22 November 2024 (Friday) - Early Shift

Finding myself awake far too early I got up on a rather cold morning. I made toast and turned on the telly wondering if I might watch something or other for a few minutes. I found myself watching The Benny Hill Show. Forty years ago the Benny Hill Show was peak-time viewing and this morning I found myself wondering why. It wasn’t actually very funny. That’s not me being politically correct or being woke. It simply wasn’t funny.

I then sparked up my lap-top to see if anything remarkable had happened on the Internet since I’d last looked at it only a few hours previously. It hadn’t really. I checked my emails – three weeks ago I first contacted my MP about the upcoming House of Commons vote on the assisted dying bill. I’ve since tried twice more to get a response but still no joy. I sent a fourth email this morning. This one got an automated reply which I suppose is a step in the right direction. I can’t pretend that I was ever a fan of the previous MP, but at least he made himself visible (albeit in what seemed to be a rather self-aggrandizing way). So far this chap hasn’t got off to a good start. But as well as setting up auto-replies to emails he’s also changed his Facebook profile to say he is an MP and not a “digital creator”.

I tried to Munz, but the Munzee app had something of a fit. It thought it was ten o’clock last night even though it had today’s date right. But I got Wordle on the third attempt.

 

I scraped the ice from my car's windscreen; it didn't take that long really. I set off to Sainsbury for petrol. Sadly the cantankerous old bat was on duty at the till today. She has been better recently but had the right arse today. I got myself a sandwich and one or two bits and bobs, and I asked for a carrier bag to put them all in. She threw the bag at me, and I struggled to open it. When I commented that I can never get the things open she snarled that she couldn't either and that was why she'd given (thrown) it to me. I threw it back and said that I wouldn't bother with a bag. Faced with removing it from the bill she ungraciously ripped it open and stuffed all my shopping in.

 

I drove up the motorway listening to the news. The French authorities aren't happy about all the effort they are putting in to stopping illegal immigrants getting to the coast only to have the British welcoming them all in. I suppose they've got a point.

And President Putin has warned the UK government that by supplying arms to the Ukrainians, the UK has made itself a legitimate target for a Russian attack. Let's not pretend that we didn't see this coming.

 

I got to work for the early shift. I had booked the afternoon off, but what with the most recent frit of my loin having come home yesterday I didn’t need the afternoon off. And seeing work was short-handed I cancelled the leave. That was good of me, wasn’t it…

But an early start still made for an early finish.

 

“er indoors ^TM” had sent me a shopping list so I went from work to Sainsburys. You wouldn’t believe the difference in attitude between the staff in the Ashford Sainsburys and their petrol station. The staff in the store were so friendly and helpful. Perhaps their management might need to redeploy the cantankerous old bat across the road to the main store so’s she might learn how not to deliberately antagonize the customers.

Having brought the shopping home, “er indoors ^TM” then got busy with it and boiled up a very good bit of scran which we washed down with a bottle of Sainsbury’s best. As we scoffed we watched the Bake Off semi-final. The more I watch that show the more I am convinced that there’s a lot of farting around in baking.

Mind you I still scoff the cakes though…. all the time someone else I making them.

21 November 2024 (Thursday) - A Cold Walk

I quite often get up silly-early and leave “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs in the pit where they all stay asleep. In a novel break with tradition “er indoors ^TM” got up very early today. Treacle and Morgan immediately followed, and Bailey started crying because she is too small to get off the bed on her own.

With “er indoors ^TM” eventually off on her errand I went back to bed. That is I went to the bed. I ogt there to find Bailey was whinging because she’s too small to get up on her own. And once she was up, the three of them started a great fighting-chasing game.

I did eventually get them to settle.

 

I got up a couple of hours later, made toast and had my usual root round the Internet. Nothing had changed. Star Trek fans were being particularly hateful to each other this morning. When I first got involved in Trekkie fandom (forty years ago) it was one big argument… but looking back it was a better quality of argument. Long before the Internet, Star Trek fans used to have fan-made magazines every few months. People would write in their opinionated rantings and have them published. Everyone else would then take offence, but rather than immediately responding (like we do with today’s Internet) we would have a few weeks in which to hone our bitter and sarcastic replies. I once made the mistake of saying that graphic novels are comic books, and the ensuing argument dragged on for years. But it wasn’t an argument like today’s bitter Internet squabbles. Because it was all done by posting to a magazine we had time to consider our replies… and so we actually had something of a debate. Admittedly no one ever agreed about anything, but there was a degree of civility about it which is lacking in today’s bickering.

