7 September 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Geo Meet, Family Get-Together

I slept rather well for a change. That was nice.

I made brekkie and peered into the internet. Not a lot was going on really. I did chuckle as I saw I’d been told off – yesterday someone asked for recommendations for local aquatic shops. I recommended some local ones and gave my honest experiences of the aquatic shop closest to work. Over the last seven years I’ve called in many times and found them rude, unhelpful and rather expensive. Over the last couple of years I’ve only been in when I’ve forgotten how bad the shop was only to be reminded why I rarely go in there. Some young girl thought it wrong of me to say so.  

What did she want of me? To lie and say the place was fine, or to keep quiet and let others experience the rudeness for themselves?

The last time I went in there I stood and waited for over ten minutes whist the staff all stood around listening to one of their number talking about the amount of blood spilled in a fist fight that someone or other had been involved in the previous day.

 

I Munzed and Wordled, and then being Saturday we set off to Dog Club. As we drove I got Steve’s “Guess the Lyrics” contest on the radio right away. “I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things”. No? Click here for the video.

We got to Dog Club where Morgan disgraced himself. He’s fine with other dogs until the other dog shows fear. Then he just gets aggressive and has to have a time out

 

We came home and had a cuppa and a bun. Whilst we’d been at dog club a new puzzle geocache had gone live. I spent a little while struggling with the puzzle. Perhaps too long. By the time I’d solved it time was running out. Bearing in mind it was a short diversion from our afternoon drive we left it for later. And drove out to Wye where the monthly geo-meet was happening.

As geo-meets go it wasn’t the most well attended, but ten of us sat in the pub garden and put the world to rights. And it was something of a milestone for me; geo-find 15151.

 

From Wye we drove to Hastings. We took a little diversion to find that geocache the puzzle of which I’d solved earlier. Sadly having not gone straight there but having gone to the meet-up we missed being First to Find. But to be honest I’d rather meet up with friends.

We carried on to Hastings  where family gathered for a get-together for a couple of birthdays. We had a rather good get-together which got progressively more vague as the afternoon wore on, and I slept most (all) of the way home.

 

Today has been rather busy… I took a few photos.

And (where has the time gone?) today marks two years since my Dad died…

6 September 2024 (Friday) - Swizzed

I slept like a log and woke feeling raring to go… at half past midnight. And then I just dozed on and off. This happens annoyingly often.

Eventually I gave up, got up and watched an episode of “Brassic” in which him who was “Grumio” turned up in a camper van which he’d converted into a mobile sex dungeon despite having no road tax, MOT or driving licence.

 

I then did my usual peer into the Internet. There wasn’t a lot happening so I had a quick Munz, then struggled with Wordle. I’ve been playing that for the last few weeks; I’m not very good at it.

I set off to work and immediately spent a few seconds retrieving the recycling bin and the food waste bin from where the bin men had abandoned them. Having heard them bellowing as I'd been watching the telly I rather thought I'd have to do that job before someone whose bin they'd lost came and nicked ours.

 

As I drove out of Ashford so I noticed a motorbike in my rear view mirror. It had its headlight on full beam, flew past me rather dangerously at the traffic lights by Matalan and sped round the roundabout where it caused no end of chaos by conking out right in everyone's way.

I remembered my old motorbike; a Suzuki GSX 250 which went for scrap about forty years ago. It too used to conk out without warning whenever it rained.

 

There was an interview on the radio with Dwayne Fields (no - I'd never heard of him either) who has become the Chief Scout taking over from Bear Grylls. From what the chap said he seems to be ideal for the position. Mind you I did sit up and take notice when he said that half a million youngsters were members. I thought it was far more than that - and membership has grown in the last year.

I was in the cubs as a child. I lasted one week as a scout, finding it rather scary. I was dragooned to assist our local group when “My Boy ^TM” was eight, and I stayed as a leader for thirteen years. It was fun at the time, but it did insidiously rather take over my life.

