24 December 2015 (Thursday) - Christmas Eve

As I did the night shift last night I listened to the radio. There was a rather interesting program which started off with a sci-fi theme. Given that you are on a spaceship that has crashed on an alien planet, would you eat an alien?

There are a lot of things I do eat, a lot I would eat if I had to, and a lot that I say I wouldn't but probably would if needs must. The program started along these lines, but I must admit that I was rather disappointed when the thing descended into thinly veiled pro-vegetarian propaganda. The implication was made that eating a food animal was akin to eating a family member.

If someone chooses to be a vegetarian then that is their choice. Why do so many feel they should evangelise about the matter?

I also heard something which made me sit up and take notice. In my previous workplace I used to look after the trainees. Over the years I saw over twenty of them from employment to qualification. They were (and still are) all a decent bunch. One in particular was an amiable gentle girl and I was pleased to hear of her getting promotion to a senior position a few years ago. I kept in touch with her (on and off) via Facebook.

A few weeks ago she was sacked for bullying other staff. Bullying? I can't believe that of her. I spoke with her and it would seem she'd fallen foul of trumped up charges. And now (completely out of the blue) her partner has collapsed and is in hospital for the foreseeable future.

How quickly life can change.

With work done I came home. Sid was snoring but "Furry Face ^TM" was itching for his walk. I left Sid (and "er indoors ^TM") snoring and took my dog round to the park and back. As we walked we met a dog-walking acquaintance. We chatted as we walked while my dog spent the entire time trying to hump his dog. I wish he wouldn't do that.

I came home; had shower, shave, brekkie and took myself off to bed for the day. I slept like a log until mid afternoon when I woke to an empty house. "er indoors ^TM" had gone out somewhere with the dogs. The house seemed empty without them.

And so I'm off to work again. There are those who would grumble about having to work on the night of Christmas Eve. I really don't mind. When I first took up this line of work thirty four years ago I knew that this would be the way of things. I wonder what the night will hold. Some of my quietest times and busiest times at work have been working alone on Christmas shifts.

When you are drinking yourselves silly over the Christmas period spare a thought for the likes of me. And the physiotherapists, radiographers, dieticians, biomedical scientists, audiologists, speech therapists, cleaners, cooks, podiatrists, ODAs, orthoptists, psychologists, prosthetists and everyone else?

It's not just doctors and nurses who work round the clock in hospitals...

23 December 2015 (Wednesday) - Before The Night Shift

I found myself wide awake in the night so got up and spent half an hour watching the 4am "South Park" on the Comedy Central channel. Getting up and watching telly seemed to work; I went back to bed and slept through til 8.30am.

Sid spent the night on the bedroom floor for the second night, and for the second night there were no turds. Perhaps it is an attention-seeking thing?

Over brekkie I struggled with a geo-puzzle. I was pretty sure I had the right idea in that my calculations put the thing in the UK. However I was pretty sure it should be somewhere in the general area of the Kent-Sussex border but I calculated it to be miles away from there. So I utilised a "non-standard" way of solving the puzzzle; I asked for help.

I also read an article which made me sigh. A space rock thingy flew past the Earth last night. This was presented as news. It really does happen all the time. Go outdoors on any clear dark night and look up. after a few minutes you will probably see a shooting star. You will see several in an hour. After a while they will seem commonplace to you. These are all from space rocks burning up in the atmosphere. These aren't news. But it amazes me that the general public really do see them as news.

We put the leads on the dogs and took them for a walk. Last night I collected "er indoors ^TM" from the Spearpoint and we left her car there. Today we walked back to collect it. Yesterday's dog walk was cut short because of the terrible weather; it was glorious today. The weather was sunny and mild. Sid rolled in fox poo; Fudge tried to hump him. I even took a few photos as we walked.

It took an hour and a half to get to the Spearpoint; getting home was hard work. The roads were *really* busy. Everyone seemed to be off for the Christmas break. We got home just as the delivery chap was arriving with a consignment of candles; that was well-timed.

