I slept well until Treacle woke me with her barking at
eight o’clock. “er indoors TM” had not taken her
to the loo with her, and Treacle wasn’t happy about that.
I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still
there. Consternation was being expressed this morning about the local council’s
decision to demolish a large area of the town centre. Quite a few
people were indignantly asking where they were going to go shopping now. I
suspect they will go get their shopping from the same place where they were
expressing their indignation. I don’t think I’ve bought anything from that
shopping mall in years. There’s all sorts of twee maxims about supporting local
businesses, but why should people pay way over the odds for things you can get
delivered to your doorstep the very next day?
From what I can see the place has an endless succession of
shops opening, not being able to afford the rent, and closing again. I can’t
remember the last time I was there.
I was reminded of the Eurostar which stopped calling at Ashford.
No one ever used it, but complained what the service stopped *because*
no one used it.
A lot of people were blaming the local council.
Admittedly they have made the decision to demolish, but as I’ve said before, we
get the local council that we vote for. To paraphrase the Hitch Hiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy, anyone who is capable of getting themselves elected should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
Once I’d Munzed and Wordled I took the dogs out. As I
drove “In Our Time” was on the radio. Sometimes that is a really
interesting and insightful program. Other times… today’s was about the
historical interpretation of the Hindu goddess Kali. Whilst I am sure there are
many people who would be enthralled, I wasn’t. I turned the radio off.
We had a good walk round the woods. It was a tad
muddy, but we expected that. As we walked we rolled in fox poo, chewed on a
bone of some sort, played with a dead frog… all the standard sort of thing we
do.
We walked for four miles and came home for a bath.
With soap.
I had a cuppa, then got out the mains-powered pressure
washer. The battery-powered one is very quick to set up but is really not a
heavy-duty thing. The mains-powered one takes quite a bit of setting up, but
once it’s ready it is good to do large areas quickly. I went over what had
taken me several hours with the battery-powered one in half an hour. Admittedly
it did generate quite a flood, but it got the job done. Mind you when I say “half
an hour”, that didn’t include running out the hose pipe, getting it all set
up and tidying away again afterwards.
I just buffed up the patio and a few stepping stones
and gave the drain a blast. I’m not going to give the garden a proper cleaning
until all the bugs have finished hibernating.
I had planned to pootle until my back wouldn’t take
any more; after an hour and a half I got a few twinges, so I packed up and had
a little look at the fish tank. It’s been a week since I got shot of the
undergravel filter (which wasn’t doing much) and replaced it with a
filter on the side of the tank. It has done wonders, but every evening when I
feed the fish they then dig up the gravel and stir up muck. But last night I
realised that they were stirring up far less much than they had been doing. So
I cleaned out the new filter. It was full of gunge. In the past when they’ve
stirred up the muck it has obviously just gone straight back into the gravel.
This new filter is getting the muck out. I should have got one years ago.
Feeling flushed with success I put a load of
undercrackers in to scrub. As the washing machine did its thing I wrote up some CPD, then made some toast
for dinner.
I tried watching some telly this afternoon. I turned
to Netflix and gave “Sense8”
a go. After an hour I turned it off. There was no plot that I could fathom, and
I’ve no time for a show that takes several episodes to get going. It had its
chance and blew it. Similarly “Vicious” was
also crap. No end of canned laughter makes a show funny if it isn’t actually
funny.
My favourite lady came home with her grandmother this
evening. She’s having a sleepover with us. So far she’s eaten an orange pepper,
bossed the dogs about (and snogged them all), accused me of wanting her
crisps, and told her grandmother off for not giving me my dinner.
She’s currently giving out the orders to Morgan,
Treacle and “er indoors TM”. Bailey is hiding on
the sofa with me.
Littlun can be hard work sometimes…
No comments:
Post a Comment