7 March 2024 (Thursday) - World Book Day

I woke to find Morgan’s head pressed up tightly to mine. The two of us lay there for seemingly ages; him snoring and me not wanting to wake him.

I eventually got up, took my Seven Seas joint tablets, made toast and had my usual peer into the Internet. I received a “Top Fan” badge from the Facebook page “Save us from fukwits – 2” this morning. I have no idea what I did to earn that accolade. I sent out a birthday wish, and looked at all the pictures of small children dressed as characters from children’s literature, nursery rhymes or TV shows. Today is World Book Day and rather than reading anything, children are encouraged to dress up. I’ve ranted about this before… there’s adverts on the telly at the moment from McDonalds who are raising money to increase literacy in children. They claim one in five children don’t even own a book.

In the past I’ve come up with a list of my top ten books for World Book Day. You can see it here. On reflection I don’t think my choices have changed since last year.

 

I took the dogs up to Kings Wood. On Monday I wrote “As we went the dogs found a dead blackbird to roll in”. On Monday I buried the thing under a huge pile of leaf litter. This morning one of them dug it up, and all three rolled in it.

Dogs are foul creatures.

As we walked we exchanged pleasantries with a few other walkers, but there were no episodes, for which I was grateful. In fact the only real incident was seeing a spaniel dragging half a tree which was tangled in his fur, and the dog’s mummy whinging that she would need to cut the dog free of the tree when she got home

We came home; I had a quick cuppa then cracked on in the garden. I got three fence panels painted. It really does look an improvement on how it was. Rather than painting more, I mowed the lawn, and decided that over four hours gardening was enough for today.

 

Having been out with the dogs for a couple of hours this morning and been working in the garden this afternoon I’m not hurting anything like I thought I might be. I ache, but nowhere near as much as I’ve done in the past. Are these Seven Seas joint tablets working? Bearing in mind how sceptical I am about that sort of bollox, it would really boil my piss if they were.

6 March 2024 (Wednesday) - Painting Shed and Fences

After a good night’s sleep I sparked up the lap-top and scoffed toast as I peered into the Internet as I do most mornings. This morning’s petty squabble was about ex-Blue Peter presenter John Noakes and his dog Shep. Was the dog the property of Mr Noakes or of the BBC? Bearing in mind the dog died thirty-five years ago you would think people would have better things to argue about, wouldn’t you?

 

I took my Seven Seas mineral supplement and we drove up to the woods where my watch assures me we walked for four miles. Or Treacle and I walked for four miles; with their zooming to and fro Morgan and Bailey must have covered five miles, if not six.

Sadly my idiot magnet was at full power. As we walked down one slope to walk up another we met a young lady and her dog wading through the mud in the valley. She looked at my boots and gaiters, looked at her pink-princess trainers, and then looked at the mud in the valley in front of her as though she was going to cry. I told her that there was a lot less mud on the higher ground; this came as a major revelation to her. Don’t people realise that water runs downhill?

And we met the old couple with the beagles on the leads. We’ve seen them before. The old woman with one of the beagles isn’t strong enough to control the dog and gets dragged all over the place by it, so we always give them a wide berth. Seeing them coming we turned off along another path, but Morgan wandered up to say hello. I whistled at him and he stopped. The old bloke clearly didn’t realise that Morgan had stopped and started ranting loudly at his wife (deliberately loud enough for me to hear) that whistling doesn’t control dogs, and all dogs should be on leads at all times as that is the only way to control them. I whistled again and Morgan ran to me, and we went off on our way. As we walked I could hear the wife saying something to which the old bloke told her not to start.

 

We came home to wash the mud off, and after a cuppa I went outside. I got the front fence, shed and the fence panel behind the shed painted. It only took hour hours to do. I’ve got the leccie box by the pond, a few planters and a couple of dozen fence panels still to paint. In the past I’ve averaged an hour and a quarter to do one fence panel, so I’ve still got a lot to do. And once all the painting is done I need to look at the shed roof and I want to build a couple more planters. And put rockery plants round the bog filter. And get the pond filter’s bulb changed.

I also noticed that the instructions on the paint have changed. The last time I painted fences the stuff reckoned it was good for up to five years; now it says it is good for up to two years. So I need to be doing those fences every year. Not once every four years – the last time I painted them was August 2020.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the last episode of Johnny Vegas in “Carry on Glamping”. We quite fancied the idea of a weekend away in one of his buses or helicopters or boats. On the one hand the place is dog friendly and isn’t ridiculously expensive. However on the other hand it is nearly a four hour drive away. Probably just as well the place is pretty much already fully booked for this year.