 

I got the dogs onto their leads and we wandered up the road to find the car. As we went so the bin men were in Denmark Road… actually going into people’s gardens, taking the bins out and bringing them back. Usually you have to bring the bin to the pavement for them as they flatly refuse to get the bins themselves… they are clearly hoping for a Christmas box.

We drove up to the woods and parked in the lower car park for a change. Last weekend someone had stayed in a local hotel and spent three days doing all the geocaches I’d hidden there. Today we went and had a little look at the ones he couldn’t find. Three were there all along. Two were missing (or I couldn’t find them either) and one was at the other end of the woods so we left it for next time. But sorting these made for a good walk. And unlike yesterday the mud was still frozen so we didn’t get too grubby. We didn’t roll in any fox poo either. Bailey ate some though…

After five and a half miles we were back at the car.

 

We came home to find “er indoors ^TM” had returned from her errand. She popped out to collect “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” whose enforced sojourn in Enfield had come to an end. After we’d scoffed KFC they all set off to Enfield to collect stuff and Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” .

I settled in front of the telly and watched “Star Trek: Insurrection” which wasn’t a bad film, and then fell asleep during “Star Trek: Nemesis”. As I dozed in front of the telly so Bailey dozed in the flow of warm air from the living room fire. She seems to like that. She does feel the cold, and it has been nippy today.

 

I’ve not really done anything much today, and I’m worn out. I suppose we did walk a little further than usual this morning; my daily step count is over fourteen thousand and my left knee is aching a bit. Perhaps I shouldn’t walk the dogs quite so far?

20 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Late Shift

As I scoffed brekkie there was something that amazed me on Facebook. The goat sanctuary has a new goat – “Callie”. The poor thing was found tethered on a roundabout leading on to the local motorway. Who would do such a thing? If you’ve got a goat you can’t cope with (for whatever reason) why not take her straight to the goat sanctuary? It strikes me that it is less arse-ache to take the goat there than it would be to sneak about at night when no-one is looking and messing about on roundabouts.

I also saw the Wherigo I wrote yesterday had gone live, and three people had downloaded the cartridge in the first half-hour. I’m hoping people do this one properly and don’t try to cheat; I’ve put in so many red herrings that it is quicker to do it properly than check out all the bogus locations. It bothers me when people cheat at the Wherigos – the whole thing is a fun little game to play on your phone. The geocache at the end is just an added bonus if you like that sort of thing. There are those that do, and they do the Wherigos pretty much right away. After a while those using the cheat programs come along just to get their geocache count up. I wish they wouldn’t.

Some chap went round Kings Wood doing my Wherigos last week – reading his written geocache logs it is plain he did them properly and laughed out loud at them. Which is what I intended.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and took the dogs out. I went outside to see that winter had officially arrived. In my world the first day of winter is the first day at the end of the year when I have to scrape ice from my car. Scraping didn’t take *that* long, and we were soon on our way.

We drove to Orlestone today as it is closer to home than Kings Wood and makes for a shorter walk. Our usual walk round Kings Wood is four miles and takes an hour and twenty minutes. Our walk round Orlestone today was a mile and a half and took thirty-five minutes. Mind you I had a minor melt-down when I looked at my watch at the end of the walk. The same walk round Orlestone used to take an hour when Fudge used to dawdle and pootle round with everyone else waiting for him. Without Fudge along these days we walk the same route in half the time.

I had this stupid idea that being so cold today that the mud would be frozen and the dogs wouldn’t get filthy. Sadly it wasn’t, and they did. We had a warm shower when we came home.

 

I set off to work. Being at Pembury today for the late shift I drove through the -hursts and the -dens. It was a very pretty drive, marred only by the lorry which had got itself wedged at the sharp corner at Goudhurst church. Luckily I didn't have to backtrack that much to find an alternative route.

 

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the supposed failures of maternity services in the UK.

It turns out that most of the problems come from all the expectant mothers having this starry-eyed idea of how a perfect birth will go. Sadly very few of them seem to have realised that having a baby is a dangerous game. Furthermore everyone is allowed choice in their treatments these days, so wannabe mothers are leaving decisions about medical intervention too late when things are going iffy. And then rather than realising this, the media continues to blow the relatively few tragic cases out of proportion and make no mention of how many births happen without incident (lots). And consequently there's a recruitment crisis in midwifery. Who's going to study for years for a job which has a decent chance of getting you crucified in the papers?

And so more and more mothers are looking outside the NHS to have their baby. Often with a doula. There was an interesting interview with the UK's head doula.

