23 November 2024 (Saturday) - A House Guest

I slept like a log last night but woke feeling like death warmed up. The after-effects of one bottle of plonk? I made toast and had my usual root around the Internet. Nothing had changed. Petty bickering and name calling continued, and I had a sea of videos on Facebook featuring people pulling things out of cows’ hooves. Just lately I’d say at least a third (of not more) of what I see on Facebook is videos of cows having hoof infections treated. What’s that all about? I suppose it’s an improvement on the dodgy pornmongering I’ve had in the past, but I have to wonder whatever prompted their algorithms to come up with this idea.

There were quite a few twee inspirational memes being posted too. Have you ever noticed that they are posted by people who have been lucky in life. Those who suggest that when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade have never been handed a lemon by life..

I then made the mistake of allowing the antivirus thingy to do its thing. It does its thing in the background without issue, but periodically it asks me if it can do a big scan and clear out. And I always let it, completely forgetting that when I do it automatically throws away all memory of saved passwords and settings.

It didn’t take *that* long to get the laptop back to how it was supposed to be.

 

“er indoors ^TM” was off out with the craft club this morning, so whilst she coated the inside of the microwave with porridge (don’t ask!) I took the dogs to Dog Club. The weather was very overcast but we still had about fifteen dogs along. They played and rough-and-tumbled as dogs do. Morgan got rather excited as he does, but as time goes by he is learning that nipping gets him time-out and muzzle time, and he was as good as gold today. Whenever there were any little spats he was immediately there, but watching on the sidelines. Not making an iffy situation worse as he used to do.

And Whisper came along too. On our walk in Kings Wood last Thursday as we were a few hundred yards from the car park, the dogs charged round a corner and a small voice said “that dog is smaller than Whisper”. Whisper was a little dachshund who then played with my three hounds for quite a while in the woods. I told his family about Dog Club and they came along today; they seemed to enjoy themselves. Whisper certainly did. New dogs at Dog Club are usually quite timid to begin with, but dachshunds just get stuck in, and Whisper certainly did.

The forecast rain held off until we were getting into the car to come home. But having had a good session at Dog Club so it rained heavily for the rest of the day.

 

As I started the car so Steve read out the giveaway question for the Mystery Year competition. The first Moon landing? 1969.

We came home for a bath; the dogs were filthy. And I changed into trousers that weren’t plastered in muddy dog paw prints. To be fair I do encourage the dogs to jump up at me.

I set the washing machine going, made a cuppa and got Alexa to play Radio Ashford as I wrote up a little CPD. And with CPD done I turned on the telly and watched several episodes of “Brassic”.

 

“er indoors ^TM” returned from craft club, then went straight back out again. Her and Cheryl were off to Folkestone to help “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” have a bit of a tidy-up. I watched two more episodes of “Brassic” then had a sleep until “er indoors ^TM” came home. She brought Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” and Pogo as the most recent fruit of my loin was planning on having a much-deserved decent night’s kip tonight.

My favourite lady charged up to me for a hug, and as our dinner was boiled up for us so we played. At one point littlun got up from the sofa, turned to me and said “excuse me Granddad” and then pottered off. Where did she get that from?

 

She’s currently in the bathroom with her grandmother. It is quiet, which is either a result, or ominous. I’m not sure which.

22 November 2024 (Friday) - Early Shift

Finding myself awake far too early I got up on a rather cold morning. I made toast and turned on the telly wondering if I might watch something or other for a few minutes. I found myself watching The Benny Hill Show. Forty years ago the Benny Hill Show was peak-time viewing and this morning I found myself wondering why. It wasn’t actually very funny. That’s not me being politically correct or being woke. It simply wasn’t funny.

I then sparked up my lap-top to see if anything remarkable had happened on the Internet since I’d last looked at it only a few hours previously. It hadn’t really. I checked my emails – three weeks ago I first contacted my MP about the upcoming House of Commons vote on the assisted dying bill. I’ve since tried twice more to get a response but still no joy. I sent a fourth email this morning. This one got an automated reply which I suppose is a step in the right direction. I can’t pretend that I was ever a fan of the previous MP, but at least he made himself visible (albeit in what seemed to be a rather self-aggrandizing way). So far this chap hasn’t got off to a good start. But as well as setting up auto-replies to emails he’s also changed his Facebook profile to say he is an MP and not a “digital creator”.

I tried to Munz, but the Munzee app had something of a fit. It thought it was ten o’clock last night even though it had today’s date right. But I got Wordle on the third attempt.

 

I scraped the ice from my car's windscreen; it didn't take that long really. I set off to Sainsbury for petrol. Sadly the cantankerous old bat was on duty at the till today. She has been better recently but had the right arse today. I got myself a sandwich and one or two bits and bobs, and I asked for a carrier bag to put them all in. She threw the bag at me, and I struggled to open it. When I commented that I can never get the things open she snarled that she couldn't either and that was why she'd given (thrown) it to me. I threw it back and said that I wouldn't bother with a bag. Faced with removing it from the bill she ungraciously ripped it open and stuffed all my shopping in.

 

I drove up the motorway listening to the news. The French authorities aren't happy about all the effort they are putting in to stopping illegal immigrants getting to the coast only to have the British welcoming them all in. I suppose they've got a point.

And President Putin has warned the UK government that by supplying arms to the Ukrainians, the UK has made itself a legitimate target for a Russian attack. Let's not pretend that we didn't see this coming.

 

I got to work for the early shift. I had booked the afternoon off, but what with the most recent frit of my loin having come home yesterday I didn’t need the afternoon off. And seeing work was short-handed I cancelled the leave. That was good of me, wasn’t it…

But an early start still made for an early finish.