5 March 2024 (Tuesday) - Aching, Jigsaws

I hurt when I woke up. More and more I seem to be constantly aching. Perhaps I should have done all the semi-retirement time off forty years ago when moving about didn’t hurt so much?

I made toast and scoffed it as I peered into a dull internet. Today’s squabble was between Doctor Who fans. People who discovered the show recently feel the old episodes dragged on and on interminably. People who’ve been watching the show for years think the new episodes are over too quickly. Both sides have a point.

And now that Doctor Who has been bought by the Disney corporation there was talk of the rumours that Warner Bros are planning the buy the Star Trek franchise from Paramount. Are they? It is easy to forget that what I see as entertainment is primarily a money-making business.

 

I got the leads onto the dogs and we tried to set off… Sadly the road was gridlocked because of four-way traffic lights at the Chinese take-away. And as is always the way, no one was actually doing any road work.

We eventually got going. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how there are calls in Russia for them to attack the western countries that are supplying the Ukrainians with weapons. I can see their point. If one country bombs another, that’s an act of war. But what if one country gives another country a bomb with the sole intention that this other country is going to use it?

We got to the woods and had a rather good walk into a part of the woods in which we’ve not been for some time. We won’t be going back to that art in a hurry… it was on the muddy side. Whilst we were there we barked at a horse (who was minding his own business in a field) and we hid another geocache. To get the final location you have to do a jigsaw puzzle. You can do the jigsaw puzzle by clicking here if you fancy a go.

 

We came home, had a bath, dog brekkie, a cuppa and a Belgian bun and I unwrapped my Amazon delivery. I’ve got fed up with aching all the time, so I’ve got some thirty days worth of Seven Seas joint care supplex and turmeric with glucosamine, omega-3 vitamins C and D and manganese. Go me(!) I doubt it will do anything, but (if nothing else) in a month’s time I can complain on here about what a waste of money it was.

I then I loaded the car with rubbish and set off again. Through the traffic lights to B&Q where I met someone with whom I used to work. We chatted for ages, then I got two tubs of fence paint, then drove through the traffic lights and set off to the tip. Usually if you want to meet odd people doing strange things, the tip is the place to go, but today things were thankfully rather dull. I drove in, dinged out my rubbish and went. If only all tip visits went that easily.

Pausing only briefly in the town centre for Munzical purposes I drove over to the hospital for my pre-operative assessment. My weight was a tad high, but you can tell that by looking at me. My blood pressure was148/88 which I was told wasn’t anything to worry about but Google says that’s a tad high too. Bearing in mind how much I walk with the dogs I would have thought it would have been lower.

Perhaps I need to lose weight…

 

I came home through the rain via Pets at Home where I collected the dogs’ flea treatments and got them a chew treat each. And once home I got the message that the geocache we’d hidden earlier had received the thumbs-up from the geo-feds.

As the dogs chomped on their treats I made myself a cuppa and guzzled it with a chocolate hot cross bun (rather odd!) and sulked. I had plans for the afternoon. I wanted to change the ultraviolet bulb in the pond’s filter and start painting the shed, planter, pond leccie cupboard and fences, but it was hossing down.

So I settled in front of the telly with a sleeping Morgan and watched more episodes of “Four In A Bed” in which the hatred between some of the contestants was tangible.

 

As I watched so my phone beeped. That geocache we’d hidden earlier had been found for the first time. Someone had seen the notification, solved the puzzle, driven nine miles to the woods then stomped through a mile of mud to where we’d hidden the thing all in under two and a half hours. The pull of being First to Find is strong…

 

“er indoors ^TM” is Zooming at her mates. I’m going to have a look at the geo-map in Kings Wood. The puzzle series of geocaches I put out a year ago has been found eighty times. It’s good for this summer, but in the autumn I will probably need to re-vamp it. And that will take some doing.

Meanwhile one of the dog’s anal glands needs doing; there’s a distinctive smell about the place. I wonder which dog it is… I’m not keen on sniffing too closely.

4 March 2024 (Monday) - Squirrels, Pressure-Washers

The internet is an amazing thing… This morning on my Facebook feed a vague acquaintance announced his amazing discovery that so much of it isn’t actually free but is paid for my advertising. Which is why there are so many adverts on it. How can supposedly intelligent people take so long to realise this? And some American evangelist was claiming that atheists ate deep-fried embryos whilst his own Twitter feed was offering that the chap would pray for you for a price.

Meanwhile I had an email – my credit rating has gone up again. That was nice.

