7 March 2010 (Sunday) - Hello Duckie

Whilst on the way to the corner shop for some fags (not for me!), as I walked past the vicarage, the vicar was standing on his doorstep, in all his finest vicaring costume, having a really blazing row with Mrs Vicar. I stood and watched for five minutes, trying not to laugh out loud.

And then to the farm, where I’d volunteered to help with the assorted waterfowl. First of all to feed the ducks. Whilst feeding the ducks I always make a point of letting some of the food get into the water so’s the carp come up. It’s probably still too early in the year to be feeding the fish, but the ducks tend to spray their feed everywhere and the fish are used to having it anyway. The fish in the duck pond are huge – regular readers of this drivel may recall an entry from August 2007 when over the course of a weekend I fished in a nearby pond and caught three hundred tiddlers which I transferred to this (at the time) recently dug pond. Over the intervening two and a half years the fish have grown really big. Two years ago I didn’t put in any fish that was more than six inches in length. Today I watched half a dozen which are well over a foot long.

Having fed the fish we set off for more ducks. Just off of one of the roads in the back of beyond was a scrap yard. Behind this scrap yard was what I can only describe as “duck heaven”. It’s actually an old chap’s hobby, which has rather got out of control over the years – two duck ponds and a series of paddocks and enclosures with (literally) hundreds of assorted ducks, swans and geese flapping all over the place. We’d pre-ordered two geese (of some ilk) which were in an enclosure waiting for us to collect them.

Watching the chap’s grandson put the geese into our carrying cage was quite entertaining, and once they were captured, Clive mentioned he quite fancied a pair of Muscovy ducks. Grandson was equipped with a net, and sent into a nearby small field. I wish I’d videoed the performance. There was honking and quacking, feathers flew everywhere and the young lad went quite red in the face charging after the birds. Interestingly enough, once he’d got the net over the ducks, they immediately stopped all their fuss, and meekly waited to be picked up. We carried the ducks to a waiting transport cage. And the ducks were as good as gold – almost as though the whole thing was a game of chase, and once they were caught, the game was over.

Back to the pond with the ducks and geese. The Egyptian geese couldn’t get out of the cage and onto the pond quick enough. The Muscovy ducks couldn’t care less, and took some poking and prodding to get them out of their cage. Within minutes, all the birds seemed to be happily mixing in with the pond’s established residents. They certainly all seemed happy enough.

To ensure their continued wellbeing we pulled the floating duck house into the side of the pond. Later in the year we will be lifting the duck houses out of the water for refurbishing, but today it was enough just to take out the old straw from inside and replace it with fresh stuff. And then we did the same with two other duck houses. Pausing only briefly to converse with the Moo-Bears and the Baas, we then made our way back to the farmhouse.

It was really good to get out and about – last week I commented about how it always rains on Sunday. Today was a lovely clear day. But I reserve the right to gripe about the weather. It was fine all the time there was no wind. But when the wind did blow – oh it was cold. After several hours by (and in) several ponds, we were all glad to get back to the farmhouse. We read the local magazine – on Easter Sunday there is a duck race in Smarden. For only a quid you get to sponsor a plastic duck on its race down the river, and the winner gets seventy five quid. Kick off is at 1pm, and it’s just down the road from the Flying Horse. I might just go along to see if my duck wins.

And then we settled down to a spot of scoff. You can’t beat a really good bit of dinner after you’ve been working all day.

It was either the Oyster Stout, or the fourth helping of apple crumble, but I do feel tired. I would have a crafty kip, but for the noise emanating from downstairs.

“Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” has acquired a guitar. I shall have my revenge…

6 March 2010 (Saturday) - Charing, Chilham, DVDs

Up early to iron my shirts, and then off to work. As I drove down the road (before 8am) I saw some of the leaders from the scout group were out and about doing the paper collection. Once every six weeks they do it – they deliver leaflets to 1400 houses, collect newspapers and aluminium cans from those houses, take them all to a skip outside town, and spend all day doing this. It’s backbreaking work, and it’s predominantly only the leaders that do it. Of the eighty-odd families with children in the scout group, maybe three or four parents offer any help.