 

“er indoors ^TM” had sent me a shopping list so I went from work to Sainsburys. You wouldn’t believe the difference in attitude between the staff in the Ashford Sainsburys and their petrol station. The staff in the store were so friendly and helpful. Perhaps their management might need to redeploy the cantankerous old bat across the road to the main store so’s she might learn how not to deliberately antagonize the customers.

Having brought the shopping home, “er indoors ^TM” then got busy with it and boiled up a very good bit of scran which we washed down with a bottle of Sainsbury’s best. As we scoffed we watched the Bake Off semi-final. The more I watch that show the more I am convinced that there’s a lot of farting around in baking.

Mind you I still scoff the cakes though…. all the time someone else I making them.

21 November 2024 (Thursday) - A Cold Walk

I quite often get up silly-early and leave “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs in the pit where they all stay asleep. In a novel break with tradition “er indoors ^TM” got up very early today. Treacle and Morgan immediately followed, and Bailey started crying because she is too small to get off the bed on her own.

With “er indoors ^TM” eventually off on her errand I went back to bed. That is I went to the bed. I ogt there to find Bailey was whinging because she’s too small to get up on her own. And once she was up, the three of them started a great fighting-chasing game.

I did eventually get them to settle.

 

I got up a couple of hours later, made toast and had my usual root round the Internet. Nothing had changed. Star Trek fans were being particularly hateful to each other this morning. When I first got involved in Trekkie fandom (forty years ago) it was one big argument… but looking back it was a better quality of argument. Long before the Internet, Star Trek fans used to have fan-made magazines every few months. People would write in their opinionated rantings and have them published. Everyone else would then take offence, but rather than immediately responding (like we do with today’s Internet) we would have a few weeks in which to hone our bitter and sarcastic replies. I once made the mistake of saying that graphic novels are comic books, and the ensuing argument dragged on for years. But it wasn’t an argument like today’s bitter Internet squabbles. Because it was all done by posting to a magazine we had time to consider our replies… and so we actually had something of a debate. Admittedly no one ever agreed about anything, but there was a degree of civility about it which is lacking in today’s bickering.

 

I got the dogs onto their leads and we wandered up the road to find the car. As we went so the bin men were in Denmark Road… actually going into people’s gardens, taking the bins out and bringing them back. Usually you have to bring the bin to the pavement for them as they flatly refuse to get the bins themselves… they are clearly hoping for a Christmas box.

We drove up to the woods and parked in the lower car park for a change. Last weekend someone had stayed in a local hotel and spent three days doing all the geocaches I’d hidden there. Today we went and had a little look at the ones he couldn’t find. Three were there all along. Two were missing (or I couldn’t find them either) and one was at the other end of the woods so we left it for next time. But sorting these made for a good walk. And unlike yesterday the mud was still frozen so we didn’t get too grubby. We didn’t roll in any fox poo either. Bailey ate some though…

After five and a half miles we were back at the car.

 

We came home to find “er indoors ^TM” had returned from her errand. She popped out to collect “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” whose enforced sojourn in Enfield had come to an end. After we’d scoffed KFC they all set off to Enfield to collect stuff and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” .

I settled in front of the telly and watched “Star Trek: Insurrection” which wasn’t a bad film, and then fell asleep during “Star Trek: Nemesis”. As I dozed in front of the telly so Bailey dozed in the flow of warm air from the living room fire. She seems to like that. She does feel the cold, and it has been nippy today.

 

I’ve not really done anything much today, and I’m worn out. I suppose we did walk a little further than usual this morning; my daily step count is over fourteen thousand and my left knee is aching a bit. Perhaps I shouldn’t walk the dogs quite so far?

20 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Late Shift

As I scoffed brekkie there was something that amazed me on Facebook. The goat sanctuary has a new goat – “Callie”. The poor thing was found tethered on a roundabout leading on to the local motorway. Who would do such a thing? If you’ve got a goat you can’t cope with (for whatever reason) why not take her straight to the goat sanctuary? It strikes me that it is less arse-ache to take the goat there than it would be to sneak about at night when no-one is looking and messing about on roundabouts.

I also saw the Wherigo I wrote yesterday had gone live, and three people had downloaded the cartridge in the first half-hour. I’m hoping people do this one properly and don’t try to cheat; I’ve put in so many red herrings that it is quicker to do it properly than check out all the bogus locations. It bothers me when people cheat at the Wherigos – the whole thing is a fun little game to play on your phone. The geocache at the end is just an added bonus if you like that sort of thing. There are those that do, and they do the Wherigos pretty much right away. After a while those using the cheat programs come along just to get their geocache count up. I wish they wouldn’t.

Some chap went round Kings Wood doing my Wherigos last week – reading his written geocache logs it is plain he did them properly and laughed out loud at them. Which is what I intended.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and took the dogs out. I went outside to see that winter had officially arrived. In my world the first day of winter is the first day at the end of the year when I have to scrape ice from my car. Scraping didn’t take *that* long, and we were soon on our way.

We drove to Orlestone today as it is closer to home than Kings Wood and makes for a shorter walk. Our usual walk round Kings Wood is four miles and takes an hour and twenty minutes. Our walk round Orlestone today was a mile and a half and took thirty-five minutes. Mind you I had a minor melt-down when I looked at my watch at the end of the walk. The same walk round Orlestone used to take an hour when Fudge used to dawdle and pootle round with everyone else waiting for him. Without Fudge along these days we walk the same route in half the time.

I had this stupid idea that being so cold today that the mud would be frozen and the dogs wouldn’t get filthy. Sadly it wasn’t, and they did. We had a warm shower when we came home.

 

I set off to work. Being at Pembury today for the late shift I drove through the -hursts and the -dens. It was a very pretty drive, marred only by the lorry which had got itself wedged at the sharp corner at Goudhurst church. Luckily I didn't have to backtrack that much to find an alternative route.