 

I got to work where I was swizzed. Yesterday I was asked if I could do some extra hours to help out. Bearing in mind the thirty-third Rule of Acquisition "it never hurts to suck up to the boss" I agreed to work the morning .After all a colleague whose birthday it was said she would be bringing in cakes today. However I didn't consider the two hundred and eighty fifth Rule of Acquisition "no good deed goes unpunished"; my colleague has gone down with COVID, phoned in sick and there were no cakes. And to add insult to injury I’d been asked to come in because she was not coming in.

 

I worked for the morning, then came home at mid-day. Once home I loaded the dogs int the car and we drove up to Kings Wood. As I’d driven down the motorway the weather had gone from bright to torrential rain and back again a few times. Going to the woods was taking a chance.

As we parked so my phone beeped with the news that the Met Office had cancelled the extreme weather warning for heavy rain and we had a good walk. Having had a report that another of my geocaches had gone missing I went to check. It was where it was supposed to be, but since I hid it nearly two years ago the ferns have grown rather thickly around it.

We had a shorter-than-usual walk today. Treacle seemed better when we left home and wasn’t limping. But after half a mile she was walking rather awkwardly so we cut our walk short. I didn’t want her over-exerting herself. Despite walking awkwardly she was still running round like a thing possessed when she saw a shadow that offended her.

We came home and I spent a couple of hours fast asleep on the sofa

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up fish and chips which we scoffed watching more of “The Traitors US” in which those who weren’t in the clique watched those in the clique whilst making no secret of their jealousy. Whilst totally not realizing they weren’t actually missing anything…  

5 September 2024 (Thursday) - It Rained

The sound of heavy rain against the window woke me at four o’clock. Judging by the snoring it didn’t seem to wake anyone else though.

I nodded off again and slept through for another four hours until backache forced me to stop laying there. I got up, took those dogs who wanted to go out outside, then made brekkie. There was a minor disaster as the milk had gone off. Milk seems to be going off quite a lot at the moment. Fortunately we found some powdered stuff in the cupboard. Unfortunately it was best before over two years ago. That went the way of the liquid stuff.

 

As I scoffed brekkie I peered into the Internet as I do. As it has been doing for the last few days my Facebook feed was filled with articles about the late Freddie Mercury. I don’t dislike the chap. I quite like some of his music. But what has possessed Facebook to bombard me with his stuff just lately?

There was a rant on one of the Facebook pages I follow. The tired old argument about how cash is king. Except it isn’t. I found myself thinking back over forty years to the Harbour restaurant before credit cards were quite such a thing. The boss would take thousands of pounds of cash to the bank twice a week. Two of us would go as bodyguards as he wasn't happy carrying such large amounts. And then all the banks in Hastings Old Town closed and what was a twenty minute job suddenly took an hour... at the time of day when restaurant staff should be doing restaurant things.

And because no one accepted cards back in those days boss always carried a wad of notes in his pocket to pay staff wages and suppliers’ bills. His wad was about half an inch thick. He lived in permanent fear of being mugged.

 

Despite the rain I took Morgan and Bailey for a walk. Treacle stayed behind; she was still limping this morning. We drove up to Kings Wood and as we arrived so the rain slackened off a little. I’d had reports that three of my geocaches were missing. One was and two weren’t. Sadly one that wasn’t missing was broken. Earlier in the year Gordon gave me a rather good geocache container – a little owl. It is tied to a tree about a mile from the car park in Kings Wood - you can find it by solving a little puzzle. But someone has got rather heavy handed with it and broken the lid. It is OK for the time being though.

We walked back to the car. As we walked Morgan and Bailey were as good as gold. It winds me up the no one ever sees them behaving themselves. Everyone sees them being pains in the glass though (to coin a phrase).