It’s a fundraising scheme, aimed to reduce the weekly subscription fee. The same amount of money could be raised by raising the weekly sub by eighty pence. But the scout group committee refuses to do this, because that will make the weekly cost too expensive, and parents couldn’t afford it. Or so I’m told.

Parents seem happy to pay a fiver for an hour’s football or rugby or ballet, but would baulk at paying £2.30 for two hours child care at scouting? I can’t see this somehow.

Work was dull, and then after a quick sarnie we went for an afternoon out. I’d typed “Charing Kent” into Google and found that “Charing's High Street is alive with many shops”. So off we went for an afternoon out. Only to find that (yet again) the internet had lied to us. There was an empty butcher’s shop, a closed post office and a licensed grocer. One wonders what the grocer was licensed to do. Certainly not to sell teeth to the toothless harridan we watched staggering out of the shop. Charing was a disappointment.

So we followed a tractor up to Chilham, which was also reputed to be scenic. There’s a privately owned castle there, and we peered through the gate at it. The village square had one shop (closed) and a tea room (closed) and a pub (Greene King IPA & Broadside – couldn’t be bothered). It was cold, so we had a mooch round the church – they’d left it open for sightseers. It’s odd how all churches smell the same, and I was impressed with the level of trust this place was showing. There were all sorts of things for sale, and honesty boxes into which you put the money. Personally I think this is to be applauded – if you look for the best in people, you’ll usually find it. Even though there are those of the scum element who will take advantage.

And then we realised we were cold, so we set off homewards. Via Perry Court farm shop to have a look. There were offering tasters of their apple juice. Three different flavours, all tasting the same, and all costing far too much. And then to Lidl’s. Oh, the tat they sell in that shop. Pikey to the max, and then some!

Home to the new telly. Since I got the thing a few weeks ago I don’t think I’ve ever watched as much telly. A few weeks ago I bought he film “Sunshine” on DVD. If you’ve not seen the film, don’t bother. It is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. After a shower I then watched a very young Malcolm McDowell in “If….”, one of my favourite films, even if I do fall asleep towards the end…

5 March 2010 (Friday) - Oh - The Thinks You Can Think

I forgot to get some dinner on the way to work today, so at lunch time I popped into the works canteen. I fancied one of their baguettes, which are made to order with a range of fillings. I was rather intrigued by the look of a bowl of yellow baguette filling, and asked the disinterested assistant what it was. “Dunno” she answered, in a tone which said “don’t know, don’t care”. She looked at me, and I just looked back at her. After a lengthy pause she sighed, and bellowed at an equally disinterested (and equally spotty) colleague to ask for a second opinion. After a brief conference, they both announced it probably had sausages in it. In the end I settled for a tuna and chutney baguette.

And then to the Hazlitt theatre for the Suessical. As it was my Xmas present I’d been looking forward to it for some time. An amateur dramatic production based on the Doctor Suess classic “Horton Hears a Who”. In retrospect, I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t what we saw. Don’t get me wrong - the show was good – I did enjoy it. But I think that as a relatively experienced fan of the entire Suess genre, and having spent years reading Suess to both of my children, I was expecting more. I did think that a real live Star-On/Star-Off machine would be ambitious, but there were no Sneetches, no Zax, no twenty-three Daves, no little cats A – Z, no big pink cat ring, no Voom!, and no Sam-I-Am. And where, oh where was Sylvester McMonkey McBean?

Nevertheless, like most am-dram productions it was really good fun, despite the failings of the sound system. I was quite taken with the fat ballerina (bless), whose thigh was thicker than most of the other ballerinas entire bodies. But she was having a go.

I had a moment’s worry when I realised that Joker from Batman was playing the part of “Thing Two”, but no one was murdered, so perhaps I might have been mistaken.

“Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” was utterly unimpressed with the whole thing, her favourite parts of the show being the interval and the end. Apparently Daddy does Doctor Suess better…

(It’s been brought to my attention that parents today don’t read Suess to their children. Heresy!!!)

4 March 2010 (Thursday) - Fun on the Trains

Part of my job is overseeing the efforts that trainees make towards becoming state registered biomedical scientists. On a day to day basis it can be rather hard work sometimes (for all concerned). My favourite bit is that every so often I get to go to another hospital to formally assess how their trainees are doing, and to see if they are competent to become state registered. Today I’d volunteered to assess one such trainee who worked at a hospital in Brighton.

I always plan to get to these assessments promptly: - it’s nerve-wracking enough for the poor candidates without having to wait all day for me to show up. So to be at the Royal Sussex County Hospital for 9am, I needed to take the 6.15am train from Ashford. Easy enough, I’m always up early. Just as I was about to buy my ticket at the station I realised I’d left all the paperwork at home. So I walked to the taxi rank to get a taxi home to save time. For all this talk of credit crunch and recession, none of the three taxis wanted my money. Each looked at me, muttered about another job and drove off. So I walked home. It’s not that far, really. But far enough that I missed the 6.15am train. Ironically the thing was delayed anyway, but I missed it by two minutes.

According to the Internet there was another train to Brighton at 6.45am. According to all the information at the station there wasn’t. According to their information the next train was at 7.30am. Ignoring the nutter singing along to the strange noises in his head, I explained to the nice man at the station the discrepancy with the times of trains to Brighton. He didn’t seem in the slightest bit fazed by this, and he had a look on his machine. His machine suggested I took the next train to Tonbridge (which left at 7.21am), and then went to Brighton via Redhill.

As his machine was disgorging this information at 6.35am, a train pulled into the station, and the announcement said that this train was going to Tonbridge. The nice man looked at his machine, looked at the loudspeaker and then looked at the train. He scratched his head and suggested I took this train to Tonbridge. I made a snap decision that (at worst) it couldn’t take any longer and so I set off to Tonbridge.

At Tonbridge, the Redhill train was waiting and I was soon in Redhill waiting for the 8.21am to Brighton. On this train I amused myself by watching the nutter who kept waking up and looking out the window, before checking his watch, swearing and going back to sleep. He eventually got off at Preston Park. I have no idea if that was his destination – I hope it was, for his sake.

I arrived at Brighton railway station shortly after 9am feeling quite exhausted. I know the train line along the coast, having been on it so many times. But this morning I’d taken a route through unexplored territory, changing trains in the middle of nowhere. It had been quite an adventure.

Continuing the adventure, I took the bus to the hospital. For less than four quid you can go all round Brighton by bus. I sat at the front on the top floor of a double decker, and watched the world go by. The only way to travel(!). I arrived at the hospital only twenty minutes later than I originally planned, did my thing, smiles all round, and I was out and on the bus back to the station by 11.30am.

From my student days it’s been traditional to bring ‘er indoors ^TM presents from Brighton. Specifically a pineapple. I can’t remember why – but it’s one of those things. If I go to Brighton, I buy her a pineapple. But disaster. No one had any. She’s had to make do with a back-up pressie.

And then to the real business of the day. I’d volunteered to do today’s assessment because it was in Brighton, which has several advantages over other destinations. Firstly (usually) it’s dead simple to get to on the train, but mainly because the Evening Star is thirty seconds walk from the station.

I was there for opening time, but restricted myself to just the one pint (American Pale Ale – oh yes!) because I didn’t want a repeat performance of the morning’s train fun. Still, I picked up a couple of bottle of Expresso for later. That should get me into her good books, even if the saucy undercrackers doesn’t.

During the day there are two trains from Brighton to Ashford. But they leave within two minutes of each other, so I wasn’t taking any chances. I got onto the 12.32 which eventually left Brighton at 12.45. I felt rather miffed that I could have had a pint of HopHead after all.

The guard on the train apologised for the late departure of the train, and boasted that they would make up the time and not be late on arrival at Ashford. He lied. We spent most of the journey at a standstill at various points along the coast listening to said guard apologising for red lights at all the signal boxes.