 

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the supposed failures of maternity services in the UK.

It turns out that most of the problems come from all the expectant mothers having this starry-eyed idea of how a perfect birth will go. Sadly very few of them seem to have realised that having a baby is a dangerous game. Furthermore everyone is allowed choice in their treatments these days, so wannabe mothers are leaving decisions about medical intervention too late when things are going iffy. And then rather than realising this, the media continues to blow the relatively few tragic cases out of proportion and make no mention of how many births happen without incident (lots). And consequently there's a recruitment crisis in midwifery. Who's going to study for years for a job which has a decent chance of getting you crucified in the papers?

And so more and more mothers are looking outside the NHS to have their baby. Often with a doula. There was an interesting interview with the UK's head doula.

I say "UK's head doula"; actually there isn't one. A doula is someone you pay to be your birthing partner who has absolutely no medical qualifications whatsoever. From what was being said some are good and some act as though they are consultant gynecologists and cause quite a few problems themselves.

It turns out that people are very happy to go running to the papers every time the NHS is involved with a tragedy, but those who've employed doulas tend to keep quiet when it all goes pear-shaped. And can you blame them? It would seem that having turned away free expert medical care, they've paid good money to an unqualified quack.

The UK's wannabe head doula being interviewed was some woman who was trying to form a professional association of doulas. She wanted written standards of practice for them all. But as she said with no legal control of them, there is nothing to stop the rogue ones taking the money and doing what they please.

I get so cross with this sort of thing. What I do is legally controlled with all sorts of checks and controls. Why isn't doula-ing?

 

“er indoors ^TM”  had given me orders not to come home without tea bags (on pain of death) so I stopped off at Tesco to get some.

I got cross there too. Dozens, if not hundreds, of customers were blundering about quite literally crashing into each other with only one (me) seemingly aware there was anyone else in the shop.

 

I got to work and did my bit. As I do. I must admit I wasn't keen today.  Periodically I looked out of the window and saw it wasn't raining. There was so much at home I could have been doing, and yesterday when I'd been at home it had been hossing down.

Another reason I wasn’t keen was that I was on a late shift at Pembury. By the time I’d scraped the ice off the car and navigated my way home through pitch-black lanes it was gone ten o’clock.

19 November 2024 (Tuesday) - It Rained

I woke to the sound of heavy rain. I had planned to take the dogs to the woods this morning, but it’s no fun in the rain.

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. The Wherigo I made yesterday had gone live at half past seven, and two people had already downloaded it. Were they going out in the rain? If they were, let’s hope they were going to do the thing properly. They would have got very wet if they fell for my anti-cheating ruse.

 

There wasn’t much else happening on-line today. There weren’t many squabbles really. I munzed, I got Wordle on the fourth attempt, and got seriously cross looking at the rain.

With nothing else to do I scrubbed the kitchen wall, cleaned out the bathroom cabinet, and seeing the rain was showing no sign of easing up I started writing another Wherigo. Well, not so much writing as re-vamping an old one. Bearing in mind the cheat software looks for pictures of final co-ordinates I’ve put in a dozen into this new one for it to find. That will be nice for it, won’t it?

 

The rain eased off by mid-afternoon so I walked the dogs round the block. As I stood up to do so, they all leapt up as well. I’d got up for various reasons half a dozen times during the day and they hadn’t batted an eyelid. But when I intended to take them out, they were there right away.

How do they know?

I didn’t think the rain had been that heavy, but we all came home soaked. I then went through the Wherigo to give it a final check… and found half a dozen issues with it.

Two hours later I packed the thing off to the geo-feds.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled me up a pizza and she set off to Hastings for a booze-up. I stayed with the dogs; they don’t like being left for any length of time. I scoffed pizza and watched “Star Trek: First Contact” – is that film really twenty-eight years old?

 

Today was dull…

18 November 2024 (Monday) - Perry Wood

I spent most of yesterday evening asleep in front of the telly, and slept like a log last night. I woke at eight o’clock to the sound of Morgan heaving., so I leapt up and bundled him outside.

Finding myself wide awake I made toast and peered into the internet where I laughed at the Christians posting on an atheist Facebook page I follow.  That page is often amusing; today the righteous were gloating that the iniquitous sinners have only got six months left in which to repent. Apparently the world is ending next April. I had a look on Google to see if this is true; apparently some Bulgarian mystic called Baba Vanga has predicted the end of the world starting next year. She also predicted Muslim rule of Europe in 2043, the entire world going communist in 2076 and humanity being wiped out in 5079.

I must admit I’m not unduly fussed. I remember the first end of the world. It was on the first of January 1980 and had been predicted by Nostradamus. Me and my mate Douggie Small spent the day walking round Hastings looking for any signs of the world having ended, and we both had something of a sense of anticlimax about the whole thing. There’s been several end of the worlds since. Only two years after the first one I was rather disappointed that the planet Jupiter’s gravity didn’t pull the Earth apart as had been predicted by some prominent astrophysicist. Halley’s comet didn’t wipe anything out in 1986, the Rapture didn’t come in 1988 (or any time in the early 90s – there were several of these), several predicted nuclear wars and alien-instigated wipeouts failed to materialize, and by the time we got to Nostradamus’s second go in July 1999 I rather gave up on end of the worlds.

There’s a list of most of them on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

 

I had an email telling me that someone had commented on yesterday’s blog entry. People rarely do, but the option is there. However I moderate each comment before it gets published since spambots have tried to use this blog as a vehicle for their advertising. Sadly this is what happened overnight. Someone wrote “It sounds like you had a rather slow start to your day, with the early wake-up and some quiet time before heading to work. It's always a nice surprise when the roads are clear, especially on a Sunday! Sometimes those quiet mornings are a welcome break”. And then they followed this up with two adverts; one for cheap pharmaceuticals and for Rack Supported Mezzanine floors. Whatever they are.