 

As we drove home we found ourselves in the middle of a queue of seemingly endless cyclists all the way from the woods back to Ashford. I was once told that cyclists aren’t allowed to have races along the roads, so instead they organize time trials in which they set off at thirty second intervals and the fastest one to complete whatever route they have chosen wins. Was that what was happening today?

I did my best to overtake the cyclists safely. Other drivers didn’t. The whole thing seemed rather dangerous.

Ironically as we drove home my MP3 player randomly chose to play ELO’s “Concerto For a Rainy Day”.

 

We got home where the pups had a bath. They’d not rolled in anything but being low down they’d got wet and muddy. A hot shower sorted them out. I popped up the road for pastries and milk, and made a cuppa for me and “er indoors ^TM”.

With the rain not letting up I spent a little while uploading photos that “er indoors ^TM” had found the other day. Piccies from our old school trip to Hindleap Warren in 1975 and Boys Brigade camp some time in the late 1970s. I’m still in touch with some of the people from the good old days. I say “in touch”; I see photos and updates from them periodically on Facebook, and occasionally we comment on what the other has been up to. But so many other people have fallen by the wayside. Take for example the old Open University gang. One of the albums of photos that has come to light was from my OU days. I didn’t put those piccies on-line. Clearly from the pictures I was having a whale of a time, but who were those people? As I perused the photos I had vague recollections. One might have been a policeman from Dartford, I think one did the same job as me somewhere in the London area, I think two were from Brighton, but as for the rest? Thirty years ago we were such a part of each others’ lives; now total strangers about whom I’d not given a thought in years.

 

I wrote up some CPD, then with the rain getting heavier and heavier turned on the telly and watched episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which (as is always the case) those with a massively over-inflated opinion of themselves were shocked to find some of their contestants doing a far better job than they were and for half the price.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more of “The Traitors US”. In theory the contestants use wit and deduction to work out which of their number can’t be trusted. In practice the whole thing is little more than a popularity contest, and it is the bitching and jostling for position that makes it so entertaining.

 

And then I had a message from work. Could I go in for a few hours tomorrow? Go on then… what with the current and forecast rain it isn’t as though I could do much tomorrow anyway. And one should always bear in mind the thirty-third Rule of Acquistion.  

4 September 2024 (Wednesday) - Another Early Shift

I was woken by the sound of Treacle getting off the bed (with a bit of a thump) at half past four. She shouldn't be jumping with her iffy leg. And certainly shouldn't be going down the stairs. I hurried after her and found her at the top of the stairs looking rather pathetic. So I carried her down. She's quite a lump to carry; let alone downstairs. We got downstairs and I put her down and went and opened the back door. She stood by the foot of the stairs looking pathetic so I carried her outside. She hobbled about a bit for ten minutes showing absolutely no sign of doing that for which we'd come outside. After ten minutes she eventually squatted, and there was then the sound of something jumping on the fence (a cat maybe). Treacle shot up the garden like a bullet from a gun, barking like a thing possessed.

When I caught up with her whatever she'd chased had long gone, and she was looking very sorry for herself. She'd obviously again strained whatever she'd strained yesterday.

 

I carried her back to bed, but I was wide awake. I made brekkie and watched another episode of "Brassic" in which him who played "Grumio" in "Plebs" had acquired a life-like but faulty sex doll, and had the hump that no one would test it for him. He was keen to give it a go himself, but not until he'd found out what the fault was. Or, to be precise, until someone else had found out what the fault was.

 

I set off to work a tad earlier than I might have done. I used the time to go round town hunting down points of interest. Mind you these points were only of interest to Munzee players. Most people would find them rather dull.

I found fourteen before heading up the motorway to work.

The motorway was frankly dangerous this morning. With Operation Brock gone for this week there were two lanes of lorries all the way from Ashford to Maidstone. The slow lane had lorries moving at about forty-five miles per hour, and the middle lane was full of other lorries overtaking them... at about forty-six miles per hour.

