3 December 2024 (Tuesday) - Christmas Ale

I woke, and went straight to my Advent Calendar. A dog in a Christmas jumper with a bowl and some bones. Again I realized I should really have opened the thing a couple of months ago. What was I going to say for today’s installment.

 

I made toast and peered into the Internet. Apparently there’s three more episodes of “Red Dwarf” coming out next year. Is this a good thing? The show started very well all those years ago, but the last few dozen episodes weren’t that good. I’m reminded of “Fawlty Towers” where they made a point of only doing two seasons, or “Bottom” where Adrian Edmunson said no to doing a fourth season. But perhaps I’m coming at it from the wrong angle. I suppose for the actors and the writers this is guaranteed income?

I sparked up my Munzee app and after a lot of fighting with it I deployed a Widdle. Apparently you can now do a Widdle through the Munzee app.

And having got Wordle on the fifth attempt I got the dogs together and we went out.

 

We drove up to the woods and (in a novel break with tradition) had an uneventful walk. We met a couple of other dog walkers and each encounter passed off without episode.

As we drove home I was very conscious of a car behind me. It drove down the rather steep hill from Challock seemingly inches from my back bumper, flew past at the sharp corner at the bottom of the hill, then tail-ended the car in front of me all the way to the traffic lights where we all stopped. It then drove through a residential area far too fast before finally flying into Dobbies car park at breakneck speed.

If I could remember my password for Rate Driver Dot Com I’d have squealed it up.

 

I got out the Hoover and watched Bailey with a smile. As I pulled the Hoover out she watched me, but without moving and pretending to be asleep. The moment I turned it on she flew at it in full attack mode. She is a nightmare with the Hoover, and when I mow the lawn I have to be sure she is inside or she will have the lawnmower.

And then the postman came with my early Christmas pressie; a dozen bottles of Shepherd Neame Christmas ale. That’ll do very nicely.

 

“er indoors ^TM” set off to Folkestone for babysitting duties. I set up the ironing board and cracked on at the ironing whilst watching the last few episodes of “Brassic”. As I ironed I was struck with inspiration for what I might say about today’s installment of the Advent Calendar story.

“er indoors ^TM” returned with kebab which we washed down with a bottle of the Christmas ale whilst watching Junior Taskmaster. That was rather good. As was the Christmas ale –at seven per cent proof, you can’t complain…

2 December 2024 (Monday) - Seeing The Gribbles

Having started a Christmas story about a rogue carol singer, this morning I opened the second window of my Advent Calendar and was presented with what at first sight appeared to be some sort of road working machine. That gave me something to ponder as I scoffed toast. Seeing that forty people had reacted to yesterday’s first installment of my Lego Advent Calendar adventure, the pressure was on.

There was an interesting post on one of the Ashford-related Facebook groups I follow as I scoffed toast. Interesting and encouraging. Some local idiot had posted a load of conspiracy theory bollox about additives to milk, and pretty much everyone was laughing at him. Good.

And there was quite the argument about whether one should wish people a Merry Christmas or a merry Christmas. Opinion was split on the capitalization of the word merry, and people were very defensive of their stances.

When I was young, people were walking on the Moon and had eradicated smallpox. I had such high hopes for the future…

 

I took the dogs out. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about Gregg Wallace the TV celebrity who is in trouble for being the latest celebrity who is in trouble. Overnight he’d released a statement saying that he’d not done whatever it was that he’s been accused of. Some idiot was on the radio insisting that Mr. Wallace had made a big mistake by issuing a denial, and was adamant that he should have issued an apology regardless of whether or not he’d done anything about which he should apologize.  

I sighed.

 

We got to the woods and had a good walk. As we went we met a few other dogs and dog walkers and exchanged pleasantries. We saw two other groups who saw us and turned and walked off in opposite directions. And we met one rather special woman. Oh, she was special… On seeing us she and her (presumably) husband put their (rather huge) dog onto a lead and marched twenty yards off the path into a swamp. As we walked past so Morgan and Bailey went up to see their dog. I whistled to call them away and they ran back to me. But at the sound of my whistle her dog ran to me too. And being a big dog it came with enough force to pull the woman holding his lead face first into the swamp. I hurried away trying not to actually laugh out loud.

 

After three and a half miles we were back at the car. We came home where I washed a surprisingly little amount of mud from the dogs’ bellies, did their monthly flea treatments, and set off to Folkestone.

