3 June 2024 (Monday) - A Day at Work

I woke in the middle of the night as I do, set a load of washing going and went back to bed where I dozed on and off until the washing was done. I got up properly, hung it out, put more in, made toast, and watched the first episode of “Tires”; a new series on Netflix which shows some promise.

I then sparked up my lap-top. I had a message from Facebook. A couple of days ago I’d reported an advert. One click on that advert went straight to PornHub, and even that didn’t breach Facebook’s advertising standards.

I sent out a birthday video to “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” and leaving instructions for “er indoors ^TM” to hang out the washing I set off.

 

I took a little diversion into the town centre for some Munzee Points of Interest, then set off up the motorway to work. I say "motorway"; Operation Brock was again in force for no explicable reason.

As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting their usual drivel. I'd not heard the news for a week or so and it hadn't changed much in that time. The war in Gaza continues; it seems both sides are keen on the war continuing. For all there is talk of cease fire, there is talk and talk, and the poor people on the ground continue to suffer.

There was also a lot of opinion spouted about the upcoming General Election. The Conservatives are keen to sort out the entire trans issue by revamping the Equality Act in a shallow plan to stop Conservative voters turning to the Reform party. Mind you I use the term "sort out" in its loosest way. Effectively what they propose is that anyone can declare they are whatever gender they like and that is all heigh-ho pip and dandy until such time as they try to interact with anyone else at all. At that point gender would legally become the same as biological sex, and biological females go to ladies toilets and compete in female sporting events and get banged up in ladies prisons (and the same for males) blah-de-blah just like it always used to be. Personally I see this as a fight waiting to happen; things have moved on since the bad old days.

However I'll (again) make the observation that whilst there are genuine trans people (of that I have no doubt), for many (especially the young) it is the craze of the moment. When my father was young there were Teddy Boys, when I was a lad there was punk rockers and when my children were younger everyone dressed in Burberry.

In my oldest granddaughter's last year at school there were twenty children claiming to be trans in a class of thirty. 

I wonder what the craze will be when “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” is of an age to join in?

 

I got to work. A few years ago I used to feel sick at the thought of going to work. Now I quite like it. I did my bit, and spent half an hour showing an A-level student the wonders of what blood looks like down a microscope. She seemed quite impressed; I didn't have the heart to tell her not to follow a scientific career.

 

I came home… once I eventually found somewhere to park. “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner and went bowling. I settled on the sofa with the dogs and watched a film on Netflix. “Brian and Charles” was rather good, but like most films went on a tad too long.

2 June 2024 (Sunday) - FTF, Folkestone

I slept like a log last night but woke with rather bad backache. I got up, put some washing in, had a shave… and went back to bed. I got up a couple of hours later and the back wasn’t quite so bad. I hung out a load of washing on a glorious morning, put another in, made toast and had my usual root around the Internet.

Back to the old routine, eh?

Yesterday I’d bitten the bullet and posted a picture of my pond plant to one of the pond-related Facebook pages. What was it? Lesser spearwort, meadow buttercup, brass buttons, creeping jenny… there were as many opinions as there were people to give them. For once everyone was offering opinions nicely. However this wasn’t the case for the “Upstairs Downstairs” page I moderate; someone had “called bullshit” on someone else’s comment. I deleted it, and set the one who’d called so that their posts need to be approved by an admin for a month. You have to worry about the mentality of someone who “calls bullshit” on Upstairs Downstairs though, don’t you?

I saw a rather lengthy article from someone who until recently was pleading poverty. Today he was singing the praises of his Tesla car; something which cost him many times what my car cost me. Other people are very strange with their money, aren’t they? Someone who defriended me a few years ago and lived in a half-million pound house similarly regularly claimed not to have a pot to piss in whilst her daughter went to private school (with a five-figure bill each year). And the one who recently crowd-funded a family member’s funeral is often all over Facebook with holidays and heavy drinking sessions.

