23 October 2024 (Wednesday) - Late Shift

There was some bitter squabbling on one of the Facebook Lego pages I follow this morning. Someone was hoping to go on eBay to get a Lego set which they had as a child, and was asking for help in getting its set number. A reasonable request? Sadly all this chap could remember was that the set was from about forty years ago and had a house and a car in it. That narrowed it down to one out of thousands, and the keyboard warriors were out in force dripping their sarcasm. 

 

And an old schoolfriend of mine (who runs ghost walks in Rye) was posting on Facebook about a ghost detecting app.

I downloaded one which gave me the option to upgrade (for a price) to be able to ask ghosts questions and to see more ghosts. Presumably the amount of ghosts it detected was dependent on how much I was prepared to pay? I tried it; it just tried to play Candy Crush. I deleted it and tried another ghost detecting app. That one said there was a ghost not far away. Judging by the ghost radar I think it was in not-so-nice-next-door’s living room.

Mind you, the people who used to live on the other side of not-so-nice-next-door were convinced their house was haunted for years until the morning of their wedding when they are adamant they heard it clomp down the stairs, slam the door behind it, and they never had any ghost experiences since...

Or so they said.

 

What with not having as much time as usual I took the dogs to the park this morning. We got there and had a little mooch about. We met a few other dogs, and walked past them with no issues.

One young mother (in her pyjamas) told me that I was living her dream in that I had a pack of small dogs whereas she only had one.

Some elderly Nepalese people were picking fallen chestnuts out of the mud. When I told them there are still a few chestnuts on the trees in Kings Wood they smiled politely and hurried off as fast as they could; almost as though I’d threatened them with physical violence. What was that all about?

 

We came home and the dogs all went straight to sleep. As they snored I realized they hadn’t had their brekkie. Dogs are strange. In the evenings Treacle particularly is constantly begging for more biscuits. But in the morning they quite happily skip brekkie and don’t have it until mid-day.

 

As I set off to work I saw not-so-nice-next-door coming out of her house. I've been hoping to speak to her about the front fence for some time, and with no dogs to bother her I tried my luck. She was amazingly co-operative. To be honest the way things are between us, simply not saying f... off fatso is realistically amazingly co-operative. She tried to make out that the fence collapsed because I hadn't painted it. I politely pointed out that I had. She pointed out (quite rightly) that I hadn't painted her side of it. I smiled. I didn't like to say that I didn't dare go on her side of the fence. But she says she's happy for me to fix it. I see that as a result.

 

I drove off up the motorway as I do. With the motorway again closed between junctions six and five I took a detour in through Aylesford, and stopped off for a crafty geocache whilst I was at it.

I also stopped off for petrol. That stuff has dropped in price - today I paid the same price that I was paying three years ago.

I saw that as a result as well.

 

With a tank full of petrol I drove up to work... and sat in the car in the car park as the torrential rain crashed down. I took the opportunity to test out my ghost detecting app. There were no ghosts to be seen in the works car park, and later the works tea room proved devoid of spirits as well.

I had a go in the laboratory where it detected something... I think it got confused with everyone wearing white lab coats.

I know I do…

22 October 2024 (Tuesday) - Finally Stopped Raining

As I scoffed my toast my phone bleeped. The geocache I’d hidden on Sunday had gone live, so I set the associated Adventure Lab series live as well. And with that live I set about my next one and met total disaster.

In order to set an ad-lab live you need an ad-lab credit. I’d read on-line that you can just ask for one, but the place where you ask tells me that I have to wait until next January before they will give me another credit. It turns out that you have to wait ninety days between creating ad-labs so that people like me don’t go churning them out like a thing possessed. Which rather pisses on my chips bearing in mind I did all the leg-work for four more yesterday afternoon, and was planning to churn them out like a thing possessed.

Mind you a group of hunters of Tupperware logged the new ad-lab only thirty-six minutes after it went live and wrote rather nice things about it in their written logs. So my efforts are appreciated.

 

“er indoors ^TM” set off out. Her work was doing some volunteering day thingy today. I set a load of washing going and took the dogs up to the woods. The rain had finally stopped and unlike yesterday, today was glorious. We did our usual circuit of Kings Wood. We met several other groups of dog walkers and every meet passed off without incident. Mind you we did meet one idiot. She wasn’t paying attention and was on us before she realized. She started shouting “ohmygod ohmygod” and made a complete mess of trying to get her dog leads from round her neck. When she finally got them free she was almost hysterical; apologizing to me that the dogs were fighting and that she was so sorry. Eventually she calmed down and looked at what was actually happening.

