10 April 2024 (Wednesday) - A Birthday

I woke with a serious neck ache this morning. I wonder what that was all about? I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do.
Again Facebook wanted to tell me about the Region de Murcia; according to Wikipedia it is a bit of south-east Spain. According to me it is somewhere that until a few days ago I’d never heard of, and since I’m seeing so many adverts about the place filling my Facebook feed I won’t go there on principle.
And again people thousands of miles away from the Middle East were “debating” (bickering like small children) about the Middle East situation. No matter what one side had done wrong, someone would try to justify it as revenge for some other historical misdemeanour. And there’s the Gaza situation in a nutshell. There was an interview on national radio with leaders of both sides several years ago when there was fighting over some different matter. Both sides kept harping back to issues that had happened years before either was born. Neither were prepared to make any concessions whatsoever, and both admitted that fighting would never stop because neither side was prepared to give an inch. Both did say that anyone who didn’t want to live in a war zone should emigrate because the place would always be one.
Nothing has changed. The leadership seem to want to fight, and it is the poor people in the street who suffer.
 
I took the dogs to the woods. We had a good walk. The woods were surprisingly not that muddy. We chased squirrels and took a different route to usual exploring a new footpath. There’s not many that we haven’t walked in those woods now. We met a few other dogs; all meetings passed off fine; the dogs said hello and came back when called. Morgan especially is so much more relaxed when not on the lead.
After three and a half miles we got back to the car and came home.
 
I went into the garden, got the paint out and painted round the wooden borders. It’s three years since I put them in; they needed doing. As I pulled a rather vicious splinter from my hand and rolled my eyes as the dogs were sticking to the wet paint so I noticed something. I saw that the pond’s water level had dropped by about six inches and the sleeper at the top of the pond was damp – the bog filter was overflowing its sides. It’s less than two weeks since that last happened.
I ran out the hose pipe and had a little think.
Realising that if the bog filter had higher sides it wouldn’t overflow quite so easily I went to Wickes to get some sleepers. They had two sorts in the size that I needed; the darker coloured ones were four quid per sleeper more expensive. Bearing in mind how many I wanted I decided I could slap a lick of paint on them myself and save loads. I treated myself to a new saw as well. Sleepers take some cutting…
I then popped to Bybrook Barn for pond liner, When I got home it was raining, which was probably just as well. Otherwise I would have cracked on and knackered myself. Once the weather chirps up the plan is to:
  • Paint the sleepers.
  • Remove the rockery.
  • Stick the bog plants into temporary buckets.
  • Turn off the filter pumps.
  • Remove the moulded splash pool without slopping all the muck into the pond.
  • Lift or cut the weed proof membranes.
  • Dig out and landscape the space for the new bog filter.
  • Saw the sleepers to size.
  • Put the new sleepers in place.
  • Line it all.
  • Turn filter pumps all back on again.
  • Stick the plants back in.
I’m not sure about how the water will come out of the bog filter into the pond. I’ll need to make some sort of waterfall arrangement. I’ll give it a think. At the moment that’s the only real sticking point. If any of my loyal readers have anything which might do the trick…
 
Once “er indoors TM had finished work we all drove down to Folkestone to see Darcie Waa Waa TM as today was her birthday. We took cake, and had a rather good couple of hours with the birthday girl. She was too young to realise what was going on, but we had a good time.
 
We were rather late home, so to save time we had KFC for dinner. We scoffed it whilst watching the first episode of the new series of “Hunted”. As always the amount of CCTV surveillance in the UK is an eye-opener.
 
A second day not at work; a second full-on day. I’m worn out.

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