23 July 2023 (Sunday) - Last Day Off

I got up to find the rain hossing down despite only an eleven per cent chance of rain. Regardless of the elements I went out to the pond, took out the Lamb’s lettuce (which pond-wise had been an abject failure) and popped in the watercress we’d got yesterday. Hopefully it will do better than the Lamb’s lettuce; it can’t do much worse.

As the rain continued I had my usual look at the Internet. It was still there. Today’s argument on Facebook was about the White Rock Theatre in Hastings which faces closure next year as the current lease comes to an end. And it was the old, old story in that no one wanted the place to close… even though no one had been there for years. I must admit I’d rather the place stayed open… even if the last time I went there was taking “My Boy ^TM” and “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” to see Geoffrey, Bungle, George and Zippy in “Rainbow” some time in the early 1990s. It’s the same with pubs closing down all over the place. No one is happy about it but no one uses the pubs. Mind you with beer at a fiver in the pub, and a theatre ticket over thirty quid (for next weekend’s show) is it surprising these places are shutting down?

I then had a look at my photo archive. I’ve got nearly two hundred gigabytes of photos – as time has gone on so photo size (in bytes) has got bigger and bigger. In the past I’ve just saved everything I ever photographed. I need to be a tad more judicious in deleting crap photos. Some of the earlier photos were in .cam format. Bitberry file opener was recommended to open these but failed. As did Irfanview. Eventually XN view came up trumps and I was able to look at photos I’ve not seen in years. Including some photos of a baby born in November 2001. I wonder who that was? I’ve no idea.  

We settled the dogs and with “er indoors ^TM” foot still playing up we drove up to the town centre where we met up with friends for our monthly brekkie and catch-up. It was good to catch up. It was good to scoff brekkie too.

We came home, and I spent a couple of hours pootling in the garden, weeding and trimming and Bionic Burning. Two hours effort just to have it look just like it always used to.
We spent the afternoon slobbing by the pond reading more of the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the latest episode of “Star Trek”. A crossover episode between the live-action “Strange New Worlds” and the cartoon-animation “Lower Decks” set over a hundred years later. I thought it would be awful; it was one of the best “Star Trek” episodes ever (and that’s up against some pretty stiff competition).   

I’ve had a good couple of weeks off work, but tomorrow I’m back to the grind. And (to be honest) I’m quite looking forward to it. For many years I would feel physically sick at the prospect of going to work… not any more.