One of her dogs had sat down with Treacle and both were watching Morgan, Bailey and her other dog. Those three were playing a game in which two chased the third for fifty yards at which point one of the two chasers became the chased, and they all then ran off in another direction for another fifty yards before again swapping chasers and chased. They were having a great time.

I had to explain to this woman that dogs playing chase *wasn’t* fighting, and that it was actually playing.

 

After four miles we were back at the car park and we came home. Once home I gave the dogs a scrub. Tummies get grubby in the woods.

I hung out the washing and put the undercrackers in to scrub, then popped over the shop and got the makings of dinner. As I scoffed a bit of lunch I watched telly. “Everyone Else Burns” is about a family who are members of a puritanical crackpot religious sect. It was both hilarious, and bittersweet in that it reminded me of a lot of the people from my religious days.

 

With telly watched I went into the garden. A little while ago I started the groundwork for the pond’s new bog filter and got everything vaguely into place. Rain stopped play for a week, but today I got on with it. I got done what I wanted to do; I screwed it all together. There was a minor (major) hiccup in that when I opened the new box of long screws I’d bought from Amazon specifically for this job I saw they didn’t have the traditional hole in the end where the screwdriver goes. These were “stick fit drive system” and with no way to screwdriver them, they were (as my brother once described a rather useless item) “sod all use to man nor beast”.

I swore a bit, and rummaged in the shed. I found I had just enough proper screws (screws as God intended) to do the job, so I got busy. I got all the sleepers together. The next job is to line the thing, but I shall wait until “er indoors ^TM” is home. It is the sort of job where you need help.

I tidied up. Just as I was picking up the stick fit drive system screws to send back to Amazon I saw something, and actually read the instructions on the box. Apparently they came with the bit that you need to attach to the electric screwdriver for screwing them in place. So I had a proper look. The tool was in the box. They do come with that fitting.

Ho hum…

 

By the time I’d tidied up and started dinner and sorted the tumble-dried undercrackers “er indoors ^TM” was home. She made a cuppa; I felt I deserved it. I thought about dragooning her into helping line the bog filter, but that will keep for a day or so.

Instead I cracked on with dinner. Plov MkIII was just chicken, apple and rice with half a bottle of red wine and Thai seasoning. I quite liked it, but “er indoors ^TM” wasn’t keen. The next version will be korma flavoured.

 

Now we’ve got a DVD player we played a DVD. We’ve been meaning to watch “Wonka” for some time. Despite an all-star cast I wasn’t impressed.

Perhaps I’d been looking forward to it so much it was never going to live up to expectations.

21 October 2024 (Monday) - Still Raining

One of this morning’s petty squabble on the internet was over a meme posted to Facebook about how medical care is given out free of charge in “Star Trek”. Non-Americans commenting pointed out that they don’t pay for healthcare (at the point of care). The Americans commenting fell into two groups. One group were saying what a wonderful idea free health care would be; seemingly oblivious to the fact that healthcare is given out free of charge in most of the world except America. The other group felt that free health care would be a terrible thing and that there was some merit in paying for it.

The other squabble was about a twee meme posted by some celebrity (from way back when) about how much nurses make. It was claimed that nurses make people better and make people smile, and you can’t put a price on that. I thought about pointing out the stupidity from the pandemic when everyone stood on the doorsteps and clapped the NHS. At the time I tried paying for my shopping (in Sainsburys) by clapping but they weren’t having that.

Perhaps if we in the UK adopted the American health care model then healthcare workers in te NHS might get better pay?

I also saw that ELO are going to play their last ever gig in Hyde Park next June. Do I want to go? I wouldn’t mind, but with tickets starting at about a hundred quid a go (or so the expert opinion reckons) it’s a lot of money to shell out.

 

Despite the rain I took the dogs to the woods. Sadly my idiot enthusiasm didn’t triumph over common sense today; the rain didn’t ease up until we were in the car on the way home. But the dogs seemed to like the walk. As we walked we saw a few other dog walkers braving the elements. I think a couple of them were professional dog walkers. They had a very random assortment of dogs, and we did see two vans in the car park bearing dog walker livery.

I wonder how lucrative professional dog walking is?

 

We came home where we saw not-so-nice-next-door taking a bag of rubbish to the public bin up the street. As she walked back she glared at me like I was the shit on her shoe. Treacle snarled at her; Treacle *really* doesn’t like her.

