As I scoffed my toast I rolled my eyes as I saw a post
on Facebook. Someone was complaining about how someone else (with learning
disabilities) was getting loads of abuse on one of the geocaching pages.
I first saw this sort of behaviour forty years ago
when Star Trek fandom was organised through fan-run magazines in which the
cowardly would lash out at people to whom they wouldn’t even have the courage
to look at if they met in person. And now the Internet has sadly given free
rein to this sort of person. Geocaching, ponds, tropical fish, Sci-fi, local
groups… some people really refuse to be civil if they feel they can get away
with being nasty.
And there were several people on one of the local
Facebook pages queuing up to demonstrate their ignorance. I don’t mean that
quite as nastily as it sounds, but it bothers me that so many people go on-line
and rant about the perceived failings of the local council, and then vote on
its composition despite being obviously unaware of what the council does and
what it is actually responsible for.
But that’s people though, isn’t it? I can remember
outcry from my days as a god-botherer when some evangelical chap announced that
communism was the closest political thing to Jesus’s teachings. After a *lot*
of nastiness it turned out that maybe one church-goer in a hundred actually
knew what communism was (in theory) all about.
I had some emails… there’s minor issues with some of
my geocaches in Kings Wood. That’s Monday’s walk planned.
I Munzed, and started Wordle with “dicks” (which
didn’t help me at all). “Pleat” gave me an “e” (in the
wrong place), and “boner” gave me an “o”. “Gouge”
helped quite a bit. “Vouge” gave the game away. The answer was “vogue”
which I’d spelt wrong on the fifth attempt.
Steve was on the radio. This morning’s “Guess the
Lyrics” competition was “The night is young and full of possibilities”.
No? I had no idea either. It was Anita Ward – “Ring My Bell”. I can
remember that song coming out; I quite liked it. Was it really forty-seven
years ago in 1979?
We got ready for the morning. We’d hoped to leave a
few minutes early as I’d parked miles away. We got to Dog Club and had a rather
good time. We humped and wallowed in mud and chased about and shared treats and
generally ran riot. For all that there were several regulars not along, I
counted fourteen dogs.
As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year
competition on the radio. “Absolute Beginners” from David Bowie and “Touch
Me” from Samantha Fox? 1986.
The dogs had a bath, we had a cuppa, then I went into
the garden. Last week I got new ultra-violet bulbs for the pond filters. I got
them into place and turned the pumps on. I then scraped the dead plants out of
the floating baskets in the big pond. They took some scraping.
I wrote up some
CPD, then had a brainwave and went out to that which I’d
dinged out of the pond earlier and salvaged a couple of pond plant pots.
I drove over to Dobbies to get three pond plants to
put into the floating baskets. I’d had an idea that if I bought a tub of three
plants I could split the plants and use the plant pots I’d salvaged… it was
actually ten quid cheaper to buy three individual plants (each of which came
with its own pot) rather than to buy a tub of three and re-pot them.
I came home where I had a Belgian bun, then put my new
plants into place and chucked some blanket weed treatment into the little pond.
We moved stuff around on the living room shelves and the
mantlepiece and “er indoors TM” managed to destroy
the Logo Bonsai tree so I spent the afternoon totally rebuilding it.
Chris came round with the big Infinity table, and
Steve soon joined us. It was a shame that Sarah was poorly but four of us
played “Game of Life” (I came third), “Trouble” (I won!!),
“Sorry” (I came third) and “Ticket to Ride” (I came
last). Hopefully there will be five of us for next time.
Treacle has been in an odd mood all evening… I shall
keep an eye on her.
I’ve got to go to work in the morning…
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