I slept right through until after seven o’clock this morning wen I
woke up with backache. Backache is usually a sign that I’ve been asleep for a
long time. It’s a shame that I have one or the other – no sleep or backache.
It’s a shame I don’t have a choice.
I made toast and saw that my lap-top had finally sorted itself out.
It said it wanted to update itself last night so I left it to it and gave it
all night to do so. The poor old device does struggle with this sort of thing;
it is now seven years old, perhaps I need a new one?
As I scoffed toast I rolled my eyes at a post on one of the
Hastings-related Facebook pages. The boardwalk of Hastings pier is covered in
seagull shit. The reason is that being on the seaside there are tens of thousands
of seagulls crapping all over the place. It always used to be like that when I
lived there; the boss in the restaurant where I worked had two cars – a good
one he kept at home (where it would stay clean), and a knacked old
runabout which he would use to get to and from the seaside restaurant and which
would get covered in seagull crap. Twas ever thus. But now it seems the influx
of DFLs (“Down From London” - the term used by the locals for all the people
moving to the coast from London) are up in arms because they apparently had
no idea that seagulls crap all over the place. There was quite a good argument
going on in which everyone was claiming that everyone else was responsible for
something that was nothing to do with them.
Being Saturday morning we drove over to Repton for Dog Club. As we
turned into Repton so the dogs started squeaking; they knew where they were
going. We had a rather good turn-out. Even though Moose, Scout and quite a few
of the other regulars weren’t there we still had one of the highest attendances
ever. The dogs charged abut and played; Treacle looked on at them in much the
same way that God might judge a dubious creation… They loved it.
All too soon it was time to come home. One the way up we’d listened
to Steve on the radio doing the lyrics quiz. Given a line from a song you have
to work out what song. I’m hopeless at that. But I’m marginally better at the
mystery year quiz we listen to on the way home. Steve said on air that one of
the clues would give it away for me… it didn’t but it made me think. In which
year was “Star Trek The Next Generation” first broadcast on UK
television? I got it wrong. The answer was 1990, but I went for 1987; the year
in which the show was made. I saw it then as I got the videos as they came out.
Looking back the videos came out in the UK years ahead of the TV releases.
Compare that to today when the new episodes of Star Trek are available (on
the pay-for Paramount Plus channel) world-wide on the day of release.
We came home for a cuppa and a dried-out Belgian bun from the local
bakery, We do like a Belgian bun on a Saturday morning and (sadly) the
local bakery down the road makes far-and-away the worst Belgian buns for miles
around (the co-op do the best ones!).
As we cuppa-ed and bun-ed I pondered a geo-puzzle. Feeling rather
smug about having solved this one and this one I made a start thinking about this one. Do have a look at it; billed
as rather easier than the other two, I’m rather struggling. Looking at the
description I *think* I need to work out a physical location somewhere
on the Romney Marsh which is in some way connected to someone called “Nancy”
who is frightened of something (possibly skipping). And having
determined who Nancy is, it should then be a simple task to convert the series
of letters FCFY, GYC, BSUL and BLYD into numbers.
I’m struggling with this one.
I hate geo-puzzles. To show how much I hate them I created one last year to prove the point
that no one can solve them. Only four people have found the thing in a year. And another I hid three years ago has also
only been found four times. So why do I
strain my brain on them? So that I can gloat when I’ve solved the puzzle.
As we'd driven home from dog club the traffic had been
horrendous. It turns out that the main road south from Ashford (the A2070)
had been closed and the diverted traffic had reduced the town to gridlock...
Whenever I'm stuck in traffic in Ashford I'm reminded of driving round Hastings
where there are endless ways to get from one point to another. In Ashford the
motorway and the train lines cut the town into segments. There are very few
ways to get over the motorway or railways, and if one of these choke points is
poggered, the whole town seizes up.
Like it did today.
It strikes me that this is a very good example of
incompetence on the part of the highways department of Kent County Council, the
head honcho of which gets a
hundred and nineteen thousand quid a year.
Perhaps we might all write to our county councilors?
“er indoors TM” s driving app told me
it would take forty minutes to get from home to work. Far be it from me to
disrespect her phone, but I took no chances, left early and took an hour and a
half to do that journey.
I got to work and did my bit. As I'd driven up the motorway
so there had been a couple of rain showers and I'd felt a slight sense of
satisfaction; I don't mind working at the weekends when it is raining. But the
rain soon dried up and I spent much of the shift looking out of the window
sulking at a glorious afternoon.
At least “er indoors TM” sorted McDonalds
for dinner…
No comments:
Post a Comment