23 February 2024 (Friday) - Bit Dull

When we came home yesterday afternoon I had a letter from the hospital about a pre-assessment appointment at a rather inconvenient time. I spent an hour on the phone to them yesterday trying to get through before the line went dead when they turned it off at four o’clock. This morning I got straight through when I phoned over brekkie. I re-scheduled and then scoffed toast, fed the dogs, and took them on an outing.
 
As we drove we listened to “Desert Island Discs”. Today’s castaway was the vulcanologist Clive Oppenheimer who is the same age as I am, and would seem to have a frankly dreadful taste in music. Much like everyone on that radio show. Periodically I make a list of what tracks I’d play if I was the castaway.  
 
We got to Kings Wood and had our walk. Bearing in mind all the rain of the last few days we took a relatively longer walk today following the gravelled track. As we walked we met so many other groups of people. All with dogs on leads over a mile into the woods. And all the dogs had yellow leads and yellow harnesses. Bearing in mind the “Yellow Dog scheme”, I put my dogs onto their leads at every encounter. And every time the other person cried out “my dog is very friendly”. I told all of these people about the idea of Yellow Dogs; a yellow lead, collar or harness means the dog may be nervous, in training, recovering from an injury or illness or operations, being rehabilitated or simply prefers to keep their distance from people and other dogs. And consequently it means that other dogs should keep their distance.
Each person replied that that they are constantly being told about the “Yellow Dog scheme” but didn’t think it was for real.
 
We came home, had bellies washed, then I made a cuppa and peered into the Internet, and did something I’ve been meaning to do for years. Some time in 2020 (I think) the button on my GPS unit broke. Over the last few years I’ve been bodging it along; now to make it work I have to poke a pokey-thing through the hole to make it work, and obviously it is no longer waterproof. Having been told many times that I can send it back to Garmin for repairs I phoned the nice people at Garmin today only to find they don’t do repairs any more. They will allow me to trade in my current GPS for a new one and give me a thirty per cent discount… or I could buy a new one even cheaper from the Ordnance Survey website.
In the end I went on to eBay and bought a new button which I can glue into place on my currently poggered one.
 
I settled myself in front of the telly for the afternoon and watched episodes of “Four In A Bed”. The first B&B was somewhere that specialised in welcoming dogs, and (needless to say) was awash with dog hairs.
The second was run by people who’d taken umbrage at all the dog hairs at the first place, made great show of having high standards of cleanliness, but ironically had far more hairs and stains in their bedding than anyone else had.
Having announced how much experience they had in the hospitality trade, the third set made a total arse of brekkie, and the woman running the fourth B&B told the second that (judging by her appearance) she thought she had something wrong with her. Which was ironic bearing in mind the one making the comment had a head which was clearly several sizes too small for her body.
In some episodes of “Four In A Bed” they all are good buddies; today’s episodes were brilliant; they all hated each other and made no secret of it.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up a very good bit of dinner and when it was scoffed I shared cheese and crackers with the dogs… I had the cheese; they had crackers. But they seemed happy with the deal.
“er indoors TM is now watching Fred Dibnah on the “Yesterday” channel. He’s jumped from Cornwall to Tyneside in one change of scene… My Dad used to like the chap. So far I’m not keen.

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