I say "UK's head doula"; actually there isn't one. A doula is someone you pay to be your birthing partner who has absolutely no medical qualifications whatsoever. From what was being said some are good and some act as though they are consultant gynecologists and cause quite a few problems themselves.

It turns out that people are very happy to go running to the papers every time the NHS is involved with a tragedy, but those who've employed doulas tend to keep quiet when it all goes pear-shaped. And can you blame them? It would seem that having turned away free expert medical care, they've paid good money to an unqualified quack.

The UK's wannabe head doula being interviewed was some woman who was trying to form a professional association of doulas. She wanted written standards of practice for them all. But as she said with no legal control of them, there is nothing to stop the rogue ones taking the money and doing what they please.

I get so cross with this sort of thing. What I do is legally controlled with all sorts of checks and controls. Why isn't doula-ing?

 

“er indoors ^TM”  had given me orders not to come home without tea bags (on pain of death) so I stopped off at Tesco to get some.

I got cross there too. Dozens, if not hundreds, of customers were blundering about quite literally crashing into each other with only one (me) seemingly aware there was anyone else in the shop.

 

I got to work and did my bit. As I do. I must admit I wasn't keen today.  Periodically I looked out of the window and saw it wasn't raining. There was so much at home I could have been doing, and yesterday when I'd been at home it had been hossing down.

Another reason I wasn’t keen was that I was on a late shift at Pembury. By the time I’d scraped the ice off the car and navigated my way home through pitch-black lanes it was gone ten o’clock.

19 November 2024 (Tuesday) - It Rained

I woke to the sound of heavy rain. I had planned to take the dogs to the woods this morning, but it’s no fun in the rain.

I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. The Wherigo I made yesterday had gone live at half past seven, and two people had already downloaded it. Were they going out in the rain? If they were, let’s hope they were going to do the thing properly. They would have got very wet if they fell for my anti-cheating ruse.

 

There wasn’t much else happening on-line today. There weren’t many squabbles really. I munzed, I got Wordle on the fourth attempt, and got seriously cross looking at the rain.

With nothing else to do I scrubbed the kitchen wall, cleaned out the bathroom cabinet, and seeing the rain was showing no sign of easing up I started writing another Wherigo. Well, not so much writing as re-vamping an old one. Bearing in mind the cheat software looks for pictures of final co-ordinates I’ve put in a dozen into this new one for it to find. That will be nice for it, won’t it?

 

The rain eased off by mid-afternoon so I walked the dogs round the block. As I stood up to do so, they all leapt up as well. I’d got up for various reasons half a dozen times during the day and they hadn’t batted an eyelid. But when I intended to take them out, they were there right away.

How do they know?

I didn’t think the rain had been that heavy, but we all came home soaked. I then went through the Wherigo to give it a final check… and found half a dozen issues with it.

Two hours later I packed the thing off to the geo-feds.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled me up a pizza and she set off to Hastings for a booze-up. I stayed with the dogs; they don’t like being left for any length of time. I scoffed pizza and watched “Star Trek: First Contact” – is that film really twenty-eight years old?

 

Today was dull…

18 November 2024 (Monday) - Perry Wood

I spent most of yesterday evening asleep in front of the telly, and slept like a log last night. I woke at eight o’clock to the sound of Morgan heaving., so I leapt up and bundled him outside.

Finding myself wide awake I made toast and peered into the internet where I laughed at the Christians posting on an atheist Facebook page I follow.  That page is often amusing; today the righteous were gloating that the iniquitous sinners have only got six months left in which to repent. Apparently the world is ending next April. I had a look on Google to see if this is true; apparently some Bulgarian mystic called Baba Vanga has predicted the end of the world starting next year. She also predicted Muslim rule of Europe in 2043, the entire world going communist in 2076 and humanity being wiped out in 5079.

I must admit I’m not unduly fussed. I remember the first end of the world. It was on the first of January 1980 and had been predicted by Nostradamus. Me and my mate Douggie Small spent the day walking round Hastings looking for any signs of the world having ended, and we both had something of a sense of anticlimax about the whole thing. There’s been several end of the worlds since. Only two years after the first one I was rather disappointed that the planet Jupiter’s gravity didn’t pull the Earth apart as had been predicted by some prominent astrophysicist. Halley’s comet didn’t wipe anything out in 1986, the Rapture didn’t come in 1988 (or any time in the early 90s – there were several of these), several predicted nuclear wars and alien-instigated wipeouts failed to materialize, and by the time we got to Nostradamus’s second go in July 1999 I rather gave up on end of the worlds.

