2 June 2022 (Thursday) - Bank Holiday (!?)

Morgan’s leg looked completely healed when I took him and his sister out this morning. I also noticed that rather than squatting to tiddle, he’s now doing “big boy wees” where he cocks his leg. Our little baby is growing up…

And then as I scoffed toast I noticed he was walking awkwardly again.

 

My piss boiled somewhat as I read the news this morning. The Queen’s Birthday Honours List had been announced. As usual there were medals for athletes who’d done well at the most recent Olympics. And medals for aging celebrities. But what wound me up was all the medals given out to “COVID leaders”. Some of the people who actually did work hard through the pandemic got awards, but by singling out one or two people for praise, automatically the efforts of thousands of others are belittled. But why give gongs to the head honchos of the companies that made the vaccines? All that head honchos do is sit in offices holding meetings which are (for the most part) utterly irrelevant to what goes on in the real world (isn’t it?). I once heard that “O.B.E.” is an acronym for “other buggers’ efforts” and it certainly seems to be the case in this Honours list.

Yesterday I asked a question on the Facebook Garden Ponds page about automated Koi feeding devices that feed fish whilst people are away on holiday. This morning I saw it had attracted a lot of replies… sadly only one of which actually answered the question. A lot of people wanted to make sarcastic and irrelevant comments. I’ve never really bothered with that page before, and I probably won’t again. Such a shame… Where these Facebook pages could be a useful resource, so many people just see them as a vehicle to be rude to people they will never meet, safe in the knowledge they will never meet them.

 

We got ourselves and the dogs organised and looked at Morgan. He could see we were going out, and was excited at the prospect. It would have been cruel to have left him behind. So we all drove up to Ulcombe Church’s car park where we met up with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte. Once we’d recaptured Treacle (who’d escaped her harness in a fit of excitement) we all set off on a walk. I say “we all set off on a walk”; five humans and three dogs set off on a walk. Morgan set off on a “carry”. He had a few little wanders, but Charlotte carried him for much (pretty much all) of the way.

From Ulcombe church we walked a mile along the Greensand Way, then back-tracked and walked a circular route through the orchards. It was a very pretty walk. Last week I mentioned there were quite a lot of stinging nettles on the way; today we met a fair few as well. As we walked we watched some huge birds of prey circling. Comments were made about one of them having its eye on the rabbits in the nearby field; I kept a closer eye on Bailey. Being smaller than the rabbits she would be small enough for a buzzard to take.

We then watched a squirrel shoot up a tree and scare a pigeon out. Presumably pigeons are lower than squirrels in the great scheme of things?

I took quite a few photos as we walked.

 

Geocache-wise it was a good walk. Some hides were rather tricky; some straightforward. But for a guided walk it worked rather well. It was only a shame that at the end of the walk “Hannah”’s on/off button finally died. It has been on the way out for some time now. “Hannah” still works, but I have to use a key to poke the thingy inside to operate the power. It will do for now. If the worst comes to the worst I’ll get a new one. I can do geocaching on my phone if I have to, but I like using a GPS unit on a big walk. The old phone/GPS argument has been raging for years. A phone is all very well for a one-off find (like I sometimes do on the way to work), but for me a GPS unit has two major advantages over a phone. Firstly it *isn’t* my phone and so doesn’t use up my phone’s battery (it had its own battery with a rather good battery life). And secondly it hangs round my neck on a lanyard whereas my phone goes in and out of a pocket.

 

We came home; as the dogs snored “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we washed down with a bottle of hock whilst watching an episode of “Bake Off: The Professionals”. Am I being mean in spending most of the time hoping the elaborate three-feet-high pastry constructions will collapse?