On the positive side the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic has re-launched itself. I’m actually an ordained minister of that church, and it once granted me an honorary degree -  A Master of Ignorance. Its central tenet is there may or may not be a god, but we aren’t really bothered either way. “We don’t know and we don’t care” always struck me as a rather sensible religious standpoint.

 

With a second load of washing hung out and “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs up and about we went for a little walk. On the Friday before we went on holiday a series of Adventure Lab geocaches and a bonus geocache went live in Viccie Park. We didn’t have time to go find them then, but today (nine days later!) no one had yet claimed the First to Find.

Surely someone had been out in the week but was playing silly beggars?

Some people really do delight in going to new geocaches, doing all the secret rituals, and not logging it on-line until someone else has been out chasing the First to Find and has found they are too late. Some people really do get a strange satisfaction in wasting other people’s time in this way. I’m told it’s called “keeping it open”.

We fully expected someone else to have been out during the week; after all, new geocaches round here are usually found within a couple of hours of going live. But we did all the Adventure Lab stuff, got the location of the final stage, and we found we really were First to Find. Nine days after publication. That’s unheard of.

 

We came home, I got the dry washing in, we loaded ourselves and the dogs into the car and set off to Folkestone. I got a job lot of Taco Bell and took it all round to “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM”. The nice lady in Taco Bell did a custom-made burrito for “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM”; she’s not up for a volcano burrito (yet).

We had a good bit of scoff, we had the obligatory dog-snogging and Bimmy-Boo. For some inexplicable reason Bimmy-Boo was done sitting in a bucket. And then we went to the Leas for a little walk. We had hoped to catch the dog event that was on today, but we were too late. But we saw the stalls that were there for it. Littlun had a go on the trampolines, and on the hook-a-duck and won a bouncy ball. And after an ice-cream all round it was time to come home.

 

I put more washing in, watered the plants, and spent quite a while picking all the grass out of the gravelled area where the bird feeder used to be until I saw all the grass. I think I shall put some weed killer there, and bird feeders over the lawn.

There had been talk of a roast dinner this evening, but what with a bellyful of burrito we weren’t that hungry.

There’s talk of pizza… but so far, only talk…

The day’s fourth wash load is going through the poor machine.

1 June 2024 (Saturday) - Back to Reality

Needing to be up promptly I’d told the Alexa to sound an alarm at seven o’clock. It made a rather strange noise. Personally I prefer the sound of my phone telling me (quite literally) to get my arse out of its pit.

I got up, did my packing, generally got in the way of everyone else trying to do their packing, and it wasn’t long before we were saying our goodbyes and heading homewards.

 

As we set off I looked at the clock. Usually at that time on a Saturday morning we would have been finishing up at Dog Club and trying to work out what the year was on Steve’s mystery year competition on the radio. It was a shame that Radio Ashford doesn’t broadcast as far as Cambridgeshire; we tried to get the on-line version but the internet signal was patchy at best.

As we drove southwards down the motorways we looked at amazement at the miles of stationary traffic trying to head northwards; we were right to have made an early start last week.

 

We got home and were soon unloaded (if not unpacked), and it wasn’t long before we worked out that “er indoors ^TM” had left a bag of shoes at the holiday cottage. Woops! Mind you I was very pleased to hear her saying that it was her fault and she should have checked; I did check the utility room where she’d left them and clearly I didn’t check the right cupboards.

I had a little look in the garden. “My Boy ^TM” and the rain had seen that the plants were OK. Most of the pond plants had gone berserk though. The big pond was amazingly clear; I’m convinced that my theory about plants in a pond is a good one. Sadly the filter in the little pond had blocked up. It does that with annoying regularity. A couple of days I’d seen a photo of the thing on one of the pond-related Facebook groups asking if it was any good. The general consensus is that it makes for a good fountain, but as a filter it needs too much cleaning.

But it didn’t take that long to clean out, and once I’d run round with the lawn mower I cleaned the filter of the big pond too. For all that the plants in the big pond had gone berserk, the punnet of watercress I’d chucked in a couple of weeks ago hadn’t really taken off, so as “er indoors ^TM” went shopping I asked her to get another bag of the stuff.

