Treacle and Bailey woke me with a woofing fit shortly after
eight o’clock. I was glad that they did; I was embroiled in a nightmare in
which I’d been seconded to the International Mars Mission as an astronaut. My
map-reading and geocachical skills would be invaluable in getting the
spaceships to Mars (as if you can’t see the planet from Earth anyway).
But my main responsibility on the crew would be to look after the dogs. Having
dogs in space suits meant that their taking a dump would be tricky for them,
and with the eyes of the world on the mission, I wouldn’t be able to hoof any
turds into the undergrowth (not that there’s much undergrowth on Mars).
The Prime Minister himself was telling me what an honour it all was, and that
he had every confidence that I would work out the piddling details.
What was that all about?
I scoffed toast, rolled my eyes at the Internet, and
checked in on what was happening in the shitbox rally on the
other side of the world. “Sharon” had sprung a leak and run out of
petrol, but all is well now.
I got the dogs onto their leads and we went off to find
where I’d left the car, and we set off to Kings Wood for a walk. We took a
rather different route today heading through the woods toward the village (rather
than away from it), and waked for four and a half miles. Once we were away
from the car park we only saw one other group. The bluebells were out; it was
really pretty. It was a shame that both Morgan and Bailey rolled in fox poo,
but there it is.
As we walked I had a text message from NHS Pensions
Retirement Award saying “We have received your NHS Pensions Retirement
benefits claim form. We can confirm we have successfully processed your
application. A written notification will be issued to you”. That’s a
relief… I wonder what it means. I’ve had this sort of message a couple of times
already but in both of those cases “successfully processed” actually
meant “passed on to the next office”.
There was a minor episode with Treacle when we got back to
the car; she was quite seriously slobbering. Was she thirsty? Had she eaten
something foul? She’d been acting odd last night – over-excited and restless. I
shall keep an eye on her…Dogs, eh? Who’d have ‘em.
We came home. Treacle had the brekkie at which she’d turned
her nose up at earlier (which was a result) and Morgan and Bailey had a
bath. If you roll in poo, you have a bath, Rules is rules.
We then had a cuppa and a Belgian bun. An Asda one. It
tasted OK, but most of the icing had stuck to the packaging.
I popped to B&Q. On the way I knocked in the door of
the house with the bricks in the garden, but again they didn’t want to answer
the door. So I bit the bullet and paid hard cash for new bricks. Sixty-six
pence per brick. And I got some plants as well. Pansies, lobelia, violas and a
peony.
I brought them home, moved a huge concrete core out of the
yard, and then seeing that “er indoors TM” was on lunch break
we put the new garden table together. Once we figured out what went where it
was rather straightforward, but figuring that out took some doing. Anyone who
could write decent instructions could make a fortune.
I then moved the plant pots I’d acquired on Saturday into
place, transplanted plants about, put compost into the old planter, planted
more plants, heaved the concrete core the length of the garden to add it to the
rockery, and realizing the afternoon was nearly all done and I’d only done half
I had planned, I said “sod it” and came indoors.
I then boiled up dinner myself. It came out rather well if
I do say so myself. We washed it down wit a bottle of Lidl white wine. Billed
as “zesty and vibrant” it wasn’t bad, really. As we scoffed we watched a
couple of episodes of “Hunted”; a rather good show which I am sure I
could do better than most of the contestants.
I really hurt. Having done a few sums the concrete core I
shifted today weighs about sixty kilograms. My original plan was to have the first
fruit of my loin shift it for me, but he went fishing.
He ain’t daft.
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