All the cars were in the fast lane, and I found myself constantly having to dip in between the lorries of the middle lane to allow whoever was driving a couple of yards from my back bumper (and flashing their lights) to get past. You'd think the traffic police would get involved, wouldn't you?

 

As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how the police have arrested a fourteen year old child who has supposedly murdered an eighty-year old chap. Has he? I don't know. If he has, let's have a public televised execution. Seriously. When I was a lad if we messed about at school the headmaster caned us. One boy had a sore arse for a day and a thousand boys behaved themselves for a year. Publicly killing off one murderer would serve as an example.

Wouldn't it?

 

Work was much the same as ever. But an early start made for an early finish. Again road works meant I was rather later home than I might have been. I got home and the dogs came to see me as they do. Treacle had obviously just woken up and was stiff and her leg was still playing up. In all the excitement her leg must have twinged so she snarled at Bailey, and Bailey tiddled in terror.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching episodes of “The Traitors US”. I’ve taken to watching it in the hope that the contestants I dislike most get the heave-ho. And the contestants are all so bland and banal finding one to dislike more than the others takes some doing.

I’ve taken to judging them on the basis of who is wearing the most stupid hat…

 

Treacle’s leg still isn’t right.

3 September 2024 (Tuesday) - Hurt Our Leg

Facebook presented me with a memory today. Six years ago today I sailed out into the Thames estuary and did a couple of geocaches out at sea. To get to the geocache on the Red Sands seas fort you need to sail out with the official tour guide. I chartered the boat which cost me a small fortune, then sold tickets to recoup my losses. But I didn’t sell tickets to just anyone; it was to a select group of friends.

One thing which stuck in my mind about the trip was the amount of bad feeling it caused. On the lead up to the trip word got round about what was happening, and I lost count of the amount of strangers who contacted me to tell me they were coming, and who got rather aggressive when I told them they weren’t. There were also a lot of people I’d never met who told me how I should advertise future trips so that the likes of them wouldn’t miss out. I replied to all in the same way. I told them it was a private booking for a select group, and I sent them the details so that they could book their own trip. And in the intervening six years not one of them has done that. There was a group of Germans who booked the boat last year, but other than that, no one has made a group booking.

 

I got the leads on to the dogs and we set off for our morning adventure. Not having that much time today we drove down to Orlestone where we had our walk.

There wasn’t any other cars in the car park when we arrived, and we didn’t see anyone at all as we walked. As we posed for a photo so I could hear a crashing in the bushes behind me. Fortunately the bushes were higher than the dogs’ heads, but I *think* I saw deer running off.

As all the dogs ran off chasing shadows Treacle suddenly stopped. I caught up to her to find she was standing holding her front left paw up. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, but she limped on and off all the way back to the car. She flatly refused to jump into the boot, and I had to lift her out when we got home. Has she strained it?

 

We came home where I washed the fox poo off of Morgan and Bailey. We had a cuppa and a rock cake, and I set off to the local hospital. I got there and eventually found a parking space. Sadly everyone else had parked rather stupidly, but I managed to wedge my car in to the last spot.

I went in, booked in, and I got in to see the surgeon ten minutes early. I rather like the chap; he is always cheerful and happy and inspires confidence. He asked how I was, and shoved an endoscope up my nose. Firstly up the left nostril to show me what that looked like. Then up the right nostril where we saw a gaping void where he’d carved out the papilloma. At the moment there is no sign of it, but I’ve had three follow-ups before where it seemed to be gone.

He’s suggested I go back in a year’s time for another look-see.

 

I came home via the petrol station where my idiot magnet did its trick. There was only one person on the till; the miserable cantankerous one with whom I’ve had run-ins previously. She was quite obviously getting more and more wound up by some dopey woman who wanted a packet of cigarettes for her husband. She didn’t want the cheapest or the most expensive and kept turning down whatever brand was suggested. She thought it was hilarious that she’d been sent to get cigarettes but had no idea what ones she wanted, and when someone else in the queue had a word the woman’s reaction was amazing. She turned round, saw the epic queue, and flatly refused to believe that the length of the queue was anything to do with her farting about.