Pausing only briefly to hose the fox poo off of Sid we had a spot of cheese on toast for lunch. I had an email - a message about that troublesome geo-puzzle from the chap who'd set the puzzle. I was thinking along the right lines but hadn't allowed for zeros. i have now, and in the New Year I shall go find this one.

Feeling rather smug I took myself off to bed for the afternoon. After two hours I was wide awake. If only we could sleep for extended periods at times when it was convenient to do so...

I'm off to the night shift now....

22 December 2015 (Tuesday) - Washing Machine Fun

What with one thing and another last night was the last night that both "er indoors ^TM" and I would be home before Christmas. So we had a rather good dinner and a bottle of wine. And as it is nearly Christmas I opened a bottle of port.

I was therefore rather amazed to be wide awake at 1.30am this morning. I got up and watched a couple of episodes of South Park before going back to bed where I dozed fitfully until I could resist the call of the lavatory no more. After that I went back to bed again and this time slept like a log for an hour until "er indoors ^TM" "quietly" got dressed.

I got up, fed the dogs, fed "Daddies Little Angel ^TM"'s laundry into the washing machine and fed myself. Over brekkie I had a look-see on-line and I must admit I had a little gloat at the tribulations facing Theranos. For those of my loyal readers who are unaware of the company, Theranos are a recently launched company who are trying to undercut the blood testing market by offering really cheap blood tests.

However the established blood testing community seem to favour using devices which give accurate and repeatable results. We tend not to use machines which seem to rely on random number generators (rather than reliable science) to produce results.

But enough of work; today is a rota-ed day off.

I then took the dogs for a walk. Fudge was raring to go; Sid wasn't interested. But he came anyway. Apart from Sid's harness completely failing half way round, the walk passed off without event. We might have gone further than we did, but the rain was persistant so we cut our walk short and came home.

I had a look at the astro club's accounts, confirmed the pub booking for next Monday and then wandered up into town. I had some money to pay into the astro club's account. I came home via the milk shake shop (which was actually open for once). I was hoping for a Christmas pudding milkshake; I had to settle for a curlywurly one.

I came home; emptied the washing machine and flooded the kitchen. The machine hadn't spun off the excess water. Oh how I laughed. Using six towels I managed to soak up all the water. I had an idea that the pump might have blocked; the engineer once showed me how to sort that. So I opened the pump and flooded the kitchen again. Pausing only briefly to go get more towels I opened the inspection hatch and shone a torch in I could see the problem. There were two dog poo bags stuck in the trap. So I hoiked them out and had another look. There was a wodge of elastic hair bands wrapped around the pump. In theory if I could get a crochet hook into the tangle I could pull it forward, cut the elastic with a Stanley knife and all would be sexy.

In practice I had no crochet hook. At the suggestion of "er indoors ^TM" I emptied the kitchen's "man drawer" and the sewing basket to find one, but to no avail. I even asked the nice lady next door but she didn't have one. After an hour's struggling and lacerating of fingers I finally managed to get the tangle off of the rotors by use of a tent peg and a Stanley knife. There wasn't *that* much blood really.

I had this plan that by 3pm "Daddies Little Angel ^TM"s laundy basket would be empty and i would be looking to take it all back to her dried and ironed. At 3pm only half of her stuff had gone into the washing machine (and was still wringing wet) *and* I had ten sodden towels to sort out.

However I did have a functional washing machine again. So I started washing again.

As the washing chugged I watched "Dad's Army"; my SkyPlus box had recorded the feature film for me to watch. That was kind of it. As I watched I tidied out the kitchen's "man drawer"; I'd made a bit of a mess of it earlier. And (to be honest) there was a *lot* of rubbish in it. I threw out about half of what was in the thing but it still looks full.

Interestingly I found three shoe horns in there. I've been searching shops high and low for the last month trying to get a shoe horn and there were three in my kitchen all along.