 

Seeing the sun was out for a change (he typed cynically!) I got the leads on to the dogs. Morgan wasn’t keen on the idea. Strangely he never is. He clearly loves the walks when we get to the woods, but never wants to actually go.

As we drove up to the woods the pundits on the radio were talking about how today marks the fortieth anniversary of the miner’s strike. Several experts were wheeled on including Neil Kinnock who was the leader of the opposition at the time.  The observation was made that the leadership of the miners made a bit of a balls-up in waiting until the country had stockpiled loads of coal and waiting until the worst of the winter was over before starting the strike. Neil Kinnock made the observation that everyone involved in the coal industry knew its days were numbered and it would have been far better had everyone made the effort to invest in transitioning away from coal than in flogging a dead horse. At the time the country was divided on whether or not to support the miners; I think my father summed it up when he made the observation that it was already cheaper to import coal from Poland, and then the miners chose to go on strike anyway.

 

We got to the woods and walked one of our usual walks. As we went the dogs found a dead blackbird to roll in. And after one of their mad charges into the trees, Morgan came back carrying a dead squirrel. He got to within ten yards of me, looked very sheepish and ran into a thicket where he dropped it. Bailey picked it up and seemed very pleased with herself.

I managed to get it off of her and I put it up a tree where the buzzards will see it off.

I’m pretty sure Morgan just picked up a dead squirrel and didn’t kill it himself; in the past when Treacle, Pogo and Fudge had small animals, the things would be twitching for some time after death. This squirrel wasn’t twitching at all.

Dogs can be foul creatures…

 

We came home where I made a cuppa, then I went into the garden, cleared the patio area, set up the pressure-washer, turned it on… and nothing happened. I gave it a clout and it made an odd noise. So I unplugged it and attempted to take it apart to see if I could fix it. The screws holding it closed seemed rusted in place. I gave it another clout, plugged it back in again and it worked perfectly. I got the patio and the area outside the kitchen window scrubbed, but it took some doing.

Have you ever pressure-washed a patio? After a very short bit of pressure-washing the ground is soon awash with filthy black water which needs to be swept away. Sweeping it down the drain is OK for five minutes, then the grate over the drain blocks up and needs unbunging. By the time I’d washed, swept, washed, swept and tidied up, a couple of hours had passed. I put everything away and found that after all the exertions I could barely move.

 

I settled myself in front of the telly and watched episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which those claiming to have years of experience of running five-star hotels were outdone at every turn by those running a B&B for fun.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up dinner and went off bowling. I sparked up Netflix and watched a film. “The Mercy” starred Colin Firth as a competitor in a single-handed round-the world yacht race in 1968. I won’t say too much about the film for fear of giving spoilers, but I will make the observation that with today’s technology you would have been far more alone sailing the world alone then than you would be now.

3 March 2024 (Sunday) - Late Shift

I can always remember the golden rule of toddlers being that you never let them have a nap. “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” had a nap yesterday evening and consequently was screaming for much of the night. Fortunately she, “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs were up in the attic room, but the noise got so much that Treacle decamped to my bed at half past two just to get some peace and quiet.

I woke at eight o’clock, and with everyone else finally asleep I made the most of the peace and quiet, made brekkie and peered at the Internet. Today people were deliberately trying to pick fights about daleks and Amazon deliveries. Always something new to quarrel about, eh? There was also a question about people’s favourite format for the story of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. To me it is a radio program; that is how it first started. The books and films and TV series have been made for those who don’t/won’t listen to radio. In much the same way that the Harry Potter films were made for people who don’t/won’t read a book. But I thought better of voicing the opinion.

 

Making the most of the peace and quiet I had another look at the geo-puzzle which had me stumped yesterday. I’ve got to find two numbers. The first “is a funny one really and only consists of three characters”. I know that one. I won’t give it away, but I will say that it was part of a geo-puzzle to which I got the answer a week or so ago. The other one has me stumped. With five or six (can have either!) characters, it “was once used as a number before more modern (and more sophisticated) numbers were discovered. Nowadays it is more often used in a recreational context”. If anyone knows what it is, feel free to let me know.

 

With everyone else still asleep I spent a few minutes pootling in the garden. A bit of tidying up... once dog turds were gathered it was mostly emptying rain water out of buckets and pots, and getting ready for the next bout of pressure-washing. There's probably a car-full of rubbish in the shed to take to the tip at some point as well, but I decided to worry about that another day.

