2 March 2025 (Sunday) - Late Shift

I was woken by Morgan trampling over me at four o’clock. He jumped off the bed and I chased downstairs after him to let him out. Dogs don’t understand baking it until the morning.

I got up properly at half past eight and had my usual rummage round the Internet as I scoffed toast. Several people were posting to Facebook pretending to be Welsh in honour of yesterday being St David’s Day. So many people claim to have some Celtic ancestry about which they say absolutely nothing until everyone else talks about theirs. Interestingly no one at all was posting about the Ukrainian President’s visit to London yesterday. You’d have thought that after all the groundswell of opinion in favour of him after the disastrous meeting with Donald Trump, people would be interested in him. Wouldn’t you?

I had quite a few emails too; people had been out looking for the geocaches I’d hidden in Kings Wood, and were saying nice things about them.

 

I tested out my new way of Munzing, and it worked rather well. I got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and then sighed. The plan for today had been hosting a brekkie meet with friends, but friends had double-booked themselves. Seeing the glorious weather outside, today would have been good for a long walk but I was on the late shift. Instead I put a load of washing in to scrub, wrote up some CPD, did the dogs’ flea treatments and then braced for a battle. Getting the worming tablets down the dogs’ necks isn’t always easy. Today it went very well. We broke the tablets into pieces, wrapped each piece in a slice of ham, and the dogs yummed them up.

 

I hung out the washing, and set off to work. I don’t work anywhere near as much as I used to, and I’m far happier in my work than I ever used to be. But I still resent working at the weekends; especially when it isn’t pouring down with rain.

As I drove to work the Archers Omnibus show was on the radio, The Archers? Seriously? Who listens to that these days. Amazingly a quick Google search showed me that the Archers has (on average) more than a million more listeners than Eastenders has viewers.

 

Work was hard work. Back in the day hospitals were effectively closed at the weekends, but not any more. It’s only a shame that the staffing levels haven’t remotely kept pace with workload.

And a shame I had to work today… the highlight of the day was giving the dogs a tablet each.

1 March 2025 (Saturday) - Rather Busy

I slept well. As always I peered into the Internet as I scoffed toast this morning. A few Facebook friends were having a birthday today so I sent out wishes. One of my mates having a birthday was an old school friend. We went to Boys Brigade together where he fell for all the religious indoctrination and he’s now a mad-keen Baptist minister in the West Country. Periodically we exchange messages; he seems quite happy, but I do feel a sense of guilt about how he’s ended up.

Quite a few people were ranting about Donald Trump as well. Mr Trump met with the Ukrainian President yesterday and the meeting didn’t go well.

I can’t help but feel that Mr. Trump didn’t say anything that really didn’t need saying. The trouble is that opinion about him is so polarised that he was totally the wrong person to say it. I’ve mentioned before about how ungrateful the Ukrainian president has been ever since the start of the war, and yesterday he was told some home truths. There’s an old proverb about not biting the hand that feeds you; it is rather apposite here. Mr Zelensky should really have done his homework, seen what he would be dealing with, gone along and sucked up. That would have worked in his favour.

 

I munzed and wordled, then went round to Dog Club. I was rather miffed to find that the poo bag from last week was still hanging on the fence from where I had tied it last week. The arrangement has always been that I open up and put up the poo bag. I leave the gate unlocked and the poo bag in place for the later groups and someone else locks up and takes the poo to the bin. It turned out that the lady who usually shifted the dung wasn’t along last week, and no one else could be bothered. Presumably someone locked up? I hope so.

But we had a rather good session; I counted twenty-two dogs at one point. Treacle was grumpy; Treacle often is. Morgan wasn’t happy though. With “er indoors ^TM” at craft club, Morgan spent the first half of the session watching the gate and crying.

As we drove home I caught the end of the Mystery Year competition on the radio. “Birdhouse in your Soul” by “They Might Be Giants”. I thought it was 1989. I was one year out. And then the news came on saying how President Zelensky has made all sorts of public announcements of gratitude to the people of America. Perhaps he’s listened?

Once home I made a cuppa and counted up the Dog Club money, pocketed the cash and transferred fifty quid to the Repton people’s bank account. I’ve now got another pocket of change.

 

I hoovered. As I hoovered so not-so-nice-next-door came out to her car which was parked outside. There were cars parked rather close in front and behind of it. She glared at them, glared at me (as though I was somehow responsible) and went back inside; not even attempting to move the car.

I then had a minor pootle round the garden. My peonie has croaked, and one of the large ceramic pots has started crumbling.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home and sorted us a spot of lunch, then we had a little look round the garden centres. The idea was to get some replacement large pots. Ideally a square one as that would fit the space of the broken one better.

I saw exactly what I needed in Bybrook Barn, but they weren’t giving them away so we thought we’d try the little flowerpot-selling place in Challock that was closed. Had we known that they were closed we wouldn’t have tried there. Dobbies had much the same as Bybrook Barn, but were charging more, and Ham Street garden centre didn’t really have much at all.

We came home, had a cuppa, and I went on Amazon and ordered some planters for half the price of the cheapest garden centre.

 

I then had a think about the Munzee map. You can munz a physical Munzee if it is within three hundred feet of you. So I had a look at the map, found two more places up the alley round the back of the houses over the road where I might stick a Munzee, and then created a PDF with piccies of all of them.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled a rather good bit of dinner which went down with a bottle of the red stuff as we watched more episodes of “The Traitors US” in which the traitors were at each other’s throats, and sadly her with the chest got the heave-ho.

Not the decision I might have made…