I slept well again, which was a result. I made toast
and had a wry smile as I peered into Facebook. One of the many things that
people argue about in the pond-related pages is whether or not to turn off the
filter pumps over the winter. Personally I always do. Others maintain that
keeping the water moving means that it won’t freeze. This morning there were
several posts from people whose ponds had frozen over and so water returning to
the pond from the filters was pouring across the ice and over the garden.
Eventually the weight of the unsupported ice made it collapse at which point it
was pretty obvious that leaving the pumps running had emptied their ponds. And
as is typical human nature there were loads more people who would never admit
to a mistake who were rather aggressively claiming their ponds were still
totally unfrozen,
And there was a lot of squabbling about the cheap
imported flags that were hung at half-mast from all the lamp posts last year.
Those that haven’t blown away are all looking rather tattered and sorry. It was
suggested that they be taken down and replaced with better quality ones, but
the suggestion soon descended into division and hatred… which was quite
possibly what putting them all up was about in the first place.
I Munzed, and got ready for our outing. The dogs
didn’t seem too keen to go out this morning, but once we got our coats on they
soon perked up. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about
productivity in the NHS. I did a course on Quality Management a while ago which
made me very sceptical about any attempts to measure productivity. What do you
actually measure? Any attempt to do any job faster just results in a rushed
job.
We got to the woods where my car’s thermometer told me
that the temperature was minus four degrees. There’s been a lot of busybody-ing
about on the Facebook dog pages recently about it being too cold for dogs. I
took the line that Bailey tells me when she is cold (she certainly does at
Dog Club) and if she told me, I could stuff her inside my fleece (like I
have done at Dog Club). We went for our walk. Compared to yesterday’s
debacle it went rather well. We saw the deer, we chased squirrels, Bailey ate
half a blackbird. And in over four miles we only saw one other person.
We got back to the car after four and a bit miles. How
much of a “bit” depended on whether you believed my watch or my phone as
again the two differed by nearly half a mile. When you think that the journey
is of the order of four to five miles, that’s about a ten per cent difference.
But MyFitnessPal and Map My Walk only differed by thirty when I
asked them how many calories the walk had burned up.
I wrote up some
CPD, then (as the snow started) I pretty much
wasted the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four
In A Bed” in which everyone was pretty much of the same level and the
winner basically bought first place by putting on a far better breakfast than
she usually does to impress the others.
“er indoors TM” boiled
up some home-made pizza which we scoffed whilst watching the second part of the
New Year “Taskmaster”.
As we watched so my phone beeped with a message from
my Nectar App. Apparently no one bought more tennis balls from the Aylesford
branch of Sainsburys than I did last year…
The weather forecast is for rain overnight – hopefully
that will wash away the snow.
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