 

“er indoors ^TM” and “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” emerged from their pit, and I spent a few minutes with littlun looking round the garden. She seems to find it fascinating. But all too soon it was time to set off to work. I went via a dozen dull Points of Interest (now the Munzee Clan War has started for this month) to the Sainsbury's petrol station where in a novel break with tradition absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened. I mentioned to the woman behind the till about the old bat who works there during the week and bends over backwards to be unhelpful. This got them all giggling behind the tills; they knew exactly who I meant.

 

As I drove west-wards to Pembury I listened to "Desert Island Discs" featuring Rita Rae who is a Scottish lawyer and judge who has a fascinating life story and a frankly dreadful taste in music.  Her choices of music weren't songs; they really were strange howling noises. I turned off half-way through and sang along to Ivor Biggun songs instead.

 

Work was work. I always say that working in a blood bank is hours of tedious boredom interspersed with moment of stark panic. Somewhat flippant perhaps, but not entirely wrong. It certainly summed up today where time dragged up until the last hour when things suddenly livened up.

I was very glad to see the night shift arrive.

 

I came home to a rather good pork chop. “er indoors ^TM” certainly does boil up a good bit of scran.

“Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” has announced she wants to start buying storage lockers full of crap and selling it at a profit. This sounds like an awful lot of farting about to me, but once she gets a daft idea in her head… she is very much her father’s daughter…

2 March 2024 (Saturday) - Awaiting Waa-Waa's Arrival

I woke with quite a headache this morning. We won’t get that brand of red wine again. I made toast and looked into the Internet and rolled my eyes.  American football player Tyler Owens has revealed that he does not 'believe in space or other planets”. Seriously. Just look up at the night sky… The chap also seems to think the flat earthers are making some serious points. Not only is this chap allowed to vote and do jury service, being a sports star, gullible people will listen to his drivel.

Here’s a suggestion. When people reach adulthood they should sit an exam. If they pass they are allowed to join in with society. If they fail, they become effectively a “protected citizen” looked after by a state to which they are demonstrably unable to contribute. It’s an old idea in sci-fi, but surely one with merit. How can our current democracy work when the opinion of someone like this is of equal value to someone who actually believes in reality.

 

Being Saturday I took the hounds round to Dog Club. Just me; “er indoors ^TM” was off to Craft Club. I had wondered whether I would be taking them this morning after yesterday’s rain, but the rain had eased up a little. The ground was still muddy though. We had a great time. Honey who started only a month ago and had been oh-so-timid came straight up to me to say hello. Bailey had a go at “fetch” in that she chased after the ball, but lost interest when it stopped bouncing. Fudge used to do that – I think he was colourblind. Is Bailey too? Treacle did her usual trick of carrying a ball and prompting me to try to take it. And then Morgan and Bailey joined in with the bigger dogs playing chase in the mud.

As we drove home so the rain got worse. I got the mystery year competition on the radio right. What year was the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited released? 1981.

 

We came home for a serious scrub. All three dogs got far filthier after half an hour at Dog Club than they ever do after hours in the woods.

With dogs scrubbed I put my trousers though the washing machine – they were filthy too. I then sent out messages about next week’s geo-meet to fifty Hunters of Tupperware. Hopefully that should drum up the numbers.

And talking of numbers I then struggled with a new geo-puzzle that went live this morning.

 

“er indoors ^TM” returned, and as the rain stopped so I got the pressure-washer out again and had a go in the back garden. I got quite a bit cleaned, but there’s still a lot more to do. I could have carried on pressure-washing but the lawn was awash where I’d been at the stepping stones, so I packed up for today.

“er indoors ^TM” went off again to get glasses, so I sparked up the telly and laughed at “Ancient Aliens” on the telly. Rather akin in intellectual ability to the American footballer who boiled my piss this morning, the people who made this show wanted to attribute absolutely everything to aliens. Given a dog turd in my garden, and three guilty-looking dogs, these people would have you think some hyper-intelligent alien species flew half way across the universe to dump on my lawn. And these idiots would do anything to discredit the obvious explanation.

 

“er indoors ^TM” returned again, this time with “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” in tow. Littlun is having a sleepover. So far we’ve done dog-snogging, had a tantrum over not wanting our dinner, eaten a bag of Christmas (crisps) and a bag of party rings, and as I type littlun is having her grandmother walk her up and down the stairs.

Much as I love her, she’s hard work. I can’t remember “My Boy ^TM” and “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” being anything like as tiring.

