I felt a bit rough this morning; when the noise of the rain
hadn’t kept me awake, the dogs had. They have this habit of sleeping at the
bottom of the bed (which is fine) and then slowly moving up the bed so I
find myself hunched up with my knees up by my ears.
I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do. A
surprising amount of people had been camping last night and had posted videos
of the noise of the rain in their tents. It’s a few years since I last camped,
but I always felt that the sound of rain on a tent was perhaps the most
depressing sound ever. You just knew that you’d have a morning in which
absolutely everything you’d touch would be sodden.
With not a lot else on and rain stopped but more forecast I
thought I’d take the dogs out.
Bearing in mind the overnight rain, Orlestone would have
been a swamp, so we went up to Kings Wood. As we drove the pundits on the radio
were talking about Russell Brand. I can’t pretend to know the first thing about
him; apparently there’s several rape allegations against him… but these are
allegations made firstly to various
newspapers, then (so it would seem) as an
afterthought to the police. Personally If I’d been raped I’d complain to the
police straight away. Admittedly there’s probably more money to be made from
selling my story to the newspapers, but what do I know?
There was also an interview with some woman who was a head
honcho at the BBC who was ranting about how inappropriate Mr Brand is. During
the interview it came out that Mr Brand still has a You-Tube channel which
attracts over six million people a day. Personally I’d see that as saying that
six million people find him amusing and entertaining, but this woman being
interviewed felt that this was six million people whose viewing she needed to
censor.
As I say I don’t know anything about this bloke other than
what I heard this morning (and later read up on) but as is the case with
all these “evil celebrities”, years pass before anyone says anything.
We got to the woods and had a rather good walk. We went for
two and a half miles. We met a few other dogs; the meetings went well. The dogs
zoomed into hedges and thickets and came back when called. Whilst their
behaviour is far from bad in Orlestone, it is noticeable far better at Kings
Wood. I wonder what causes the difference.
We came home where the dogs immediately went to sleep. I
loaded a load of rubbish from the shed into my car, then made a cuppa (with
cake) for me and “er indoors TM”. From the looks on the
screen I think her colleagues might have liked a cuppa and cake too. I wrote up a little CPD and as the
rain became torrential I drove round to the tip on my way to the late shift.
I was tempted to leave the rubbish in the car for a day or
two, but I really needed to empty it out so I braved the elements. I got to the
tip and told the nice tip man I had some plaster to shift. He explained I had
to pay; I said I knew. So I lugged my bags through the rain past the barriers
into the exclusive pay-per-bag area where I had to empty each bag into the
skip. Or try to. There was another chap also emptying bags of hardcore. Or
trying to. His wife was with him; a quarrelsome old harridan who was keeping up
a constant tirade of criticism. The old bat was standing there in the rain
(getting in everyone's way) finding fault with every single thing her husband
was trying to do. I asked her to excuse me so I could get to the skip; she kept
haranguing her husband. I again asked her (a little louder) to move ..
She looked at me, and turned back to nagging her husband. After the fourth time
that I asked her to move, the nice tip man told the old bat to either help
empty the bags of hardcore or get out of everyone's way. She was not all happy
about being spoken to in this way, but the nice tip man was adamant; she could
either help or get out of the way. As the old bat shuffled away muttering to
herself, her henpecked husband quietly thanked the nice tip man.
What must this chap's life be like; saddled with a wife who
wants to stand in the torrential rain just to nag him?
I paid the nice tip man twenty quid for allowing me to
empty my four bags of plaster, got rid of the rest of my rubbish, washed my
hands in the rainwater which had filled a discarded bathroom sink and set off
to work through the rain. I probably have driven slower up the motorway but
neither I nor anyone else dared go anywhere near what you might call "motorway
speed"; at one point (near the junction six turn-off) there was
an inch of water covering the slow lane.
I spent much of the afternoon looking out of the window
watching the weather alternate from torrential rainstorms to glorious sunshine
and back again every fifteen minutes.
It had all dried out by home time.
It was a shame that I had to take a five-miles diversion on
the way home as the motorway slip road was closed.
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