1 July 2025 (Tuesday) - Too Hot...

I was fast asleep when Bailey woke me by trampling up and down on my chest, obviously anxious to go outside. So not wanting any little accidents I took her out only to have her playing silly beggars hunting round the garden looking for frogs (again).
I gave her a couple of minutes then went back to bed, but once I’m woken I struggle to get back to sleep, and that was before one o’clock.
I dozed on and off during a very warm night, finally getting up shortly before half past five.
 
I made toast and had a look at the Internet. There was quite a bit of consternation on one of the local Facebook pages this morning. Yesterday it had been claimed that some woman was taking photos of children on Folkestone beach, and a full-blown witch-hunt had been stirred up. Had this woman actually been taking photos, or has she had some petty squabble and someone who felt slighted was getting petty revenge? Who knows?
And I saw something which worried me somewhat, As a child I took a friend along to Boys Brigade with me. Boys Brigade really should be banned; it is all about brainwashing children into believing crackpot religious nonsense. My friend was taken in by all the religion and he’s now a Baptist minister in the West Country. Every week his church put out a video of their prayer ceremony, and I often find myself watching it in stark amazement. This morning my old mucker was on the webcast saying “Whatever troubles we find ourselves faced with today let us pray so that God might be glorified”.
Think it through – his idea of a supreme being is one that needs to be continually reassured about just how wonderful it is. Would any supreme being really be that insecure? It bothers me that my old mucker has devoted his life to this crackpot nonsense, but what can I say?
 
I got into my car and the thermometer told me that it was already twenty-three degrees, and that was at half past six in the morning. With a few minutes spare I drove round the road to where I hid a geocache a while ago. Not only had someone logged that they couldn't find it, they were so confident in their ability that they had logged that it needed maintenance; writing in their log "we searched well enough at the object described". The object described was a sign on a lamp post; I even gave a photo of that sign. The cache was magnetically stuck to the lamp post behind that sign. I got out of the car, saw the thing right away, sighed, and drove off. 
There are two schools of thought about not finding a geocache. Some people think "I can't find it.. Oh dear” and that's it. Others think "I can't find it because it is not there" and log "Needs Maintenance" which alerts the geo-feds. I wish they wouldn't.
 
I drove off to work., As I went up the motorway there was an interview with the head honcho at Portsmouth harbour who had the hump. Apparently the harbour authorities across the UK all chipped in to the cost of the inland border facility at Sevington, and because of changes to various laws the place is now redundant and will be sold off at a loss. The bloke from Portsmouth says he wants his share of the cost back from the government, and rightly so.
 The whole idea of an inland border facility at Sevington was a stupid one, wasn't it? The idea was that lorries would come ashore at Dover and then drive twenty miles to Sevington where they would then be inspected... giving them twenty miles along which they could drop off any illegal stuff they were carrying. Surely whoever came up with that idea should be sacked for incompetence along with whoever gave them that job in the first place.
 
I went to Sainsburys to get a sandwich and some supplies for our upcoming holiday. Needless to say not a single manned till was open, so I went to the self-service tills. The machine went berserk because I was trying to buy a bottle of gin. Some assistant with a face like a slapped arse walked over, glared at me, and pressed the button to say I looked old enough to buy gin. She wasn't at all happy when I asked her to remove the security tag on the bottle, but never once actually spoke a word. As I went out I saw a bit of a fuss. Another customer had kicked off and had one of the manned tills opened for her. I commented that if I'd known that the manned tills were open I would have used one. The chap on the till (also with a face like a smacked arse) commented that he'd only just opened the till... well, his words were that he'd only just opened the till. His tone clearly said "f... off fatso".
Supermarkets boil my piss. Back in the day we had corner shops, and lots of them. The chap behind the till wanted your custom as the shop was his personal livelihood and he knew that you had many other places where you could spend your money. These days the corner shops can't compete with the supermarkets.
And supermarkets are relatively few and far between; on my twenty-five mile journey to work there's only two that don't involve a major diversion.
And supermarkets are staffed by people who for the most part couldn't care less.
 
When I got to the work's car park it was quarter past seven and twenty-six degrees.
I went in to work where it was a colleague's last day. Apparently last week she found that her son hadn't got in to the local school she wanted for him and the alternative wasn't very good. So she approached one of those "we buy your house" companies who gave her cash there and then. She's packing tomorrow and moving to Sheffield later this week.
I got myself a cheese scone at tea break. Some people say sod it and move to Sheffield. Me - I have a scone.
 
Work was work. When I came out the thermometer in the car said it was thirty-seven and a half degrees. I suspect that was an over-estimate as the temperature is always high when I get into the car. But by the time I’d reached the traffic lights a couple of miles down the road it had only dropped to thirty-four and a half degrees.
 
I came home to find Treacle had just been sick. We’re blaming the heat. Being on an early I did have a naïve plan to take the dogs to the woods, but I don’t like to take them out of the temperature is over twenty-three degrees (at most) and according to the BBC that’s not going to happen until ten o’clock tonight.

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