Cheryl came round to deliver the sprouts and parsnips for Friday, the dogs had their tea and I watched another film. "Community" is a rather odd horror film about a rather foxy film-maker who falls foul of a transvestite drug-dealing psychopath. If nothing else it passed a couple of hours whilst I was waiting for a message from "er indoors ^TM". She was on her works booze-up today. I collected her just before 8pm expecting the worst.

Bearing in mind the state she's come home in from previous works events my fears were unfounded.

21 December 2015 (Monday) - St Michaels

I must have been tired last night. I slept for over six hours, got up for a tiddle, and went back to bed for another three hours. I was eventually woken by "er indoors ^TM" "quietly" getting ready for work.

When I'm first one to leave the house my stealth ninja skills are second to none. When she's first one to go it is as though she is teaching tap dancing to a herd of elephants.

I got up just before 8.30am; something of a lie-in. The nephew who provoked yesterdays rant was still pontificating on Facebook. Today he is wondering about the meaning of life.

I've calmed down a little, but (it's an old man thing) it annoys me that one of the major failures of human beings is that we seem to be unable to learn from the mistakes of others.

Eventually he will wise up to the fact that he's wasted so many years, will stop dye-ing his hair silly colours, have his ear surgically reconstructed and get a job. And he will then rant about others doing what he is doing now. Why can't he save a lot of time by learning from how others have simularly cocked up in the past?

Probably for the same reasons that I dont...

I fed the dogs then had a look at the monthly accounts. They've been worse but bearing in mind it is Christmas I could do with them being a whole lot better.

I then settled Sid down and took Fudge for a walk. Ideally I would have liked to have taken Sid, but (in all honesty) he is something of a "special blossom". He tends to look at the mud in the same way that pink girlies do. He had a good walk yesterday. He wouldn't have liked what we had planned so we settled him into his basket.

Pausing only briefly to collect the required information for a geo-puzzle I soon was at the agreed meeting place. Seven of us (and my dog) set off for a little walk around St Michaels. As geo-walks go it wasn't the longest, but it kept us out of mischief for a couple of hours. The mud was quite thick in places; several of the fields had rather a lot of water on them. "Furry Face ^TM" would have found stilts very useful. We were told to get a move on by the horsey-people; we told the horsey-people about not putting a fence on a public right of way. Cliff nearly (but not quite) fell in a pond; I had mud all the way up to those parts that mud should not go.

It was a really good walk; the forecast rain did come a couple of hours earlier than expected but we didn't get *too* wet.

We set out in search of twelve geo-targets. We found them all. That was something of a result. Especially bearing in mind that today was a calendar day.

We got back to the car. I looked at my pristine car which I had valeted only three days ago. I looked at the mud dripping from my dog. Fortunately I had an old towel he could sit on. We came home and my first reaction was that I was pleased taht Sid was asleep. He'd clearly not missed us. Then I saw the turd on the carpet and the tiddle stain on "Daddies Little Angel ^TM"'s bag of stuff. I'd taken him into the garden before we went out; he did "stuff" then. We were only gone for three hours!

My dog saw wad had been done and immediately his ears and tail dropped. He knew it was wrong. Sid looked up at me, then went back to sleep.

I gave "Furry Face ^TM" a bath; quite a bit of mud came off. I uploaded the photos of our walk, and a video too. And then I had a notification from LinkedIn. Alan Dias had shared an article. If any of my loyal readers know who Alan Dias is, please don't hesitate to share this knowledge.

"er indoors ^TM" got home and we set off to Asda to get the scran for Christmas Day. The stuff for one day came to over one hundred and ten quid. To think that some days I get by on a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, a bit of toast and a bag of crisps.

Once home I ran "Furry Face ^TM" round the block whilst "er indoors ^TM" took Sid off to see his Mummy. "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" is missing Sid. The sooner she gets a permanent address the better for everyone...

20 December 2015 (Sunday) - Hippies

I got up at 2am and chased both dogs into the garden whether they liked it or not. (As a matter of fact one did and one didn't) I was therefore not impressed to get up at 6am to find a turd waiting for me just outside the bathroom door. I suspect that was from the dog that didn't like it at 2am.

