I woke feeling rather grim this morning;
whatever lurgy I’ve got has turned into some sort of cold. But as always I can
sulk or get on with my life.
I got on with my life.
I made toast and had a
look at the Internet as I do. This morning there were several posts on the
1970s nostalgia Facebook pages all of which showed some random still from a
film with comments “this was always popular” or “I liked this one”
and me feeling that I was the only person in the world who had no idea what the
film was. I am so tempted to post up a random family photo and comment “watched
this one last night” and see how many people pretend they know what the
film was (when it wasn’t a film at all).
I had a look at my
emails. I saw some people had been out in Kings Wood finding the geocaches I’d
hidden there, and unusually a new geocache had gone out. Another fiendishly
difficult puzzle though. Several geo-meets had been created over the next few
weeks too. None particularly local though, which was a shame.
I did a YouGov survey,
then as the dogs had their brekkie I got ready for the morning’s mission.
Leaving “er indoors TM” in charge
at home I took the dogs up to Kings Wood. It was a bright morning at home, but
again we drove up into the fog. As we walked so the fog slowly lifted and the
mud (which was frozen on arrival) slowly melted.
We had a good walk round the woods. We ate some horse poo,
and with no fox poo to be found we rolled in a dead sparrow. As we walked we
saw several birds of prey. More than we usually see. And they were all fairly
close. Was I being paranoid in thinking that they had their eye on Bailey?
We came home and met
the roofer bloke clambering up a ladder. The roofer chap was finishing the work
on the flat roof up on top, but showed me photos of the state of the roof over
our bedroom. The bits I thought would be
an issue are fixed, but more problems have been found. Part of me is thinking “OMG!!!”
and part of me is thinking that now we know there’s an issue we can get it
sorted before it becomes a problem.
After all, what is
money for if not to squander on roof repairs?
I washed the dogs’ paws, legs and bellies, then
had a look at the pond. It was crystal clear. Bearing in mind how cold it has
been recently the water flow would have made sure the water was cold, and
consequently the fish all in torpor (fish hibernation). So I turned off
the pumps and the filter, took the filter apart, cleaned it all out and put it
all back together again empty ready for the winter. Several Februarys ago I wrote “Every year
I turn the filter off when the pond is shut down in November, and every year I
don’t clean it out then. Instead I leave carp turds festering over the winter
so they are nice and ripe a few months later when I come to clean the thing out.”
I didn’t make that mistake today. It needs the new bulb putting in place; I can
do that another time.
I’m
really pleased with this pressure filter. Back in the day I used huge box
filter things. They were heavy. Carrying them down the garden to the drain (where
I can clean them) involved my getting covered in fish poo flavoured pond
water, and the cleaning took over an hour. I started off with one of those
things on 22 March 2007 (when “My Boy TM” installed the first one)
and I struggled on with that sort of filtering for just over sixteen years
until 26 April this year when I put in the
pressure filter.
It’s
brilliant. I wish I’d installed one years ago. Leaving aside the fact the thing
does an excellent job, I can do a quick clean in twenty minutes, or a deep
clean (like I did this morning) in half an hour. The quick clean can be
done without moving the filter at all, and being a lot lighter and being a
sealed unit means I can take the filter to the drain for a deep clean without
slopping fish poo all over the place.
It takes longer to get set up to do the
cleaning and to tidy away afterwards than it does to actually clean. Life is so
much easier when you’re not spreading fish poo flavoured muck all over the
place.
I then had a little
tidy-up round the garden. As I pootled I kept looking up at the roof. The nice
roofer is doing work on our house and new-next-door at the same time and
he was all over the roof. This made me think… There’s no way I would clamber
all over the roof. But I think nothing of spending large parts of my day
dealing with other people’s blood.
No day off work is
complete without doing the ironing; I spent some time with the ironing whilst
watching more “Squid Games: The Challenge” It’s a “reality TV”
sort of show, or so it is billed. I hope it is all acted out; some of the contestants
being interviewed are truly nasty.
With ironing ironed I settled myself on the
sofa… and woke two hours later. Despite having cracked on with the day I still
felt rather grim, and probably needed the sleep.
“er indoors TM” has gone out with her
mates. I’ve just set up the Facebook album for this year’s Advent Calendar. I
really should open the thing, shouldn’t I?
For a day’s holiday I’ve not stopped…
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