I deleted the comment.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on my third attempt, and took the dogs out. We drove up to Perry Wood today for a change. As we drove I listened to the pundits on the radio who talking about political advisors. Historically they have been unelected buddies of politicians and have been useful not so much to offer advice as to take the blame for unsuccessful policies. The examples of Thomas Cromwell and Dominic Cummings were given. Despite being hundreds of years apart their cases were rather similar, weren’t they?

 

The last time we went to Perry Woods I couldn’t find the place. Today I used the sat-nav and we arrived to find an empty car park. I sparked up my geo-app; there’s one geocache up there that has eluded me for some time, and over the weekend the chap who had hidden it had given me the heads-up on it and had been out to check on it himself as it hadn’t been found for three years. The chap had even put crossed sticks forming an “X” over it but I still took fifteen minutes to find it. Some people who hide geocaches want them found, and some don’t.

Having found it we then went on through the woods looking for the other three geocaches in those woods. We found one of them. We’ll go back for the other two in the spring – it was rather slippery and swampy today. I took a few photos though – Perry Wood is a rather pretty place,

 

We came home where the dogs had a warm shower. I’d rather not wash the dogs after a walk if I can get away with it though. They come home very tired but the shower/bath somehow puts them all in a very hyperactive and excitable mood which lasts for far too long.

Eventually they were asleep, and I then cleaned out the filter in the little fish pond. I need to see if I can find a very small pressure filter for that pond; the current one needs cleaning out every couple of weeks and isn’t the easiest to clean.

 

I then spent the afternoon re-writing a Wherigo cartridge. Over the last few years I’ve spent ages writing fun little GPS games only to have people using cheat software to extract the final geocache locations… and then complain that by cheating they can’t get the hints and tips that I write into them. After a couple of hours I came up with one that isn’t entirely cheat-resistant but does throw people off the scent.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted dinner then set off to bowling as she does on Monday evenings. I settled on the sofa and was soon snoring underneath a pile of dogs. Who were also snoring…

17 November 2024 (Sunday) - Manky Tennis Ball

I’d set the alarm for half past six this morning so I woke at four and lay awake watching the clock for a couple of hours. Eventually I gave up, got up and made toast. I watched an episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” then sparked up my lap-top to have my usual trawl around the internet. Nothing much had happened overnight for once, so I had a quick Munz then got Wordle right on the third attempt. As usual I started off with “table” and only had the third and last letter wrong. I couldn’t think of any other word than “tally”.

 

It was light when I set off to work this morning. Being a Sunday the roads were nowhere near as busy as usual. Normally if I leave home at half past seven the traffic trying to get to the motorway is at a snail's pace from the Matalan roundabout (about a mile from the motorway). Today I sailed all the way.

As I drove the pundits were interviewing an author who'd written a book about the succession of a hypothetical pope. The book sounded rather interesting; it was a shame that having been talking about a book for five minutes the chap conducting the interview said that the film is released this week; speaking in such a way that films and books are synonymous. I suppose in this day and age for most people they are... Everyone knows about Harry Potter. Everyone’s seen the films. How many people have actually read the books?

There was then a round table of various windbags pontificating on who would be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. One of them banged on about how an Archbishop should raise awareness of child poverty and how we shouldn't be dependent on food banks. Another accused the first of being too left wing and said that politics should be kept out of religion. Sadly when the first chap asked the second if he's heard of what Jesus had preached about being nice to each other, it seemed that (despite being some big-wig in the church) the chap clearly hadn't. And then some well-meaning old biddy claimed that Christianity was for the well intentioned and the self-serving alike.

And this was followed by the news that Donald Trump is planning to appoint the head honcho of a fracking company to be in charge of American energy policy. I've lost count of the amount of times I've said what a stupid idea democracy is. Here's another example. Oh well, as I once said (in jest) to “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” "f... the environment. It will probably last longer than I will". I suspect I will actually croak before the environment will, but what kind of a planet are we leaving behind?

 

Work was much the same as ever. Originally I wasn’t supposed to be working today, but I’d had a message asking if I could step into the breach. I didn’t have much else planned for the morning, and stepping into the breach at short notice is what hospital work is all about. I got there a few minutes early so’s I could pop into the canteen for a spot of brekkie, and I was only needed for the morning. I was back home in the garden harvesting dog turds by half past one.

 

After a spot of scran we bundled the dogs into the car and set off to Folkestone. A couple of weeks ago I sorted “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” ‘s patio. Her outside guttering was overflowing but at the time I thought I’d sort that problem another day. So today I went and sorted it. The problem was that the downpipe wasn’t draining the gutter. I took along all sorts of tools… Well… I won’t lie. I took a trowel, a bucket and a length of hose pipe. What more could anyone need?

We got there, and as “er indoors ^TM” farted around making the beds I went and did some plumbing. I rammed the hose pipe up the down pipe in an attempt to loosen the blockage. There was something pretty solid blocking the down pipe, and coming from underneath with a hose pipe wasn’t working. So, using onto a particularly rusty garden chair as a ladder to get at the guttering, I came in from the top with a trowel. After a few seconds of particularly vigorous trowelling I excavated a rather manky tennis ball from the down pipe, and the accumulated stagnant water immediately gurgled away. So I trowelled out the residual muck and then used the bucket to flush the guttering with some fresh water. Trowel, bucket and hose pipe. I didn’t need anything else. Mind you it has to be said that the gutter is still a bit rancid, but gutters generally are. A decent load of rain will wash it through.