 

Once home I had a fiddle with my blog archive - it had lost some of the piccies. And then I had a go at a puzzle geocache I’ve been struggling with for years. The puzzle is just random strings of numbers which meant absolutely nothing to me until I read the instructions. The instructions said I needed a particular ordnance survey map and a roamer. Had I read the instructions in the first place I might have got a First to Find on this six years ago.

I then spent much of the afternoon struggling with an on-line jigsaw puzzle for geo-reasons.

 

With thunderstorms forecast for tomorrow evening we had our seaside walk today. Even though the weather looked a tad iffy. We went down to Folkestone Leas, but didn’t go very far. Treacle was still limping.

She’s not crying or worrying her leg, but she’s not steady on it. If it doesn’t improve she’s going to the vet.

2 September 2024 (Monday) - Early Shift

I woke in a cold sweat at half past five this morning following a rather vivid nightmare. Something of a shame really; with Pogo off on a little holiday there was plenty of bed space for once.

 

I made toast and had a little look at the internet. There was an incredibly petty squabble kicking off about a factual inaccuracy on one of the on-screen graphics used in the TV series of “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. You have to wonder who would freeze-frame and check what had been written on a TV show from the last century, don’t you?

There wasn’t much else happening quite so early in the morning.  I sent out a couple of birthday messages to friends and got ready for work.

 

As I drove to work I listened to the radio as I do. There was loads of talk about how the schools inspector OFSTED is dropping its one-word summary of schools. Apparently they aren’t changing anything else about how they inspect; just the one-word summary. I’m no expert but it strikes me that any inspector would be far better offering advice on helping improvement rather than finding fault.

Does OFSTED do that? I don’t know.

And there was talk about the problem of antibiotic resistance. Basically doctors have been giving out antibiotics like sweeties for years, and farmers have been feeding them to animals for years. For the most part the bacterial that antibiotics kill have long since been killed, and so with them gone their space is being taken by bacteria that laugh at antibiotics. And before long we’ll be back to the middle ages when an infected cut will go septic and kill you.

I was told all about this when I started in hospital laboratories in 1981, and it was common knowledge back then. Every few years this story does the rounds and everyone acts surprised.

 

I drove to work up the motorway today which had none of that “Operation Brock” stupidity going on. I got to junction six in seemingly record time, and then the delays started. The slip road from junction six to junction five has road works, as does the Coldharbour roundabout off of junction five. Mind you when I say “road works” I mean miles of road cones and dug-up roads, but no one actually doing anything.

 

Work was work. As I did my bit I had flashbacks from my time in the Harbour Restaurant. Over the summer of 1981 the Italian boss had friends staying with him. He asked the youngsters who worked for him if we would take his friend’s teenage children out with us in the evenings. We were a tad reluctant as they didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Italian. Boss gave us the price of an evening out… and we all got on famously. Despite not speaking a word of Italian I soon found myself able to understand it. I couldn’t speak it, but I could understand it. Similarly the Italians couldn’t speak English but hey understood us.

I wonder what happened to them?

Today some of my colleagues were chattering in Italian. I recognized the sound, but sadly I’ve forgotten all that I picked up over that summer holiday.

 

And then at one o’clock a colleague had a text from her daughter’s school. They had unilaterally decided that with effect from today children could only be collected by parents unless a form was filled in allowing someone else to collect the child.

My colleague told the school that she needs more than two hours notice of such a change of policy, and that if her sister couldn’t be trusted, then she herself would collect her daughter after work… at six o’clock.

The school never replied.

But isn’t this a sign of our times? Ten year olds needing to be collected from school. I used to walk home by myself when I was seven.

 

Being on an early shift I got out early. The journey home took me twice as long as it used to. It took half an hour to drive the mile and a half from work to the motorway. I did have a plan to take the dogs to the woods after work, but I spent all of that time in a traffic jam.

