28 February 2022 (Monday) - Before The Night Shift

“er indoors ^TM” went to the loo in the small hours, and it was a good twenty seconds before either dog charged after her. What was  that all about? Needless to say no one charged after me when I went a few minutes later.…

 

Over toast I peered into the Internet. It was still there. And dull. Every morning I have a look at Facebook to see what friends and colleagues and acquaintances have been doing, and most mornings I am disappointed. This morning there were a couple of photos from the weekend, a few pictures of flags and sunflowers to show unity with Ukrainians, and one friend had got a new cat, but the vast majority of posts on my feed this morning were advertising some rather overpriced brand of dog food. Most of the six hundred and twenty people on my friends list had very little to say which was a shame. As I’ve said before I am a very nosey person and I want to know what everyone else is up to.

I had a flurry of emails; people had been out finding geocaches I’d hidden; Over fifty “Found It” logs including one on a cache which has been missing for some time and I had been intending to replace on Wednesday on my way to work. I was pleased that one had been replaced. From what people had written it was clear that the cache was missing, and the people walking past did in thirty seconds that which would have taken over an hour for me to do.

I then played “Sweardle” which I got right on the third attempt and “Lewdle” which I got on the second, registered another negative COVID test and rolled my eyes. This was the one hundred and sixteenth COVID test I have registered on-line. I have done one every four days with monotonous regularity ever since I was first told to do one every four days… and the website tells me that my reporting performance is only eighty-eight per cent. How does that work?

 

I took the dogs to the park with our clean and washed tennis balls. Recently there have been squabbles over both dogs wanting the cleaner ball, but having put both tennis balls through the washing machine, today we had none of that.

We did stop a squabble though; two male blackbirds were having a full-on fight, and it was only when Treacle nearly had the pair of them that they broke up. We also saw OrangeHead who now has a whole new posse; there were six of them. Mind you one of the newcomers to the group had a dog which was “playing dog piggy backs” with another newcomer’s dog, so I doubt those two will stay the course.

 

We came home to find postie delivering a parcel. As well as some Munzee stickers I’d ordered a small piece of trackable Lego. Sadly the people at the on-line shop had bored a keyring through it. As a piece of Lego it is now only fit for the dustbin. I shall send the thing out as a geocaching trackable and fully expect it to go missing within a month. I emailed the shop to ask if the do any trackable Lego that they haven’t destroyed before selling it; they replied claiming that the product was clearly labelled as having a key ring attached… I had another look at the product description… they were right. Oh well…

 

I then wrote up some CPD like I usually do before a night shift (I am a creature of habit!) and was rather amazed to see that my CPD blog has been read over four hundred times in this last week, and spent a while struggling with a geo-puzzle. The thing went live yesterday afternoon and I couldn’t solve it then, so I’d asked for a pointer only to be told there was an error in the puzzle description (even though someone had already been out rummaging round all the places that met the given hint and had presumably struck lucky). I couldn’t solve it this morning either, but by the afternoon a soluble version was available.

 

I spent twenty minutes in increasing panic trying to find Treacle only to eventually see she was on the bed laying on top of the hot water bottle I’d put in there earlier.

I went to bed for the afternoon and didn’t really have a good sleep. When “er indoors ^TM” is there, both dogs settle immediately (they don’t dare not). Treacle was still this afternoon, but Pogo was not. I gave up trying to sleep after a few hours and watched some episodes of “Trailer Park Boys”.

“er indoors ^TM” will be home soon, and will hopefully feed me, then I’m off to the night shift… via Sainsburys for shopping and petrol. I wonder if the stupidity of queuing for petrol is still going on?

27 February 2022 (Sunday) - Now I Ache...

 

I woke rather earlier than I would have liked and lay awake with a vague feeling of restlessness, guilt and vaguely sulking for no reason that I could fathom. Had I forgotten to do something? Had I done something wrong? This strange nagging feeling stayed with me for much of the morning.

I made toast and peered into the Internet, and Facebook immediately presented me with the last photo I took of all four dogs in the car when we drove over to Great Chart and did a little litter picking. I had a little melt-down, and then carried on peering into the Internet. It was still there. I sent out birthday wishes to four people whose birthday it was today, and was rather disappointed to see that so few people had seemed to have done anything yesterday. One friend had been to a car rally and another to the RHS gardens at Wisley, but that was it.

I took the dogs for a very quick walk round the block, then as “er indoors ^TM” set off to collect “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” and “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction ^TM” I went into the garden and did a little tidying up. I flushed through the water features, ran out the hose and topped up the pond, and pulled weeds out of the shingle. That only took an hour, so with a little time on my hands (and a house full of mayhem) I went to get the pressure washer out of the shed only to find that “My Boy ^TM” still had it. Whilst I waited for Cheryl to deliver it, I pulled the weeds from the front garden.