 

We then walked the dogs round the Leas for a bit, even though it was dark. So dark that when we came to do “Boot Dogs”, as Treacle jumped into the car boot so Morgan jumped onto the bonnet of the car behind.

I caught him in mid-air going in entirely the wrong direction.

 

Today I spent the morning at work, unblocked a drainpipe, and walked the dogs for half an hour. Why am I worn out?

16 November 2024 (Saturday) - Rather Busy

Despite all its connections to the Internet being turned off, my phone went berserk with a flurry of notification pings shortly after four o’clock. And despite the alarm being turned off, it played the alarm at seven o’clock.

That phone does what it likes.

 

I made toast and peered into the Internet. It hadn’t really changed. Petty triviality and bickering persisted as it always does. There was quite the argument over the term “totty” on a Facebook group about the 1970s. I felt about commenting but decided against it.

There were quite a few people posting the same sort of thing to work-related Facebook groups this morning too. Having spent many years becoming qualified to do the job, people were rather surprised to realise that hospitals operate round the clock, and so many people wanted suggestions for a nine-to-five job for which they could use their existing qualifications and not have to go right back to square one and start again from scratch.

You’d think people would find out what a job entails before spending six years training for it, wouldn’t you?

 

Being Saturday we got ourselves organized and set off to Dog Club. Yesterday we came home from the woods via Pets at Home where I got Treacle a new tennis ball for Dog Club. She lost it within a minute of arriving; just as well I’d bought a spare as well. We had a great time at Dog Club. At one point I counted seventeen dogs. I’m not sure I counted them all (they kept moving about) and three more arrived after I’d counted. Morgan did get a little over-excited, but it is all part of his learning to socialize. He comes when called, and just showing him his muzzle calms him rather impressively.

 

Sadly we missed Steve’s Mystery Year competition on the radio; just as we drove away so Steve was on the radio giving the answer saying that he’d not had an entry from us and that Dog Club must have over-run.

It had.

We came home for a cuppa, then “er indoors ^TM” set off to Hobbycraft for a new glue gun. Hers had vanished. I spent a frustrating hour struggling with a geo-puzzle. If any of my loyal readers know how to reverse a text string in Microsoft Word (i.e. turn “abchef” into “fedcba”) please let me know.

 

We then drove out to Biddenden for the monthly geo-meet-up. Twenty of us met in the garden of the Three Chimneys and spent a very pleasant afternoon chatting about all things geocachical.

 

We came home, and after a little doze Steve and Sarah arrived, followed by Chris. We had a very good evening round the Infinity table playing “Game of Life”, “Sorry” and “Ticket to Ride”. I was rather smug when I won at “Sorry”, and I think I’ll do much better at “Ticket to Ride” next time now that I’ve figured out how the scoring works.

15 November 2024 (Friday) - Bodging a Fence

The dogs let me sleep in until eight o’clock this morning which was something of a result. I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet.

There was something of a theme on Facebook this morning. People in all sorts of groups including work-related ones, baby-boomers and sci-fi (to name a few) were banging on about how they plan to put up their Christmas decorations this weekend, and were rather confrontational and aggressive about it. If putting up the tinsel makes people happy, then good for them. Why not - after all, the Christmas adverts have been in the shops and on telly for some time already.

However (as I’ve said before) personally I get fed up with it. This year I think I would enjoy Christmas were it in the first weekend of December. However it isn’t. It’s in the fourth week of December and I suspect I will be fed up with hearing about it by then.

 

I munzed, and amazed myself by getting Wordle on only the second attempt. I always start with “table” and today got the first two letters right first time. I could only think of one other word starting with “ta”.

I then drove the dogs up to the woods. As I drove the footballer Ian Wright was on “Desert Island Discs”. He sounded rather interesting, but does he *really* listen to opera?

We got to the woods where there was chaos in the car park. When we get there the dogs stay on their leads until we are a little way away from the car park. Today several people had arrived at the same time and just thrown their car doors open. Dogs were running wild round the car park, and the queue of cars waiting to get in was growing. No one wanted to drive in for fear of running a dog over.

 

When we eventually parked we had a good walk. We walked for four miles and once away from the car park we didn’t see anyone else at all. The dead deer was still there but the dogs didn’t see it. I had half a mind to drag the thing home and see if I might flog it to a local butcher, but according to the British Deer Society that would be illegal. According to the Internet if you find a dead deer on Forestry England’s land you should phone them and tell them.

So once home I gave Forestry England a ring.

 

I then looked at the clock, got out all the pond filter cleaning kit, cleaned out the pond filter, put all the kit away and looked at the clock again. It took less than fifteen minutes and I wasn’t left with a seriously aching back and smelling of fish poo like I used to be after filter cleaning. This pressure filter is so much better than what I used to have.

I then took a hammer to the front garden fence to repair the poggered panels. In theory the fence belongs to next door. In practice the thing has been falling apart for years. I bodged it back together, then popped over the garden centre to get one of those plastic plant trellis things to cover it over. It’ll do for now. It needs a proper fix, but I’m loathe to do anything major that will upset hibernating insects and bugs until they wake up next spring.

That’s my lame excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

 

I made us both another cuppa then had another look at the Internet where Facebook showed me a memory. There’s a local path that floods regularly. A year ago I contacted my local councilor about it. She eventually replied saying it wasn’t her problem. And a year later the path still floods.

 

Over a dinner of pie and chips we watched more “Taskmaster” which was rather good.

I’ve got a minor guts ache now…

14 November 2024 (Thursday) - Plov Mk IV

With no alarm set I slept like a log last night and had been hoping for a lie-in this morning. But about ten seconds after “er indoors ^TM” got up so Treacle got off the bed to follow her with the biggest crash you ever did hear. And then Morgan and Bailey embarked on a rather vigorous game of chase in which there were two play areas – on the duvet and under the duvet.