And then home to write up my formal report of the day, and to claim my expenses. Regular reader of this drivel may recall I made a similar journey to Brighton to assess another trainee last year (July 27, 2009). From my records I see the train fare that day was £20.40. The same ticket today was £59.00. I see the official rate of inflation in the UK is billed as being 2.9%. I’m no expert, but I calculate it to be 289.2%...

3 March 2010 (Wednesday) - Still Sulking

The morning’s flurry of emails brought a few more messages of support over my expulsion from Beer in the Evening. Among the comments I’ve received have been:

“ For what its worth I could find no abusive comments made by you or of you being a trouble maker. I have found you to be a man of few words which are no nonsense and straight to the point, a gift obviously not appreciated the management of BITE.”

“…He won't take criticism even though the trolls have been permitted to insult good regular members with impunity.”

“Well said on the forums. Why the hell *** (the webmaster)*** kept quiet while all that Unionjak (a racist poster) stuff and all the other rubbish was going on in the forums still escapes me.”

“..You and I often review pubs from completely different viewpoints, but agree more often than not on where we can get a decent pint and that's what it's about.”

There is now actually a Beer in the Evening member category called “Banned”. Those of us in the “Banned” section are still permitted to write money-making reviews for the website, but are no longer allowed a voice on the website’s forum. It’s no secret that over the last few years I’ve put quite a bit of effort into reviewing pubs for the Beer in the Evening website, and I can’t pretend to be happy about being given such cavalier treatment.

On reflection I wonder if I might have been better off being far more vocal about the website’s failings. Perhaps I should have made a conscious decision to become a martyr, rather than having been chucked off for no adequately explained reason.

Still, what’s done is done. I’ve been welcomed with open arms at “another place”, and the nice people there even helped me to transfer my pub reviews to their new home. This evening I went through all of the reviews I’d done over the last three years. Amazingly I could remember every pub. Some of my reviews were out of date, some were multiple reviews of the same pubs, and one or two were squabbles. But in less than an hour I transferred over one hundred reviews.

I quite like being a roving reporter for Pubs Galore. I think I’ve redirected all the links on my various websites. If any of my loyal readers find any links from my ramblings directed to where I’m not wanted, please let me know.

Whilst I’m raking over old ground, on November 2007 I blogged about the murderers of two year old James Bulger. The news at the time carried the story that one of them had got religion and was getting married. I said at the time that he shouldn’t have got married. I said he should have been executed. But as always I was in the minority. The bleeding heart brigade felt the chap should be given another chance. We weren’t told which murderer got married, but today’s news tells us that the murderer Jon Venables has been re-admitted to prison. The phrase “I told you so” comes to mind.

And to close on a lighter note: a colleague had a minor dilemma today. Sid wanted to push something, but couldn’t decide what. We eventually drew up a shortlist of:

• It
• His Luck
• The Button

If any of my loyal readers would like to help Sid out with his pushing, please email the usual address.

2 March 2010 (Tuesday) - Banned (!)

I see that my rant yesterday about licensing of dogs attracted two comments. One from Guy, with which I agree, and one from Anonymous, with which I don’t. But that’s fine – we are all entitled to our opinions, and I like being told that I’m wrong because it reminds me that sometimes (only occasionally, mind) I can be wrong. Seriously though, being told I’m wrong makes me think. And today I’ve pondered this response from Anonymous (wish I knew who you are!) and I’m sorry, but I disagree. If the pikey element want a dog, but don’t want to do the paperwork, then I honestly believe they will do what they please.

Perhaps I have bad experiences of the police force, but in the past I have had pikeys having a bare knuckle fight in my front garden. I phoned the police, who never came out. My son’s girlfriend had her car broken into. I phoned the police who flatly refused to investigate. I really can’t see the local plods showing any interest in unlicensed mutts.

