a small fortune on their teeth-whitening procedure you would have a far better chance of “doing the dirty deed” with that grinning bimbo. I wasn’t falling for that.

It was at this point that “er indoors ^TM” started ranting. A couple of days ago Treacle had run off with one of her slippers. She’d just found that slipper whilst taking Sid out for what dogs go out to do. The slipper was on the lawn, in the rain and in the mud.

 

I quickly popped round to B&Q to get some plastic boxes; six larger ones and four smaller ones. The chap on the till only charged me for one of the larger ones. That saved eight quid.

I then came home and went up to the attic room. Over the last year or so I’ve been accumulating Lego and popping it either under the table I’ve got my Lego town on, or in a rather precarious stack. I had this plan to put up some shelves, and sort the Lego into boxes and put them on the shelves. That way I wouldn’t get backache rummaging under the table, and I could find out what I’ve actually got. I got the shelves up easily enough, then spent five hours sorting Lego. I had various categories into which I was sorting the Lego; basic bricks by colour, flat pieces, roof pieces, wheels, minifigs, maxifigs, trees and plants, and “assorted crap”. I made good progress I found all sorts of things I’d forgotten that I had. Unfortunately after five hours of sorting there was more in the “assorted crap” pile than in all the others put together. Realising that I will need to go through the “assorted crap” and sort it somewhat better I popped to B&Q for more boxes. Unfortunately this time the girl on the till was on the ball and charged me the right price. Ho hum.

 

As I started the car to come home I had a warning on the dashboard. ”Top up oil level”. I was gripped by panic. I have no idea what oil the car takes; let alone where it goes. Fortunately Halfords is just over the road from B&Q, and for a fiver the nice man put the oil in for me. When I opened the bonnet (I can do that!) I found four possible places where oil might have gone. It was as well that the nice man from Halfords knew which of the possibilities was for oil and which was the screen wash and which was the power steering. Whilst he was at it, the nice man checked  the car’s battery, all the lights and the windscreen wipers too, and gave them all the thumbs-up That was a fiver well spent!

 

I came home to a friend request on Facebook. “Olamilakan Oluwaseyi (goddessmary)” wanted to be friends with me. she said that she was “seeking for a loyal submissive orsissy to be dominate and owned by her. Fully”  I did wonder what an “orsissy” was, but I didn’t really like to ask.

 

We had  a rather good bit of dinner, then (eventually) tuned in to the family Zoom meeting. Tonight we had three rounds of bingo. Having each popped  a tenner into the kitty it was all to play for… and was rather embarrassing in that out of the hundred quid in that kitty, “er indoors ^TM” and I won sixty of it. I’ve already spent my forty quid on more Lego.

We then had a family Zoom quiz – a quiz with a difference. “60 M in a H” is 60 minutes in an hour. “90 D in a RA” is 90 degrees in a right angle. However “8 T on an O” is *not* “8 tits on an organ”, much as my beloved daughter-in-law would have us believe.

I won the quiz too… Go me !!

29 January 2021 (Friday) - Another Late Shift

I slept like a log last night, finally woken by a rather vivid dream of lightning in the bedroom… “er indoors ^TM” was taking photographs of sleeping dogs.

Over brekkie I peered into the Internet as I do, wondering if I had missed much overnight. I rarely ever do, but one day there will be something monumental that happened whilst I slept. It wasn’t last night.

Firefox (the internet browser) had updated itself and despite its proud boasts was exactly the same as it had ever been. As was the Internet. There was pretty much nothing of note on Facebook, but for some reason there was another glut of “Thank You NHS” posts. I wish people wouldn’t post these twee memes. You don’t thank a bus driver for not crashing, do you. If people *really* want to thank the NHS why do they not write to their MP? People might suggest that the pay of the average NHS worker be such that after six years of formal study they don’t get far less than a train driver who has done three months training?

I had a message from the Hop Fuzz brewery inviting me to their on-line beer tasing event. The idea is that you sign up to the event, they send you the beers and samples of some of the ingredients, and you then join in their Zoom meeting in a couple of weeks’ time. You can see the details here. I was all for it until I saw the price. Thirty quid!!! For three pints!!! I told them that was a bit steep.

And Netflix told me they are putting their prices up too. They can go whistle; I will get Netflix free with my Sky-Q box… whenever coronageddon allows the thing to be installed.

 

I took the dogs for a little walk round the block. I did consider the woods or the park but there had been heavy rain overnight and they would have been rather muddy. I suppose had I been thinking we could have walked at Great Chart, but I wasn’t thinking. We walked up the road and followed the river home just like we did yesterday.

 

I came home to a message from the Hop Fuzz Brewery. I think I’d upset them when I’d commented on the advert that they had put on my Facebook feed. They pointed out that the bottles of beer weren’t pint bottles, they were 500ml bottles, and they whinged on about the cost of packaging, cost of pint glasses, cost of Zoom accounts, blah blah blah. So for reasons of accuracy I feel I should correct what I ranted a few lines ago. Thirty quid!!! For just over two and a half pints!!! Mind you this got me thinking… in years gone by next weekend would be one of the highlights of the year – Dover Beer Festival at which we would scale heights of drunkenness which would make your hair curl (if you had any). I wonder if we could stage an on-line beer festival. It would be easy enough to come up with a few ales available in any supermarket. I wonder if there would be any interest?

 

Rain had not been forecast for today, so I was rather disappointed to be walking through a monsoon to get to my car. I drove out to Argos to collect some shelving; I have a little project in mind for the weekend.

I then headed west. As I drove to Tunbridge Wells the pundits on the radio were interviewing the head honcho at Netflix. The chap was rather interesting - apparently he had tried to go into partnership with the people who ran Blockbuster Video when he first started. They didn't want to know. Who's laughing now?

The chap was saying he has a very relaxed attitude to running Netflix; take staff leave for example. Staff don't have fixed amounts of annual leave like most workplaces; they just take off as must as they want or need. Personally if I had that sort of arrangement I would take the piss, but that is just me. isn't it?

 

I stopped off at the Tesco in Pembury to get a sandwich for lunch. As I tried to go into the place I couldn't help but see some old biddy at one of the now ubiquitous hand sanitising stations that are everywhere. This woman has put a good dollop of hand sanitising gel onto her woollen gloves and was wondering why she was just getting into a mess.

I didn't actually point and laugh. I know that the buzzword of the day is "be kind" but some people do make it difficult…