I got up.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. Yesterday I got a trophy-thingy from work for forty years service. This morning over a hundred people had clicked the “like” button. That was nice. Personally I’ve half a mind to either bin the thing or sell it on eBay; I’ve really taken against it. Perhaps had it not been three years late in arriving and been presented to me rather than posted to me, I might be a little more grateful.

There were several people posting to Facebook this morning about how they were abandoning Twitter/X as it has become very political. Apparently BlueSky is now the way to go. Personally I abandoned Twitter years ago as I couldn’t get my head round all the # and @ nonsense. And I was already spending far too much time in Facebook. I didn’t need another social media to complain about.

Will I follow the herd and get a BkueSky account? Probably. I suppose I’d best find out something about it first.

 

“er indoors ^TM” set off to work. I took the dogs up to the woods for a walk. Being rather misty I hoped we might see deer. We saw one – or that is I saw one. A dead one laying on the side of a path. Fortunately the dogs didn’t see it. Seeing the dead deer reminded me of an old friend though. Thirty years ago back in the days of the snake club my old mate Bob used to live in Challock and was gamekeeper on some of the land that backs on to the top end of Kings Wood. He once told me that part of his duties was culling the deer. He claimed that he had to shoot one deer a day every day of the year to keep their numbers in check. That sounded a tad excessive to me. Sadly Bob’s no longer with us to confirm or deny this...

It was rumoured that through the reptile keeping Bob acquired a rattlesnake. Shortly after the rumours started he was found dead in his house having died of a heart attack. When one of the snake club was called to collect and re-home Bob’s snakes no rattlesnake was found, but one of the vivaria was open. Heart attack is one of the results of a rattlesnake bite. Did he have a rattler that had him?

There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

 

We came home. Although the dogs hadn’t rolled in anything they were a bit whiffy and so had a bath. I then mowed the lawn and whilst I was at it gave the new strimmer its first go. It seems to do the job.

I put washing in to scrub and got on with the ironing whilst watching all of the second season of “The End of the FXXXing World” which featured the chap who had been shot dead at the end of the first season.

 

I then started making dinner. It bubbled and simmered until “er indoors ^TM” came home. We scoffed it whilst watching more “Bake Off”. Sadly Plov Mk IV was also a tad bland and had far too much rice, but I have plans for Plov Mk V.

But the plonk wasn’t too bad…

13 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Three Years Late

Another night with an alarm set, and so another restless night. At least I stayed asleep until after three o’clock this morning. After a couple of hours I gave up and got up. I made toast and watched another episode of “The End of the Fxxxing World” in which our heroes travelled to the Isle of Sheppey. There were some spectacular aerial shots of the Kingsferry bridge; I do like seeing places that I’ve been on the telly.

As that finished I caught the end of an episode of Bullseye in which two rather greedy idiots from the 1970s gambled some frankly rubbish prizes in the hope of getting a speedboat, and lost the lot. Personally I could never see the attraction of winning a speedboat. The things are utterly impractical. Where are you going to keep it? If you store it on your drive or in the garden you’ve got to find a slipway from which to launch it. Have you ever tried to get a boat out of the water and back on to its trailer? And if you are going to keep it moored somewhere, harbour fees ain’t cheap.

I’ve experience of boats. An uncle once persuaded my father to go half-shares on a fishing boat they kept on St Leonards’ beach and I can remember my dad constantly griping about what a load of arse-ache that was.

 

I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. It was still there. Today’s petty squabble on Facebook was about why people should leave cash tips in a restaurant (of at least twenty per cent of the cost of the meal) because the waitresses are so poorly paid. Others were taking the line that it is up to employes to pay staff, not customers. People were getting rather nasty with each other on the matter.

If I’m going to leave a tip in a restaurant I’d not leave a cash tip. I’d pay it on the card so’s everyone working in the place could get a share. I used to work in the kitchen of a seaside restaurant. My basic wage was the same as the waiting staff. My take-home was a fraction of theirs. They got tips and I never did.

 

I set off to work on another dark morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting their drivel as they do. There was more talk about the Archbishop who resigned yesterday over the ongoing scandal, and talk of four more bishops who should resign. The Archbishop of York said that those who "actively covered this up" should go but he said those were not bishops. I suppose he would, wouldn't he?

As I said yesterday, in my experience bishops are a dodgy lot.

Meanwhile President Trump is planning who is going to have the top jobs in his new government. He's giving senior positions to the world's richest man Elon Musk, and to Fox News pundits and (so it was claimed) those who'd supported him in his campaign. There was quite a bit of consternation that he wasn't appointing people who'd been elected to public office but was appointing those who'd done him favours despite their having no political experience. It strikes me that Mr. Trump hasn't really got any political experience, and that's never stopped him, has it?

 

I got to work where I did my bit. In between this and that I did an external quality assessment blood film. Periodically NHS Head Office send out slides from obscure cases to check we don't miss anything important. It was in one of these that I saw some trypanosomes today.  Trypanosomes are nasty little things that get into your blood and cause sleeping sickness. I've never seen them outside of external quality assessment exercises, but I live in hope.

And I got a certificate and award for forty years service. It came in the post. Bearing in mind I hit forty years in September 2021 I can only assume it got delayed on the way somewhere.

 

I came home to find the Christmas "Viz" magazine had come in the post as well. That hadn’t been delayed.

12 November 2024 (Tuesday) - Level Two

With an alarm set I had another restless night. I woke feeling full of energy and raring to go… at twenty past midnight. I then lay awake for much of the rest of the night.

