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13 February 2023 (Monday) - Before the Late Shift

With no alarm set I slept to over eight hours last night, finally waking as a wet nose thrust itself into my armpit at quarter to eight. I got up, I put eleven things into the washing machine (as the clothes horse has eleven rungs), and set about some toast as I looked at the Internet. Or tried to. The laptop said it was connected to the Internet, but nothing internet-related was happening at all. I could understand the lap-top’s reluctance to go on-line; when it finally did I saw I had two more friend” requests on Facebook.
The one with more clothes on (and the scarier chest) claimed to be called “Harriet” and claimed that someone has set up a fake Facebook account using her picture and I shouldn’t accept a friend request from that account, though she was rather vague why I shouldn’t.
The other one was called “Dominatriz” and amongst the people listed on her account as her friends was “Peculiar Peter”. I reported both to the Facebook Feds for being extremely un-moral. It’s not often that I can claim the moral high ground, is it?
I sent out a birthday request to an old friend from primary school who I haven’t seen in person since 1975, rolled my eyes at various petty squabbles… and gave up trying to look at the Internet. All three dogs were having a serious play-fight, and if any one dog was feeling victimised they would jump onto me for support.
 
As the dogs were full of beans I took them out. It was too late to get to Kings Wood and back. Orlestone is a swamp at this time of year. So (against my better judgement) we went to the park. We got there and I let the dogs off of their leads, They immediately went to bother the normal people so I blew the whistle and they came straight back. I was impressed. As we went round the park so the puppies would charge up to random normal people, and immediately come back to the sound of the whistle.
As we walked some old chap (about my age) told me he must speak to me. My heart sank as I expected the worst. But I was wrong to be pessimistic. This bloke said that he’d seen us coming into the park and watched me letting the dogs off of the leads. He admitted he thought I must have been mad to let such small dogs loose, but he said he was really impressed at how the dogs responded to the whistle, and wanted to know how I did it. I explained the principle of whistle training (feeling rather smug). Whistle training is incredibly impressive to watch – when it works. When it doesn’t it is frankly embarrassing, but we are probably up to about an eighty per cent success rate with the puppies.
 
With walk walked I popped to the corner shop for pastries to have with a cuppa. I get those when “er indoors TM is working from home. We scoffed them with a cuppa as I paid a bill. We had the boiler serviced exactly a month ago (on 13 January) and the nice lady at the plumbers (one of my ex-trainees) posted the bill right away. It arrived this morning. A second class letter took a month to get to me…
I wrote up a little CPD, then set off to work.
 
With nothing of note on the radio I sang along to “Ivor Biggun” songs as I drove up the motorway. Having seen the price of petrol in Ashford I drove up to Aylesford where it was twelve pence a litre cheaper, and so I saved myself five quid. As I walked to the kiosk to pay so the chap parked at the pump in front of me stopped me and pointed out we both had the same sort of car. He was amazingly excited about this.
To me, any car which is beige in colour is that same as my car, but apparently our cars were both Skoda Fabias. And being next to each other was really something… according to this chap. Bless him.
But much as I mock, that was pretty much it for my day… A dull one really.

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