Somewhere over the winter I’ve managed to misplace my laser pointer. I’m going to need one at the next astro club. Although I could borrow one so I can wave it around whilst giving my talk, they are very useful for the practical astronomy session after the talks. I’ve found that if I point out various stars and things with a laser, the “normal people” all think I know what I’m talking about.

I ordered the laser on eBay on Sunday evening, and it was on the doormat when I came home from work this evening. Two days to deliver the thing. I was impressed!

Some three years ago I posted my first pub review on Beer in the Evening. Since then I’ve posted reviews of my experiences of one hundred and eighty four pubs. But over the last few months I’ve formed more and more reservations about them. On January 21 I blogged about my unhappiness with the website. Just lately they’ve reactivated the pop-ups, done absolutely nothing to curb the racist rantings of some of the reviewers and taken over six months to add suggested pubs. It’s over a year since I pointed out that the town of St Leonards on Sea has been duplicated. And it’s no secret that the hard core of their supporters have left the web site and gone over to a rival concern. Last night I dared to voice my concerns on the Beer in the Evening forum, and I was told that if I didn’t shut my trap I’d be kicked off the website.

I came home this evening to see that I could no longer access the forum. However, being an I.T. genius it didn’t take me long to figure out a way back on. The chap who runs the website has posted: “Not something I really wanted to do today, but we just removed two members this morning. I did say there would be no further warnings. Abusive posts towards us or the site will NOT be tolerated.”

A shame he didn’t actually read what I’d actually written. He can’t now, as he’s deleted it. Personally I would have thought my offer to do unpaid work for him on a regular basis wasn’t abusive. Perhaps he was confusing me with the people who were more forthright in pointing out his failures. Many of whom have been in touch last night (ironically) via the Beer in the Evening instant messaging system or today via the Facebook group. All admiring my getting kicked off the forum.

Interestingly I see the 180+ pub reviews I’ve done for him haven’t been deleted, nor have I been removed from the Facebook group. Bovvered….?

1 March 2010 (Monday) - The News

I must admit to a wry smile as I read the news this morning. At work we live in terror of the Freedom of Information Act. In practice, it has very little (i.e. absolutely no) bearing on our daily round. But in principle anyone can ring up any government-run establishment and demand whatever nonsensical information that takes their fancy. And have an enforceable legal right to have that information within a month. For a nominal fee (I think it’s about ten quid) hard working people are legally obliged to drop what they are doing to find out (for example) how many left handed Nigerians have been tested for emphysema in the last week.

The idea is that information kept by government sources is to be freely available. Ironically following such a series of such requests for data made under The Freedom of Information Act, it would seem that some government departments have had enough. The Ministry of Defence, inundated by crackpots demanding information on flying saucers have decided to no longer keep records of UFO incidents. With no records they have no information to disclose to the general public, and so will save themselves untold effort looking up said information.

I wonder how many other government departments are now going to start emptying their files too.

I also saw there are plans to bring back the dog licence. But in a rather different format. The idea is that people will need to pass a competency test to show they are able to handle a dog. Add onto this the proposal to have all dogs micro-chipped and compulsory third party dog insurance, the average dog owner is looking at a bill of sixty quid a year on top of all the expenses associated with keeping Fido. My initial reaction from my own experience was that I liked the proposal. Having always had dogs in the house as a child, once I had a house of my own, I couldn’t wait to get a dog of my own. And then I realised how utterly unprepared I was for a dog.

But then on reflection, not many of my friends and acquaintances have dogs any more, and of those that do, I don’t think there’s any that don’t have well looked after and well controlled mutts. All that this licensing will do is to add expense where it isn’t needed.

And the pikey element (at whom this legislation is aimed) will just ignore the licensing anyway.

And then to work. Yesterday ‘er indoors ^TM came home from Tesco with some heat pads for my bad back. You stick them down your pants, and they work wonders, or so the blurb would have me believe. I’d reached the stage where I’d try anything, so down the pants they went, and I set off for work. It was either the moving about all day, or the heat pad. But something’s worked wonders. I wouldn’t say I was cured, but I’m certainly a lot better than I was…