I eventually got up at five o’clock, made brekkie and sparked up Netflix. With hundreds of things to choose from, nothing appealed. I saw there was a second series of “The End of the F***ing World” so I thought I might try that; I could vaguely remember liking the first series. But I couldn’t really remember anything about it, so I started watching the first series to remind myself. I don’t remember it at all, but it was entertaining enough; two young psychos chum up and go off on a road trip.

 

I then had a quick look at the Internet in case I’m missed much overnight. I rarely do, and today was no exception. But I had an email about the household insurance. Exactly a year ago I wrote “I had an email saying the household insurance was up for renewal… at over double what I paid last year. …. Insurance companies are a pain in the glass (to coin a phrase). They always do this – they send through a renewal at a ridiculous price, and when you phone them to whinge they reduce the quote; often to lower than what it was last year”.

This morning I had the renewal email saying they were offering me the same policy as last year but two hundred pounds cheaper. I’m seeing that as a result.

 

I set off to work. One advantage of the dark mornings is that I can press the button on the car’s key and see the indicator lights flashing from quite some way away so I know where the car is. I saw it from probably about ten times the distance at which (at the last minute) I saw an idiot on an e-scooter and then another idiot on a pedal bike. Both all in black, with no lights on, half an hour before sunrise.

 

I drove to work listening to the pundits on the radio. There were calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, and as the day went on so he did throw in the sponge. Apparently some bishop or other has been kiddy-fiddling. It was alleged that the Archbishop had known about it for years but did nothing. Some official report into the matter concluded that concluded that the errant bishop might have been brought to justice ten years earlier had the Archbishop formally reported what he knew to the police.

Perhaps the Archbishop reported it to God…

Personally I’m reminded of Bishop Peter of Sussex who was everyone’s hero back in the day when I was a god-botherer. He turned out to be a wrong ‘un.

And there was talk about the COP29 international climate change conference which has started in Azerbaijan. The Prime Minister has gone, and is apparently proudly crowing about what the UK are doing. But the Americans and the Chinese are no-shows. Without them being on-board, anything the UK does will be little more than pissing in the wind.

 

Work was work; I was on an early shift today. Given the choice I prefer those. I came home and “er indoors ^TM” went out. She was off to the cinema with Cheryl and Lacey. I settled in front of the telly and watched more episodes of “The End of the F***ing World” until she came back.

She came back with KFC, which was something of a result.

 

Oh – and our Munzee clan got to level two today…

11 November 2024 (Monday) - This n That

My old mate who travels the world from hotel to hotel rather than having any fixed abode was posting to Facebook from Hawaii this morning. There were several photos of him in various expensive-looking places. I suppose he must be happy but there’s no denying that I get homesick after only a few days away.

There were also photos of Anastasiia Pokreshchuk who has had surgery to get the world’s biggest cheekbones. She likes the look, or so she says. I suppose she would have to say that. Does anyone else find it attractive? When I was a lad there were people walking on the Moon. Shortly after we had amazing computers, mobile phones… and now we have Donald Trump and people thinking that looking frankly ridiculous is something to which we might aspire. Where did it all go wrong?

 

Treacle seemed OK on yesterday’s walk, but during the evening she had occasional limping. So rather than our usual four miles round Kings Wood we had a shorter walk today. We went down to Orlestone. We used to go there all the time, but after a couple of incidents with Morgan and Bailey (when they were smaller) we’ve not been there for ages. We went back today and all three dogs were as good as gold. We barked at some normal people who were foraging; they looked terrified. The woman foraging looked at Bailey in much the same way that I might look at a wild tiger. And we had an episode with three Dobermans, but to be fair to them they only wanted to play. It was a shame they were so big; Treacle got very defensive of Bailey, and Morgan just ran in terror.

Where we’d normally walk four miles round Kings Wood we were back at the car after a mile and a half today.

 

We came home where the dogs didn’t need a bath. In the past Orlestone has been a swamp. It wasn’t today.

I made us a cuppa, loaded up rubbish into the car and set off to the tip. A week ago I put the old poggered strimmer in the front garden in the hope that some passer-by might have been daft enough to take it. Sadly no one was.

I went to the tip and taking care not to run over the people who weren’t paying attention I get rid of a carful of rubbish then drove up to Kennington. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” had bought a sackload of remote control toys and I had to collect them. And pay for them as well.

From there I went to Bybrook Barn. I bought a few rocks and got a few ideas for what I might do with the front garden. But just like at the tip, not one person in a hundred was looking where they were going, or seemed to have any idea that there was anyone else around them.

 

And then I had a phone call from an old colleague. The chap is up before the professional regulator. Apparently he made racist comments in private messages, but the person to whom they were sent chose not to respect the confidence.

I wish there was something I could do to help him…

 

I spent the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which some new-age hippy spent quite some time banging on about his eco-friendly cleaning products and then had the right arse when he was told how filthy his toilets were and how they needed a good scrubbing with bleach.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza and chips then went bowling. Earlier in the day I’d read a description of the film “Alien” which had been rather dubiously translated from a Hong Kong DVD so I sat with the dogs and watched it. I can remember going to see the film when I was fifteen years old and lying about my age. And now, quite a few years later, two things strike me about it.

Firstly despite being on an interstellar spaceship everyone was smoking.

Secondly just how much the film dragged on. It was about half an hour too long. I got bored with it.

10 November 2024 (Sunday) - Romney Marsh

There was a post on Facebook this morning which made me think. Apparently there is some road in nearby Headcorn with the same name as a road in Ashford. Someone living in the Ashford one has been ordering stuff on Amazon only to have found everything is being delivered to the house of the same number in the Headcorn one. Whoever lives in the Headcorn one is just taking the parcels and thinking it is Christmas. It is easy enough to get a refund from Amazon, but it is arse-ache when the replacements get sent to the wrong address as well.