I collected “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” and we drove to the other side of town. We shovelled down a quick McLunch, ten had a look in the pet shop. Ostensibly going to look to the fish, we spent ages looking at the bunnies, the rats, the big mouses (Guinea pigs) and the gribbles (could have been anything!). I’d not looked at the prices of small mammals recently. A Guinea pig is now thirty quid a go and they wanted sixty quid for a rabbit.

From there we popped over the road to Homebase. The most recent fruit of my loins wanted shelves for her kitchen cupboards. Have you noticed how no one makes standard sized kitchen units? We got some shelves, took them home and cut them to the right width and depth… Or near enough…

 

Pausing only briefly to do a tip run I came home. There was all sorts of things I could have done at home, but instead I had a little sit down and pondered what I might say for today’s episode of my Lego Advent Calendar.

 

I woke up an hour later and watched another episode of “Downton Abbey”. I’ve taken to watching it in the evenings. In tonight’s episode Lady Mary was a right cowbag to the butler. Bearing in mind she once porked the Turkish attaché to death she’s in no position to take the moral high ground.

I then drove “er indoors ^TM” to the pub. Her bowling gang are having their Christmas beano tonight. I’ve got to collect her in an hour or so – here’s hoping she can get into the car under her own steam…

1 December 2024 (Sunday) - Sissinghurst

I made the schoolboy error of going to the loo at four o’clock this morning and came back to bed to find the space I’d left had been captured by the dogs. I managed to shove them over and secured about nine inches of bed space. But it must have been enough. I woke five hours later with backache. Waking with backache is aways a sign that I’ve been in my pit far too long.

Being a creature of habit, usually every morning I get up, have a scrape and make toast before then peering into the Internet. But for three and a half weeks every year I start my mornings differently. Instead of all that usual nonsense this morning I opened the first window of my Advent Calendar. I was rather pleased with what I got today – a little boy in a frankly dreadful Christmas jumper. I had an idea what I could do with that.

And then I went into the garden. The hole I filled in yesterday remained filled in. Last night at pre-bedtime tiddle Bailey did try a half-hearted dig at it. Was she the culprit?

 

I then had a scrape (with a fresh razor blade), made my toast and had a look at the Internet. This morning’s petty argument was centred about an episode of “Blackadder” which featured Chris Barrie who played “Rimmer” in “Red Dwarf”. That episode first aired in October 1987; don’t these people have anything better to squabble about?

Being the first of the month I kicked everyone out of our Munzee clan (it’s a Munzee thing), Munzed, got Wordle on the third attempt

 

“er indoors ^TM” and the dogs came down and I went outside to watch them. None of them did any digging.

We got ourselves organized and went for a little outing. The weather forecast claimed that the weather would be getting better so we believed it and drove out to Sissinghurst. We set about the geocaching Adventure Lab that was there. It did strike me that the locations were rather bunched together at different ends of the village, but on reflection that’s where the points of interest were. We had a good wander up and down the village though. There was a minor hiccup when our apps both refused the same correct answer twice, but both worked on the third attempt.

Whilst we were in the area we popped up to the nearby church where we spent a few minutes answering questions based on the place to get the final location of a nearby geocache. I put the GPS co-ordinates into my phone and despite it seeming to be in someone’s garden (it wasn’t) It wasn’t that long before we had the thing in hand.

 

We had planned to go on to another geo-puzzle but the weather forecast had lied. Rather than easing up, the rain was getting worse. So we drove up to Bloomsbury’s garden centre only to find the garden centre bit was closed, and that it was actually a rather posh restaurant.

So we headed home-wards via Ripley’s garden centre in Bethersden which would seem to be popular with people who like spending far too much money on things they can buy cheaper elsewhere. Mind you Morgan peed up the door so the visit wasn’t entirely wasted. He went on to do an encore tiddle at Bybrook Barn’s door too.

 

We came home for a spot of scoff and we put on a Christmas film. “Scrooged”. I’d not seen it before, and I’ve still not seen it; I fell asleep and woke just as the credits were rolling. “er indoors ^TM” made us a cuppa and put on another film. “A Christmas Karen”. Another re-make of the old “Scrooge” story, but very well done.

With film watched “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “Lego Masters: Australia” in which the winner was the one I felt should have got the heave-ho. But the foxy one was through to the next round. I saw that as a result, as did (I expect) the foxy one.