I had a spot of brekkie and had a look on-line. My piss boiled over Facebook... Something which annoys me is how history repeats itself.

About fifty years ago hippies sprang up and became somewhat notorious for slobbing about whilst dressed stupidly, stoned out of their tiny minds blathering platitudes about peace and love whilst (for many) making themselves patently unemployable. Presumably with this in mind, my nephew has modelled himself on Coco the Clown and spends much of his time stoned out of his tiny mind blathering platitudes about peace and love all over Facebook... having dyed his hair bright green and pierced his right ear with a lump of plastic so large as to make him instantly undesirable to any potential employer. (I've nagged him about this so many times!)

I agree entirely that the world *would* be a better place if everyone stopped fighting and killing and hating each other. However the hippie philosophy doesn't seem to offer a practical alternative.

I can't help but think that if those who are so vocally advocating slobbing about stoned out of their tiny minds (whilst blathering platitudes about peace and love all over Facebook) actually paid their way (and didn't expect subsidies from my taxes) then the world might actually be a better place.

Have you ever noticed that you rarely see hippies going to work at all; let alone before 7am on a Sunday morning?

I set off to work. It was dark when I left home; after all in two days time it is the shortest day of the year. Mind you it was warm; according to my car's dashboard it was eleven degrees at 6.45am. I've only had to scrape ice off of my car once this year.

As I walked to my car I met a chap walking toward the town. I say "walking" - he was staggering all over the pavement taking three or four steps from side to side for every step forward. He was wearing a (rather crumpled) fine suit, but his tie was knotted under his right ear, he had tinsel round his neck and a carnation behind his right ear. He attempted to exchange pleasentries with me, but speech was far beyond him.

He seemed happy. Perhaps he was a posh hippy?

As I drove to work I listened to the radio. In stark contrast to my nephew's wittering about love and peace, the Prime Minister is to review the use of guns by British police.

It transpires that British police are rather reticent to use firearms because fears of lengthy investigations, public inquiries and even prosecutions following a shooting deter police form wanting to take pot shots.

There is no easy answer. On the one hand the police should be able to shoot gun-wielding terrorists dead on the spot without a second thought. On the other hand in such situations it is not clear until after the event what was actually going on.

I'm glad I don't have to make such decisions. It is much easier to pontificate from a distance.

I got to work just as dawn was breaking and had another busy day.

Twelve and a half hours later I came home again.

You don't see many hippies working twelve and a half hour shifts on Sundays do you?

(I'm going to have a little lie down now until my blood pressure subsides)

19 December 2015 (Saturday) - Nuts

I got up five minutes before the alarm was due to do its thing and spent a couple of minutes picking up the turds that Sid had peeled out overnight. What a delightful creature he is...

Over brekkie I had a look-see on-line. Little had changed really. It rarely does. As I scoffed my brekkie I watched a particularly dire episode of "George and Mildred" in which a hen-pecked George was hiding in the pub. Much as I like going to the pub myself, it never fails to amaze me how large a part of life pubs play on the telly. I wish I could afford to go drinking as much as George Roper did.

And so to work. I do like my shift system because it gives me a lot of time off. However the flip side is days like today when I have to go in to work on a Saturday and do a twelve hour shift. But on reflection I prefer this way of working to a nine-to-five arrangement.

As I drove I was reminded of yesterday's valet-ing which the car had; both the gear stick and the steering wheel were rather slipperier than usual. And (as it does) the radio was churning out its own brand of drivel. There was an interview with a Kentish nut farmer who wasn't happy about the presenter's implication that people only buy his nuts as an ornament for Christmas then throw them away uneaten. He seemed surprised, shocked and offended by this.

I'm sorry if the farmer wasn't happy, but that's what we do every year. And so does everyone else. Don't they?