Cheryl delivered the pressure washer, and I scrubbed up the stepping stones in the lawn, and the stone benches and the stone flowerpots and the patio by the shed… and in doing so reminded myself why I so rarely get the pressure washer out. Whilst it is good fun, and whilst it does scrub things up very clean, it throws a *lot* of water about and soon turns the garden into a swamp.

I lifted the drain cover, swept as much of the flood into it as I could, then had a look at the tree overhanging from the drive at the end of my garden. The tree is a plum tree and in the autumn it drops plums onto the shingle. Fat wet plums which splatter and attract wasps. I’ve done some research and found out that I can’t help myself to the plums before they fall, and once they’ve fallen I’m not supposed to do anything with them but offer them to the chap whose tree it is. But I *can* cut back overhanging branches. So I did. I’m technically supposed to offer them to the chap whose tree it is, but I chopped the branches up really small and stuck them into my green waste bin. And then decided I ached too much to continue.

 

Before coming inside I looked up the garden, and reminded myself about why I don’t like gardening. I took the left-hand photo above shortly after ten o’clock this morning and took the right-hand one just before four o’clock this afternoon. Can you see the difference? I can’t. I’m not being big-headed when I say I have a good back garden; it looks OK, I’m very pleased with the pond and water features; the shingled areas and statues are good, But I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time just keeping the garden as it is.

 

I came inside where “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction ^TM” was playing with several marble-run games and watching Raa Raa the Noisy Lion on Lube-Tube (as he calls it). It seems  SBOD is uncertain as to which of Granddad or Raa Raa the Noisy Lion is cleverest. But he did tell me a joke. What do you call a goat that gets run over? A dead goat…(well, I laughed!)

 

“er indoors ^TM” took “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” and “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction ^TM”  back from whence they’d come while I set the dishwasher and washing machine going, and spent an hour fighting with a geo-puzzle that had been published during the afternoon.

 

Over a rather good dinner we watched the penultimate episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. It was rather good, and watching it having recorded it earlier we were able to fast-forward through all the adverts and cut a two-hour program down to less than an hour and a half.

I ache… and I think I caught the sun today.

26 February 2022 (Saturday) - Far Far Ago

As I scoffed toast and peered into the Internet it was all very negative this morning. There was a lot of talk about the ongoing situation in the Ukraine in which the Russians are effectively doing what they want whilst everyone else sits back and wrings their hands. I saw that whoever it is that runs Rochester Cathedral had arranged for the colours of the Ukrainian flag to be shone on its spire as they pray for peace. Isn’t this just a concrete example of the futility of  what they preach? Shining different coloured torches whilst their god is unwilling or unable to stop the suffering?

Facebook also (again) presented with an advert for “Treasure Trails”; a bunch which charges a tenner for (effectively) what you can get for free from the Geocaching Adventure Lab app. I suppose people who pay for this are either unaware of the Geocaching Adventure Lab app, or just like spending their money.

 

I had a flurry of messages and emails from the Isle of Wight branch of Halfords. Someone with the same name as me lives there. He must have a similar email too as I periodically get messages from wherever the chap has recently visited on the Isle of Wight. His building society were emailing me last year.

And I got told about a new puzzle geocache up near Thanet. Based on types of curry, the thing kept me occupied for a few minutes before I decided to give up as I doubt I’ll be going anywhere near it any time soon.

 

We got ourselves and the dogs organised and walked to the “er indoors ^TM”-mobile, and set off. We saw that the queue for petrol at the BP garage was nowhere near as long as we might have been led to believe. It wasn’t long before we were at Badlesmere from where we met up with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and had a rather good walk. There was a horse in one of the first fields we crossed; as we crossed it the horse vaguely sauntered in our general direction but never got closer than twenty yards away. As we crossed the next field we met a chap with a dog who said that the horse hates his dog and was waiting for him, and a few minutes later there was quite the commotion kicking off behind us.

We carried on through the woods and into a field in which a load of animals had clearly recently been trampling through. We had quite the discussion as to whether it had been sheep or deer until Charlotte hit on the (frankly genius) idea of having a look around and spotted a load of sheep.

I’d gone along expecting loads of mud and fallen trees… and have to say I was disappointed on both counts. There was some mud… but not that much really. And there were a few fallen trees, but none dramatic enough to have blocked any of our paths.

After a couple of hours walking we were back where we’d left the cars… right outside a pub. Strange, eh? We had a pint or two and a very good bit of dinner.

As always I took a few photos as we walked and scoffed.

 

I slept most of the way home; I am reliably informed there were four cars queuing outside the petrol station in Brookfield Road.

Still feeling very stuffed from a very good dinner we slobbed in front of the telly and spent the evening watching episodes of “Yonderland”. If you’ve never seen it, it’s on the Sky catch-up thingy… It’s not too shabby…