As I scoffed toast I tried to look at Munzee what with
today being the start of the Clan War. However the app (and the website)
were slow to the point of being unusable. A couple of months ago Munzee HQ had
a major upgrade to its IT, and like pretty much every IT upgrade everywhere the
IT is now doing all sorts of wonderful things behind the scenes… but actually
does the job it is supposed to do far slower and nowhere near as well as it
used to.
There was a whinge on Facebook about the size of the
housing developments going up locally. Sadly some people seemed to think what
whinging on Facebook equated to making a formal complaint to the authorities…
because they felt that “the authorities” was Facebook. Sometimes I get
rather scared about how thick normal people can be.
I loaded the dogs into the car and we went out. AS we drove
the pundits on the radio were spouting all sorts of drivel. The proposed HS2
train line from London to Manchester would seem to be dead in the water. It was
said that if that odious Nigel Farage were to join the Conservative party and
mount a leadership challenge, he’d be Prime Minister before the year was out (what
a chilling thought). But no one really seemed to grasp the implications of
the malaria vaccine that had just been announced. More than
one person dies from malaria every minute; mostly children under five years of
age. And pretty much all people from the poorest parts of the world. No one
asked our potential Prime Minister (and those of a like mind) make of
that.
We got to the woods and saw that Dalmatian who was running
loose last week. Today he was on a lead being walked by a rather doddery old
lady. A little way into our walk we met the chap who gets dragged all over the
place by the akitas who are clearly far stronger than he is.
And three quarters of the way round as we came through one
of the narrower paths through the trees we found a tent. Someone was camping
over a mile into the woods.
After four miles we got back to the car and came home.
Treacle had a bath as she’d been stomping through the swamps. And as I sat with
a coffee and croissant so I got whiffs of fox poo. Bailey then got a bath.
I then set about the lawn. After a week’s growing the lawn
is too long to easily be able to see dog dung. Mowing the lawn, bionically
burning the weeds and vooming round with the garden vacuum took an hour.
As I emptied all the lawn clippings and garden waste into
the green bin in the front garden I did chuckle. Two young(ish) chaps
were walking down the road, each with the most ridiculous haircut. Imagine
growing your hair for five years then sticking a dessert bowl on your head,
shaving away everything that fell outside the dessert bowl and covering what
was left with cooking oil. As they walked past (rubbing the obviously sore
bald bits) one said to the other (in all sincerity) “That
barber’s good, isn’t he?”
Having completely forgotten the earlier issue with the
Munzee app we got the leads onto the dogs and drove down to Stanhope with the
intention to have a half-hour Munzing session. We had a go, but it is a tad
frustrating to have the app taking over five minutes to do what it used to be
able to do in a couple of seconds. Our plan had been to get a Qrate each; I
managed, but “er indoors TM” didn’t. Eventually we abandoned
as “er indoors TM” had to be back for lunch.
I spent the afternoon doing more gardening. Over the years
the stepping stones up the lawn have sunk deeper and deeper into the grass. So I
took the first one, lifted it out of the lawn, trimmed the grass from around
the edge of the hole, popped in seven scoops of soil, replaced the stepping
stone and stomped it level. In a novel break with tradition I used a spirit
level to make sure all actually was level.
And having done the first one I then simply repeated the
process for the other twelve.
The ninth one is a tad wobbly; if it doesn’t settle I shall
have it up and bung in some more soil to balance it out… in a day or so.
“er indoors TM” boiled up pizza and
chips and went off to see her mates. I set the dishwasher going and settled
down on the sofa with the dogs and watched a film. “65”
was… crap, really.
It started off with someone whose daughter was dying and so
the chap had a phenomenal medical bill. If that’s not an advert for
state-provided healthcare, then what is? Anyway… to pay the bill this bloke
took a whole load of people (in hibernation) off for a ride in outer
space in his space ship which he inadvertently pranged on the Yucatan peninsula
in Mexico sixty-five million years ago on the very day before that great big
asteroid crashed and wiped out all the dinosaurs.
I suppose the film could have been good but… (to give
but one example) if you are being attacked by some sort of dinosaur thingy
and your only means of defence is a space laser, what would you do? Personally
I would shoot the dinosaur with the space laser. I wouldn’t let the dinosaur
get to within biting distance and then repeatedly clout it with the blunt end
of the space laser.
My Munzee app has completely died now…
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