Bearing in mind how the new Star Wars film is in the news, the pundits were talking about how future wars will be fought using space based technology. I would have thought that shooting down communication satellites would be an obvious way to cripple an enemy, but the pundits seemed surprised at just how easy the entire global communication infrastructure could be knackered. Are these people *really* that stupid?

Despite the ding-dong I had with them earlier in the week I stopped off at Morrisons to get some supplies before work. Much as they might boil my piss, they have one over-riding advantage when compared to other supermarkets; they are on my way to work.

Admittedly I drive past Asda, but I drive past Asda (usually) before 7am, and they don't open until 7am. Visiting any other supermarket means a rather serious diversion.

I got there; I did my shopping. All rather uneventful when compared to my last visit.

I got to work, and had a very busy day. Ideally I would have gone on from work to the work's Christmas do. But not leaving work till gone 8pm meant I would be rather late. And a late night isn't good before an early start.

I've got to do all this again tomorrow you know..

18 December 2015 (Friday) - This n That

Apparently "er indoors ^TM" chivvied the dogs back downstairs to their baskets four times last night. I didn't hear any of it; I slept like a log last night. I suspect the rather good steak dinner had something to do with it. Having said that I woke this morning with something of a stomach ache.

Over brekkie I checked out the Internet. Christmas and Star Wars seemed to be being bandied about in equal proportion, and the teachers of my aquiantance were crowing that today was their last day at work. Sometimes teachers wind me up *just* a little bit. They seem to be *very* vocal in telling the world about their extended holidays (something like thirteen weeks?) and then get all upset when the general public doesn't respect the fact that their jobs are very demanding and they do a *lot* of preparation in their own time.

All I can say on the matter is that the average teacher seems to be breaking up for Christmas sometime during the afternoon today; I break up for Christmas at 8.15 am on Christmas morning (and will probably sleep for much of the day).

I had an email (well sixty of the things) telling me that the geo-series I put out yesterday had gone live. There would seem not to have been any problems with the series; I was pleased about that. Whilst anyone can go find them whenever they like (and some already have), I'm hoping one or two people might like to come out for a walk in their general direction with me on New Year's Day. I've set it all up as a Facebook event which anyone can join.

"er indoors ^TM" wanted to know if any of her best tops were in the ironing basket. I wish she wouldn't ask things like that - how am I supposed to know a "best" top from any other sort. We have rather different criteria as to what constitures a "best top" (woof!) I just iron them - I don't grade them. She then spent five minutes telling me how stupid I was.... it turns out she wanted a *vest* top.

I know what those are.

I then put the leads on the dogs and we walked round to the park where we met "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" and Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM". Littlun beamed when he saw us and we had a good walk around the park.

Once home I then drove down to the marsh - today was a geo-calendar day. I made rather hard work of finding a film pot under a rock down there. Then (as a Christmas treat) I got the car valeted. It hadn't been done for some time. It was *rather* grubby but is amazingly clean now.

I came home to find "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" still in residence. She was waiting delivery of a replacement phone. "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM" was contentedly wreaking destruction on our living room. As he pulled something electical I told him off. He sobbed for fifteen minutes; Granddads aren't supposed to do telling off.

Having seen off most of the contents of the living room "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM" went round to wreak havoc at Brian and Rachel's whilst I went to see the dental hygenist. She had a good rummage about inside my cake muncher, and I then spent a couple of hours watching Clint Eastwood escaping from Alcatraz on the telly whilst doing the ironing. I'd not done that for some time. (Ironing *and* watching Clint Eastwood)

"er indoors ^TM" eventually came home armed with fish 'n' chips (or chips fish-n as "My Boy ^TM" used to call it) and we spent the evening catching up with stuff recorded onto the SkyPlus box. "er indoors ^TM" had had a better offer for the evening that she had turned down... she could have gone Ingressing mob-handed with the blues but she had thought better of the idea.

I wonder if it was my griping that it was exactly this sort of thing that made me pack up the whole Ingressing game that changed her mind... or perhaps it was just anything for a quiet life...?