There’s a list of most of them on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

 

I had an email telling me that someone had commented on yesterday’s blog entry. People rarely do, but the option is there. However I moderate each comment before it gets published since spambots have tried to use this blog as a vehicle for their advertising. Sadly this is what happened overnight. Someone wrote “It sounds like you had a rather slow start to your day, with the early wake-up and some quiet time before heading to work. It's always a nice surprise when the roads are clear, especially on a Sunday! Sometimes those quiet mornings are a welcome break”. And then they followed this up with two adverts; one for cheap pharmaceuticals and for Rack Supported Mezzanine floors. Whatever they are.

I deleted the comment.

 

I Munzed, got Wordle on my third attempt, and took the dogs out. We drove up to Perry Wood today for a change. As we drove I listened to the pundits on the radio who talking about political advisors. Historically they have been unelected buddies of politicians and have been useful not so much to offer advice as to take the blame for unsuccessful policies. The examples of Thomas Cromwell and Dominic Cummings were given. Despite being hundreds of years apart their cases were rather similar, weren’t they?

 

The last time we went to Perry Woods I couldn’t find the place. Today I used the sat-nav and we arrived to find an empty car park. I sparked up my geo-app; there’s one geocache up there that has eluded me for some time, and over the weekend the chap who had hidden it had given me the heads-up on it and had been out to check on it himself as it hadn’t been found for three years. The chap had even put crossed sticks forming an “X” over it but I still took fifteen minutes to find it. Some people who hide geocaches want them found, and some don’t.

Having found it we then went on through the woods looking for the other three geocaches in those woods. We found one of them. We’ll go back for the other two in the spring – it was rather slippery and swampy today. I took a few photos though – Perry Wood is a rather pretty place,

 

We came home where the dogs had a warm shower. I’d rather not wash the dogs after a walk if I can get away with it though. They come home very tired but the shower/bath somehow puts them all in a very hyperactive and excitable mood which lasts for far too long.

Eventually they were asleep, and I then cleaned out the filter in the little fish pond. I need to see if I can find a very small pressure filter for that pond; the current one needs cleaning out every couple of weeks and isn’t the easiest to clean.

 

I then spent the afternoon re-writing a Wherigo cartridge. Over the last few years I’ve spent ages writing fun little GPS games only to have people using cheat software to extract the final geocache locations… and then complain that by cheating they can’t get the hints and tips that I write into them. After a couple of hours I came up with one that isn’t entirely cheat-resistant but does throw people off the scent.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted dinner then set off to bowling as she does on Monday evenings. I settled on the sofa and was soon snoring underneath a pile of dogs. Who were also snoring…

17 November 2024 (Sunday) - Manky Tennis Ball

I’d set the alarm for half past six this morning so I woke at four and lay awake watching the clock for a couple of hours. Eventually I gave up, got up and made toast. I watched an episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” then sparked up my lap-top to have my usual trawl around the internet. Nothing much had happened overnight for once, so I had a quick Munz then got Wordle right on the third attempt. As usual I started off with “table” and only had the third and last letter wrong. I couldn’t think of any other word than “tally”.

 

It was light when I set off to work this morning. Being a Sunday the roads were nowhere near as busy as usual. Normally if I leave home at half past seven the traffic trying to get to the motorway is at a snail's pace from the Matalan roundabout (about a mile from the motorway). Today I sailed all the way.

As I drove the pundits were interviewing an author who'd written a book about the succession of a hypothetical pope. The book sounded rather interesting; it was a shame that having been talking about a book for five minutes the chap conducting the interview said that the film is released this week; speaking in such a way that films and books are synonymous. I suppose in this day and age for most people they are... Everyone knows about Harry Potter. Everyone’s seen the films. How many people have actually read the books?

There was then a round table of various windbags pontificating on who would be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. One of them banged on about how an Archbishop should raise awareness of child poverty and how we shouldn't be dependent on food banks. Another accused the first of being too left wing and said that politics should be kept out of religion. Sadly when the first chap asked the second if he's heard of what Jesus had preached about being nice to each other, it seemed that (despite being some big-wig in the church) the chap clearly hadn't. And then some well-meaning old biddy claimed that Christianity was for the well intentioned and the self-serving alike.