 

I came home to find the postman had been. I subscribe to three magazines. The postman brought the September edition of two of them today.

I will read one from cover to cover several times. The other will go for recycling unopened...

1 September 2024 (Sunday) - Boxley

When I was a lad I had some toy robots called “Zeroids”. Not the Gerry Anderson ones; you can see pictures of these ones here. This morning as I scoffed my toast people were posting to Facebook about how these things now sell on eBay for over a thousand quid each. I wish I’d kept mine.

Facebook had sent me a message. I like Facebook. It allows me to be incredibly nosey and see what other people are doing and gives me seemingly unlimited photo storage. However it has some rather strange ideas about what it thinks is acceptable in polite society. It’s no secret that peddling websites of porn don’t breach its Community Standards – I regularly post up photos of those doing so.

The other day it randomly presented me with a video of some woman wearing next to nothing running round trying to shoot a large iguana with a bow and arrow. After a lot of gratuitous close-ups of her arse and chest she shot the iguana which was clearly in pain.

I won’t re-post the video. But it is still on Facebook as it apparently doesn’t breach their community standards…

I totally failed at Wordle and with a little time to spare went round the garden harvesting dog dung. It’s amazing how quickly that stuff accumulates.

 

“er indoors ^TM” and the dogs came downstairs. Morgan sat with me for a bit, He had hiccups. Whilst he hic-ed we got ourselves organized and set off to Boxley. Karl and Tracy were doing a maintenance run (walk) on a series of their geocaches and we came along for the walk. Six of us (and four dogs) set off on a rather serious uphill slog. We’d arranged the walk so the serious uphill bit was first. Once at the top of the hill the going was much easier, but I was amazed at how many off-road bikers we had to avoid. Especially when you consider how difficult that place was to get to. Longbeech Wood and Kings Wood are far more accessible; why don’t the cyclists go there?

 

In an amazing show of self-control we walked past the pub… mind you a country pub on a Sunday lunchtime? Heaving with the normal people. We would have spent close on a hundred quid, and we’d got a picnic with us anyway.

About two thirds of the way round we stopped for that picnic. Over the last few months we’ve rather got out of the habit of picnics. I miss them. It was rather good to sit in a field and watch the world go by. It was a shame that Bailey had to roll in quite so much poo, but there it is.

I took a few photos as we walked. I do that.

 

We got back to the cars; we said our goodbyes. They took a little longer than usual. Pogo is going off with Karl and Tracy for a little holiday. Much as we love him, four dogs is a tad too much. Especially as when he’s with us Pogo feels he has to be guardian of the pack. When he’s on his own he can be much more rested and doesn’t feel he has to prove himself.

 

Once home “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs had a little sleep. I strained my brain with a geo puzzle. You can see the thing by clicking here. There’s a load of talk about how good desserts are, some pictures of various puddings and a formula from which you can calculate the longitude and latitude of where there’s a little film pot under a rock. Or, as I suspect, inside a metal gate. I’ve identified all the puddings, but how I get numbers from them eludes me.

Bearing in mind that the rules of geocaching say that the thing has to be somewhere on the Romney Marsh, if any of my loyal readers know how I might add strawberry cheesecake to oatmeal biscuits and get five, please let me know.

I’m reminded of my old maths teacher who once told me that I couldn’t add apples to oranges… he’d have a fit if he tried puzzle geocaching.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the first episode of the second season of the American version of “Traitors”. An odd show. Most of the women contestants have had rather bad plastic surgery and look as though they have just had a smack in the chops. One who hasn’t has one tit three times the size of the other. Most of the men contestants have over-inflated views of their own importance apart from the one who seems to have failed the job interview for the role of village idiot. And ex-politician John Bercow was in there as well for on apparent reason. All of the contestants seemed to know all of the other contestants from other reality TV shows, and none seemed to like anyone else.

It's rather entertaining…