 

I put a week’s worth of undercrackers into the washing machine. It had had a week off; back to the grind for it. And then I had a little pootle in the garden planning the extension to the bog filter. I’ve got a length of drainpipe to protect my inlet (oo-er!) and probably enough shingle to make a base. All I need are some large cobblestones and the plants. If any of my loyal readers have any spare large cobblestones they don’t want, I’m your man. And if anyone could identify the plant with yellow flowers in the piccie above I’d be very grateful. The obvious place to ask would be one of the Facebook pond-related pages; my post I awaiting approval but I suspect that just asking what a plant is will be enough to kick off several rather bitter arguments.

 

As I type this, all three dogs are snoring. We’ve had a good week away but it has been very full-on for them. They are worn out, poor things. As am I…

31 May 2024 (Friday) - Reach

Another wet morning, but with a forecast looking better for later in the day. As we planned where we might go we were suddenly plunged into darkness as the power failed. A quick fiddle with the trip switch sorted it all out, but what was that all about?

With power restored we decided to go for a walk round the village of Reach, but as we decided that so the heavens opened. But we went anyway. Between seeing the downpour and putting on our shoes the rain stopped.

 

Reach was ten miles from base along some of the bumpiest roads we’ve ever travelled along. We got there and had a good walk about. The ground was nowhere near as muddy as other walks have been this week. As always our route was set by a series of geocaches. Sadly like most we went for this week they were rather old caches and things have changed since the things were hidden eight years ago. What was once “base of post” is now “under six feet of thicket”. What was once “base of tree” is now “in the hedge”.

 

After a good walk we came back to base, had a light late lunch, and I had a kip on the sofa. A little later as dinner was being prepared I smelled something. The chicken I’d got from the local shop a couple of days ago was rancid.

With nothing else in the cupboard to scoff I took the chicken back to the shop. I explained what had happened to the chap behind the counter and showed him the offending chicken. He had a look and a sniff and called his manager over. I overheard the chap say “this man bought some chicken here. Christ, it stinks!”. The manager was happy to refund or replace. I went for a refund; as I said to her the chicken in their chiller cabinet (with five days left on its best by date) was a strange blue-grey colour. Perhaps they need a proper fridge with a door that closes?

 

We went up to the co-op and got some non-rancid chicken, and once that was cooked up we had a rather good dinner. And with dinner scoffed we played a couple of games of “Sorry”, of which I won one.

I took a few photos of the day.

We’re going home tomorrow…

30 May 2024 (Thursday) - Littleport

Bearing in mind just how awful the weather has been this week and how utterly unreliable the BBC weather app on my phone has been, this morning as everyone else was fast asleep I deleted it and replaced it with an app from the Met Office.

That only took half an hour to do.

 

Eventually everyone was up and about and scoffing a rather good full English brekkie. With iffy weather being threatened by my new weather app we felt it best not to be marching through the mud today so an urban walk would be ideal. We drove up to the village of Littleport where we wandered about finding various geocaches as we went on between the downpours.

As we came to the end of our walk we called in to the Downham Isle brewery; a strange place operated by some old boy out of an extension at the back of his house. We got some beer, and as everyone else looked for a geocache in the car park I went to get some port. I’d had problems getting the stuff yesterday and today was equally problematical. I went into the village off-licence…

“Have you got any port?”

“Nooo”

“This is an off-licence?”

“Nooo”

“Do you speak English?”

“Nooo”

So I went to the village shop.

“Have you got any port?”

“Port?”

“A fortified wine?!

“Wine?”

Eventually the co-op came up trumps.

 

We came back to base where it was raining. I cracked open a bottle of the beer I’d got. The chap at the brewery had warned up it was lively… the stuff was nothing but froth. Having wasted a bottle I eventually found the way to drink it was to uncap the bottle and leave it standing in the sink with froth gushing out of the bottle. Eventually after ten minutes the froth would go and I’d be left with between a third and a half pint of not-bad beer.