1 March 2024 (Friday) - Battle Abbey, Pressure Washing

Yesterday I wrote “I had an email about a new virtual geocache at Battle Abbey. I thought about chasing to be First to Find but thought better of it. It would involve an hour’s drive along country lanes, and I’ve done enough of that already this week”. What I didn’t write was that being the first one to find a virtual geocache takes some doing as they are very rare, and getting one gives you serious bragging rights amongst Hunters of Tupperware. I spent much of yesterday wondering if I’d made the right decision. I checked the on-line listing probably every half-hour with a view to going down early this morning even though the weather forecast wasn’t good.

“er indoors ^TM” was off out with her mates yesterday evening. When she came home the FTF was still unclaimed. Did she fancy a little road trip? We pondered and thought about it,,, and at half past eleven last night we decided we might as well… it wasn’t as though we had anything better to do.

It has to be said that I don’t think the dogs were impressed…

 

There was a minor hiccup on the thirty-mile drive down in that the sat-nav wanted to do as much of it as possible on single tracked country lanes, and when we finally persuaded it to take wider roads it wanted to take closed roads. Avoiding the badgers, rabbits and foxes we drove through the rain and got to Battle Abbey shortly before one o’clock where we had another minor hiccup. To claim a find we needed a photo with the gatehouse in the background. Well… the gatehouse was most definitely in the background but you couldn’t see it because it was too dark. So since no one was watching we moved the car so that the headlights lit up the gatehouse (a bit) and photographed like things possessed in the desperate hope that we’d get a decent photo before the rain started again.

We got one or two… Bearing in mind that were taken in pitch darkness they aren’t a good as they might be,

There was fog on the way home… And all the traffic lights that I’ve whinged about before. By the time we’d got home and I’d done the on-line geo-things in was half past three before I found myself fighting the dogs for bed space.

 

I woke at half past eight this morning; I might have slept longer if not for the sound of the rain. Over brekkie I had a little look at the Internet. It was still there. I sent out birthday wishes to two Facebook friends.

My piss boiled somewhat at an advert I saw on one of the fishing Facebook groups I follow. I’ve mentioned in the past that fishing tackle manufacturers get tents, re-brand them as a “bivvy” (because most people can’t spell “bivouac”) and quadruple the price. But the latest racket is to knock out a sleeping bag and camp bed as a “sleep system” and watch the punters hand over their money as fast as they can.

There wasn’t much else on-line really, which was probably for the best.

 

Usually I would take the dogs out first thing, but the dogs were fast asleep after last night’s adventure and the rain was torrential. I had a vague idea to get the pressure washer out because it makes loads of mess which the rain would wash away, but it was too cold and too wet for that idea, so I spent an hour doing CPD then got the pressure washer out anyway. The ground of the front garden is supposed to be a light brown/tan sort of colour, but it was black. It needed a scrub. In the past, passers-by have whinged about the mess the pressure washer makes (it makes a serious mess) but today’s heavy rain would keep passers-by to a minimum, and would wash away most of the mess.

As is always the case, the pressure washer took quite a bit of setting up, and once set up I scrubbed away. Two minutes scrubbing, thirty seconds brushing the water away. What the pressure washer does is to blast the dirt off of the ground, and it leaves you with a flood of foul-coloured water which needs to be swept away. Swept across the pavement into the gutter. It’s the brushing of filthy water across the pavement that winds up the passers-by. I had one once threaten to report me for getting muck up the side of the car parked outside my own house. The fact that it was my car was neither here nor there. I make a point of having my car outside when I’m pressure-washer-ing so’s none of the normal people can complain that I’ve made a mess of their car. Not that I ever have.

 

With pressure-washing done the rain cleared up I took the dogs to the park. We got half-way there before getting caught in a downpour which turned into a hailstorm, so we came home.

I had a little doze in front of the telly, then watched some episodes of “Four In A Bed”. The first B&B was run by a pair of old biddies who prided themselves on running something that my gran’s gran would have appreciated, and when asked why the wi-fi didn’t work, they said that having crap wi-fi was a feature, and that decent customers don’t want wi-fi..

The second place was a rather average B&B run by some odd chap who hated criticism; odd really when he had so much in his place to criticize. The third so-call B&B was an eighty-one room hotel run by someone with a passionate hatred of the chap who ran the second B&B. And in one of those strange quirks of fate the fourth B&B was not a hundred yards from where we’d been taking photos of Battle Abbey last night. Strangely this was the only place to which all the contestants said they would return, but the place still came second to last. Perhaps if the young lady running the place had kept her chest under wraps?

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we washed down with a bottle of plonk whilst watching Johnny Vegas’s “Carry on Glamping”.

For some reason I’m feeling rather tired

I hope the torrential rain eases up for Dog Club tomorrow morning..