5 February 2025 (Wednesday) - Early Shift

I had a rather restless night. Despite having the internet connections turned off, my phone loudly announced that I had a message (about trivia) just as I was nodding off. I then did my annoying trick of sleeping soundly for two hours, waking before two o’clock and then laying awake for the rest of the night.
And so I was up silly early watching more “Poldark” in which Captain Monk Adderly started sniffing round Elizabeth. I can’t work out why Elizabeth is seen as the local beauty; she always has a face like a smacked bum.
 
I then sparked up the lap-top and saw sad news… The local Husky group is no more. Running Dog Club isn’t difficult. All I do for our group is show up, open the gate, hang up the money pot and tie a carrier bag for dog turds to the fence. Admittedly someone else from one of our later groups takes the turds away and locks the gate, but it is hardly arduous. You just stick the bag of turds into the nearest bin. And the money – count it up, pocket it and transfer that amount from your own account to the account of the people whose field it is. It really isn’t that much to do, it probably takes me five minutes each week, and everyone (humans and dogs) have such a good time.
Our dog club meets on a Saturday morning. Until recently there has been a similar group meeting on a Sunday for huskies and other large dogs. The woman running the group has had to step down, and sadly the group has now closed down. No one was prepared to take over. Could no one have found five minutes a week to keep the group running?
 
Taking care not to wake anyone I got ready for work, and once I'd scraped the ice from the car I set off. Having a few minutes spare I took a little diversion in the general direction of Stanhope to capture a dozen flat friends (it's a Munzee thing) before heading up the motorway.
Sadly I'd timed things to get on the motorway just as a load of lorries had come up the motorway from the ferry, and so with the slow lane full of lorries going at fifty miles per hour and the middle lane full of lorries overtaking them at fifty-one miles per hour I took my life in my hands and went in the fast lane. I pulled into the middle lane when I could; there was a seemingly never-ending queue of vans wanting to voom past at breakneck speed.
 
As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about President Trump's latest stroke of genius. He's going to solve the Gaza problem by annexing it and forcibly evicting two million Palestinians. Clearly that goes entirely against international law, but in cases like this who is it that enforces international law? Yes - the American army.
Will he go ahead with his plan? Probably not. I suspect he will actually claim that the plan couldn't go ahead and cite whoever is seen as Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of the American electorate and come out more popular than ever. Like him or loathe him, you have to admire him.
 
Needing lunch I popped in at  Sainsburys. I got what I needed and again there were no tills open with till operatives. That suited me today; with a ton of change from emptying the collection pot from Dog Club I bought several odds and ends and paid for it all by emptying all the silver and brass coins into the machine. One of the staff was glaring at me; I gave her a sickly smile and carried on dropping in the five and ten pence pieces.
 
I did my bit. I came home. I had an email. Someone had commented on something I'd posted to my CPD blog. They'd written "die!"  five hundred and thirty-six times. Some people would be concerned about that; I think it is rather sad that some people have nothing better to do with their time, and that whoever it was that wants me to die is too cowardly to put their name to the comment.
I wonder who it was. I have absolutely no idea.
I’ve changed the settings to stop people posting anonymously. I did that on here several years ago.
 
I wonder what’s for dinner… I’ve got seven hundred and twenty calories left on today’s allowance.

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