 

As the rain continued to fall we spent the rest of the afternoon playing “Ticket to Ride” and “Sorry” until it was dinner time. We had some rather good burgers, but having scoffed far too much together with the yeast from the bottle conditioned beers has left me with a rather dodgy stomach.

 

I took a few photos today. I also spent an inordinate amount of time farting, I hope this sorts itself out.

29 May 2024 (Wednesday) - Witcham

With rain forecast for the early afternoon we wanted to crack on today. We had a prompt brekkie and soon set off to an obscure lay-by. We were walking a series of geocaches today, and the designated parking certainly didn’t seem up to the job when we’d looked on Google Street View so we found somewhere better.

We set off and followed lanes and tracks and swamps. I’d like to say that we’ve found muddier and swampier ground before, but the simple fact is that we haven’t. Half way round the route we had to retreat; the path was utterly impassable; it was a swamp wider than the path and was deeper than our boots. We went back fifty yards and planned to walk along a field that ran parallel to the swamp in the hope there was a fence at the end of the field.

There wasn’t.

We did find a narrowing in the hedgerow though… so we got enough rocks form the field to ford the ditch om the hedgerow, and in a total triumph of idiot enthusiasm over common sense I launched myself across the ditch and demolished the hedgerow on the other side of the ditch to get back to the path on which we were supposed to be. It was still a swamp, but a passable one.

A little later we found another impassable path. We again walked a field that ran parallel to the swamp, but this time there was a way from the field we were in to the track where we were supposed to be.

Geocache-wise the route was… I think the best way to describe it was sadly as not one that I could recommend. The series was twelve years old; the given hints may well have been spot-on when the series was created, but (for example) the dead sampling and stump referred to have long since gone. Many of the caches hadn’t been found by the people before us, and seven “Did Not Find” out of twenty-three caches is a rather bad result, to say the least.

 

Needing supplies we came home via the Spar we’d found the other day. I asked if I could buy a case of beer. The woman behind the counter stared at me blankly; she had no idea what a case of beer was. I suggested that when the shop had a delivery of beer it didn’t come in one bottle at a time. She went out the back and fetched me a cardboard box.

Ho hum.

Sadly they had no port, so we went down the road to what Google would have us believe was an off-licence.  I asked the bloke behind the counter for port. He stared at me and asked what port was. I explained it was a fortified wine; he suggested I might like Stella or Budweiser.

Ho hum.

 

We came home where the dogs had a serious scrub; all having been out of their depths in the mud and swamps today. Just as we finished scrubbing them so the heavens opened. The plan had been to sit in the garden drinking the beer I’d got from the Spar; we sat inside and drank it until tea time when we had a particularly good tea of quiche and garlic bread and chips and salad and profiteroles.

 

I took a few photos today. Today had been rather good. But we all had an earlier night tonight than we’ve had all week.

28 May 2024 (Tuesday) - Lazy Day

“er indoors ^TM” had taken great care to turn off all her alarms; it was a shame that they woke me this morning, but there is it. I nodded off again, and eventually we all got up rather later than we might have done.

With rain forecast we went for a little walk up to the village and back hoping to miss the rain, but sadly we didn’t. Had we been out two minutes earlier we would have remained dry.

 

The plan had been a quick walk and then a full English brekkie. We had the quick walk, and as others fought with the hob and the oven I sat with the dogs to settle them; they were rather fractious this morning. Sadly they settled me, and I was soon fast asleep.

I woke to find brekkie ready, and a good brekkie it was. Sadly the rain was still hossing down, so we got out the Infinity Table and played games. Ticket to Ride, Battleships, Wheel of Fortune, Hungry Hippos, Chicken Wrangler and Trivial Pursuit (both traditional \and Harry Potter).

 

Eventually the rain stopped and we took the dogs for another short walk, then “er indoors ^TM” was on cookhouse duty. She boiled up a rather good dinner, and with that scoffed we sat about listening to Alexa playing music.

 

We’ve not done much today; a very lazy day really. There’s photographic evidence here. So why do I feel so tired?