Back in the day I lived in Grove Road in Hastings and we regularly got the mail for Elmgrove Road in Brighton.

We also used to get a postcard every year from someone who holidayed in Ashford-on-the-Water. We never did find who that was from, or who it was supposed to be delivered to.

 

There wasn’t much else happening in the Internet today. I sparked up the Munzee app and saw that a friend (who lives near Bluewater) had Munzed our Skyland at five o’clock in the morning. He was up and about early.

I munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and then got a message. The first fruit of my loins had poggered his back. “My Boy ^TM” and Cheryl were planning to come on a rather short walk with us today, but they had to cry off.

But we went ahead with our walk anyway. There is a short series of a dozen geocaches near New Romney which we thought might make for a good dog walk. And it did. About a dozen geocaches over four miles on flat ground took us a couple of hours. Treacle was allowed off-lead but we took no chances with the littluns after a pheasant shot out of a ditch and we saw another dog-walker with his dog caked on fox poo. Whilst we kept Bailey and Morgan out of the fox poo, Treacle went wading in swamps.

I took a few photos as we walked. With walk walked we drove round the marsh finding up a few of the puzzle caches I’d solved in the week.

 

We came home where in a novel break with tradition “er indoors ^TM” took command of dog bath time.

Oh dear…

Personally the first thing I do when I’m doing the dog-scrubbing is to chuck all three in the tub so I know where they are, and so that they are contained and captured. Bathing them one at a time gets the first dog clean, but the second two can see what is coming and they escape still caked in whatever it was that made you want to bath them in the first place.

Eventually the dogs ended up scrubbed and we had a cuppa and a hot cross bun.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted a rather good curry which we scoffed whilst watching today’s episode of “Lego Masters”. We recorded it and watched it later so’s we could fast-forward through the adverts. What took an hour and a half to record took fifty-five minutes to watch. Bearing in mind how easy it is to avoid adverts I can’t help but wonder why they are still made.

9 November 2024 (Saturday) - Another Lazy Day

When I went to the loo at three o’clock this morning I saw all the lights were on next door. She was up late or early. Whichever it was. I went back to bed.

 

I got up a few hours later, made toast and had a look at Facebook and rolled my eyes. Several people weren’t happy this morning. One of the triumphs of Brexit (!) was that it created an environment in which all the UK’s immigrant workers didn’t feel comfortable any more and so many went back home. This left the country with massive shortages in the hospitality and agriculture sectors. It would seem that as well as the illegal immigrants, Donald Trump now wants to send home naturalized Americans too. Bearing in mind that America imports a *lot* of its more intelligent and highly-skilled workforce this isn’t going to end well. I’m reminded of my whinging at school about how dull the history lessons were, and our French teacher telling me that those who don’t learn the lessons of the past will repeat them for themselves.

Mind you, what is Mr. Trump actually trying to achieve? Since when has any politician ever acted in the national interest rather than just doing whatever they can to appease those who are more likely to vote for them?

And I saw an advert on-line. There’s a “Samhain Pilgrimage” tomorrow – a five mile walk across the South Downs doing all sorts of hippy things along the way. And it is only sixty quid a ticket, but if that is a bit much you can make your payment in smaller amounts. Hippies never used to charge that much back in the day.

Meanwhile on one of the nerd sites that I follow was one of the most bitter and acrimonious arguments I’ve ever seen. This one was about who would win in a fight between a Star Wars death Star and a Star Trek Borg cube. Oh, people were getting angry…

I suppose people being more worked up about hypothetical fights between fictional spaceships than they are about innocent people being deported speaks volumes about why the world is in the state it is in.

 

Being Saturday we set off to Dog Club. We had quite a few first-timers along today, and one episode. Some old chap came along with his dog. He immediately let the dog off the lead and stood and watched it trying to hump all the other dogs. This happens with dogs. Those getting humped generally tell the humper off and all is fine. However this dog wouldn’t be told, and the chap whose dog it was just stood watching. When not humping, this dog was playing rather roughly and the excitement was winding everyone up.

Morgan got so excited he had his muzzle put on as he is easily provoked.

After a few minutes this dog walked past his owner who put it on a lead for a few minutes.

Five minutes later the same dog was causing more problems and the owner was nowhere to be seen. I managed to catch the dog just as the owner bumbled round the corner from the next part of the field (he thought he’d go for a little walk). I marched the dog back to him and he got the idea. This dog stayed on the lead watching and calming down. With that dog under control things went back to usual. Which was probably for the best with (at least) seventeen dogs along today.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off to craft club. I drove home listening to Steve on the radio. Having totally failed to guess the lyrics on the way to Dog Club I got the mystery year on the way home. ELO’s album “Out Of The Blue” and Elvis Presley dying? 1977.

We got home where the dogs had a bath. There was a distinct whiff of fox poo. And then I set about the ironing. It doesn’t iron itself.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came back from craft club and sorted a ham and pickle roll. Very nice. And then we had another lazy day. “er indoors ^TM” practiced what she’d learned at craft club and I looked at geo-puzzles in the area where we’re going on holiday next year.

“er indoors ^TM” announced she was cold and turned on the fire. Our electric heater fire blows out warm air. At the first sound of the thing working, Bailey runs and sits in the flow of warm air. When the thermostat kicks in and turns it off, she goes back to her basket until it turns on again. The other dogs aren’t at all bothered by it, but Bailey was up and down like a thing possessed all afternoon.

 

Over a rather good bit of scoff washed down with a decent bottle of plonk we watched more “Bake Off”, and having had half of a decent bottle of plonk I expect I shall spend the evening snoring in front of the telly.