And this was followed by the news that Donald Trump is planning to appoint the head honcho of a fracking company to be in charge of American energy policy. I've lost count of the amount of times I've said what a stupid idea democracy is. Here's another example. Oh well, as I once said (in jest) to “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” "f... the environment. It will probably last longer than I will". I suspect I will actually croak before the environment will, but what kind of a planet are we leaving behind?

 

Work was much the same as ever. Originally I wasn’t supposed to be working today, but I’d had a message asking if I could step into the breach. I didn’t have much else planned for the morning, and stepping into the breach at short notice is what hospital work is all about. I got there a few minutes early so’s I could pop into the canteen for a spot of brekkie, and I was only needed for the morning. I was back home in the garden harvesting dog turds by half past one.

 

After a spot of scran we bundled the dogs into the car and set off to Folkestone. A couple of weeks ago I sorted “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” ‘s patio. Her outside guttering was overflowing but at the time I thought I’d sort that problem another day. So today I went and sorted it. The problem was that the downpipe wasn’t draining the gutter. I took along all sorts of tools… Well… I won’t lie. I took a trowel, a bucket and a length of hose pipe. What more could anyone need?

We got there, and as “er indoors ^TM” farted around making the beds I went and did some plumbing. I rammed the hose pipe up the down pipe in an attempt to loosen the blockage. There was something pretty solid blocking the down pipe, and coming from underneath with a hose pipe wasn’t working. So, using onto a particularly rusty garden chair as a ladder to get at the guttering, I came in from the top with a trowel. After a few seconds of particularly vigorous trowelling I excavated a rather manky tennis ball from the down pipe, and the accumulated stagnant water immediately gurgled away. So I trowelled out the residual muck and then used the bucket to flush the guttering with some fresh water. Trowel, bucket and hose pipe. I didn’t need anything else. Mind you it has to be said that the gutter is still a bit rancid, but gutters generally are. A decent load of rain will wash it through.

 

We then walked the dogs round the Leas for a bit, even though it was dark. So dark that when we came to do “Boot Dogs”, as Treacle jumped into the car boot so Morgan jumped onto the bonnet of the car behind.

I caught him in mid-air going in entirely the wrong direction.

 

Today I spent the morning at work, unblocked a drainpipe, and walked the dogs for half an hour. Why am I worn out?

16 November 2024 (Saturday) - Rather Busy

Despite all its connections to the Internet being turned off, my phone went berserk with a flurry of notification pings shortly after four o’clock. And despite the alarm being turned off, it played the alarm at seven o’clock.

That phone does what it likes.

 

I made toast and peered into the Internet. It hadn’t really changed. Petty triviality and bickering persisted as it always does. There was quite the argument over the term “totty” on a Facebook group about the 1970s. I felt about commenting but decided against it.

There were quite a few people posting the same sort of thing to work-related Facebook groups this morning too. Having spent many years becoming qualified to do the job, people were rather surprised to realise that hospitals operate round the clock, and so many people wanted suggestions for a nine-to-five job for which they could use their existing qualifications and not have to go right back to square one and start again from scratch.

You’d think people would find out what a job entails before spending six years training for it, wouldn’t you?

 

Being Saturday we got ourselves organized and set off to Dog Club. Yesterday we came home from the woods via Pets at Home where I got Treacle a new tennis ball for Dog Club. She lost it within a minute of arriving; just as well I’d bought a spare as well. We had a great time at Dog Club. At one point I counted seventeen dogs. I’m not sure I counted them all (they kept moving about) and three more arrived after I’d counted. Morgan did get a little over-excited, but it is all part of his learning to socialize. He comes when called, and just showing him his muzzle calms him rather impressively.

 

Sadly we missed Steve’s Mystery Year competition on the radio; just as we drove away so Steve was on the radio giving the answer saying that he’d not had an entry from us and that Dog Club must have over-run.

It had.

We came home for a cuppa, then “er indoors ^TM” set off to Hobbycraft for a new glue gun. Hers had vanished. I spent a frustrating hour struggling with a geo-puzzle. If any of my loyal readers know how to reverse a text string in Microsoft Word (i.e. turn “abchef” into “fedcba”) please let me know.

 

We then drove out to Biddenden for the monthly geo-meet-up. Twenty of us met in the garden of the Three Chimneys and spent a very pleasant afternoon chatting about all things geocachical.

 

We came home, and after a little doze Steve and Sarah arrived, followed by Chris. We had a very good evening round the Infinity table playing “Game of Life”, “Sorry” and “Ticket to Ride”. I was rather smug when I won at “Sorry”, and I think I’ll do much better at “Ticket to Ride” next time now that I’ve figured out how the scoring works.