28 August 2024 (Wednesday) - Walks, Gardening, Tip Run

With no alarm set last night I slept like a log. When I eventually woke I made toast and peered into the Internet fearing the worst. Last night there had been quite a bitter argument on one of the Facebook groups I moderate. Early yesterday evening there had been a rather petty disagreement in which someone made a comment about going hanging yourself in the servant’s bedroom. Anyone who’d watched the show would realized that was a reference to the Upstairs Downstairs episode “I Dies from Love”. However some woman who clearly didn’t realise this had been intent on blowing it all out of proportion. I moderated, I told everyone to play nicely.
This morning it had all seemed to have blown over.
Another chap had posted on one of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy pages so he “could defend the maligned BBC 1980s television adaptation”. I’m not sure what he was defending it from; he slagged it off more than anyone else had ever done. Occasionally HHG gets some stick, but the problem facing the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is that it was originally a radio program. In much the same way that Harry Potter and James Bond are series of books, the film and TV adaptations are made for people who can’t sit still and listen to the radio or read a book.
And there were photos of the Electric Light Orchestra’s tour. They are currently performing their farewell tour. It’s rather sad that they are calling it a day, but their frontman is in his mid-seventies and one of the other leading lights died last May.
 
I drove the dogs up to Longbeech Woods where there was a German camper can in the car park. I let the dogs run into the woods and after a minute they dashed ahead and started barking. I hurried to find them woofing at a young couple cowering in the hedge. They were looking at the dogs in much the same way that I would look at a pack of hungry tigers. I firmly said “Straight Past!” to the dogs and they stopped woofing and carried on. That’s another work in progress of ours. It’s rather impressive when it works.
As we walked I picked up the last two geocaches in those woods that I hadn’t found. I saw a squirrel; the dogs didn’t. Bailey did try to eat a fox turd but dropped it when I shouted at her.
After an hour and a quarter we got back to the car. My watch said we’d walked a shade over three miles. In that time other than the terrified Germans we’d only seen one other person, and they were in the distance and we avoided them anyway.
 
We came home and I made a cuppa. Yesterday “er indoors TM had got us Belgian buns from Aldi. They were OK, but the best ones are from the co-op.
I hung out the washing, loaded up a load of rubbish into the car, then whilst I was waiting for my allocated tip time I went into the garden and trimmed back all the stuff hanging over the fence from not-so-nice-next-door. As always it took some trimming.
 
And so to the tip… Oh dear.
Once I’d unloaded I saw something new there. There were a couple of banners saying “re-use” and behind the banners were all sorts of things that looked used but still useful. Furniture, ornaments, and an electric keyboard. I asked one of the tip staff what that lot was all about. The chap replied with a grunt. I asked if they were for sale or free for people to take. The chap’s reply was “no” but his tone was “f… off fatso”. I explained how many tips offer a service where the higher quality unwanted stuff is sold. He snarled that they didn’t do that, turned his back and made a point of ignoring me.
I’ve put in a formal complaint; I doubt anything will happen though.
 
I came home, and pootled about in the garden until I realized I was hurting. So I stopped pootling, came inside and wrote up a little CPD. As I wrote so Terry phoned from the Three Network. Or so he claimed. He was no more Terry from the Three Network than I was Rashid from the Three Network. I wasted quite a bit of his time listening to his offer, then offered him my special deal. I told him that for no more than he was already paying me, he could piss off or get knotted. This confused him, so I repeated the offer. On my third repetition he realized I was wasting his time and he hung up.
Here’s a heads-up. If a Scottish phone number calls you trying to offer a deal from the Three Network, it’s a scam.
 
Once she’d finished work “er indoors TM and I took the dogs down to the coast for our midweek evening walk. For a change we tried the beach at Sandgate; I had this naïve idea that the place might be quiet and good for the dogs. It was heaving and dogs were banned until the end of September.
But we had a good walk along the prom.
 
Being rather later home than we might have been we had KFC for dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Below Deck” in which stewards and deck hands were porking each other. It is commonly said that “worse things happen at sea”; they certainly seem to.

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