 

The dogs had a bath. No one had rolled in anything foul, but they were wet and muddy. A hot shower to warm up and shift mud was in order. And once showered, the dogs were all soon asleep.

I loaded up an assortment of old tat into the car and set off to the tip. The tip was quiet today – only two other cars were there. I unloaded, and got chatting with the chap at the tip about how much useful stuff gets dinged out. I mentioned the little shop at the tip in Hastings; the nice man said that pretty much every council-run tip in the country has little shops where they sell useable stuff… except those in Kent.

 

I came home to an email. The geo-feds had given me the thumbs-up for my adventure lab idea, and had scheduled it to go live tomorrow. So flushed with success I spent the afternoon preparing four more of the same sorts of thing.

And once “er indoors ^TM” had gone bowling I looked at four more for my old stomping ground in Hastings.

I’m really hoping this rain will stop soon.

20 October 2024 (Sunday) - Rainy Day

I slept for ten hours last night. I sleep so much better when I have no alarm set. I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do every morning. It was there. Again no one really had seemed to have done very much. Some days it seems that either no one does anything with their lives, or if they do they don’t plaster it all over the Internet, or if they do my lap-top chooses not to tell me. Which is a shame for a very nosey person.

I munzed, got Wordle eventually, and then the dogs came downstairs. After a night in my pit I am desperate for a wazz. But the dogs are different. They get up and pootle about. They have to be chased into the garden and even then they fiddle about before eventually doing anything. I wish I had the same lack of urgency first thing in the morning – I’d stay in my pit longer.

 

I got dressed, put some washing in to scrub… and sulked. The forecast rain had started. Mind you I was very pleased that the rain didn’t come yesterday. We were very lucky with the weather for the CITO event and the geo-meet.

I pootled on-line, wrote up some CPD, and pondered my next geocaching Adventure Lab cache series. I’ve been given another five ad-labs. The idea is you find somewhere of local interest with five specific locations. At each location you set up a question to answer – the name on a sign, the distance on a milestone, something along those lines. You take GPS co-ordinates, and set it all up on-line, and it makes a little adventure for someone else to do. I’ve set up five of these already. One up the main street in Great Chart finding points of interest, one sight-seeing around Singleton Lake…

I’ve got another series of five, but I was rather at a loose end for where I might set them, and what I might have as a theme. Wherever it is needs Internet connection. I did have a plan for Kings Wood, but the mobile data up there is patchy at best.

… and then I had a stroke of genius. But I didn’t have time for it…

 

Despite the rain we took the dogs to the garden centre. We couldn’t spend all day stuck indoors; I’d go stir crazy. So we went to the pet section at Bybrook Barn garden centre to see if we could get Treacle a new lead. We lost hers yesterday whilst having a litter pick-up. Sadly we couldn’t find anything but we got a decent fruit cake.

We thought we might come home via Pets At Home to see if they had any decent leads. They didn’t, but we got some dog treats.

And we took a minor diversion on the way home to implement stage I of my stroke of genius.

 

One home we had a cuppa, and I carried out stages II and III my stroke of genius. Starting from up the road near the station you can walk down Beaver Road, along Denmark Road and into Torrington Road. A fifteen-minute walk passing the sites of five now-closed-and gone pubs; at each of which you answer a simple question.

That was stage II.

Having answered those simple questions at each stage you get given the location of a bonus geocache… that you’ve just walked past.

That was Stage III (Hiding it earlier was stage I)

Writing the cache page and ad-lab pages kept me quiet for a couple of hours. It’s now down to the geo-feds.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching tonight’s episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. Both were rather good…

 

Hope this rain lets up soon…

19 October 2024 (Saturday) - Dog Club, CITO, Geo-Meet, Dinner

The dogs took up an amazing amount of bed space last night. Eventually I got some space when they all followed “er indoors ^TM” to the loo in the small hours, but when they came back there was an altercation about why Bailey was so smelly. For a very small cute dog she can be quite disgusting sometimes.

I got a little more kip, but not much.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there, and much the same as ever. More and more I’m seeing utter drivel of no interest to me on my Facebook feed, and less and less of that which is actually interesting.

I munzed, and have now done all that I need to for this month’s Munzee Clan War – it is now down to everyone else. There was a little consternation on one of the other clans in that someone who needs to Munz daily hasn’t been on-line in ten days. But as long as it isn’t out clan, all is well.

And I got Wordle on the fifth attempt when I finally realized to use the American spelling. 

 

Being Saturday we set off to Dog Cub. Yesterday when working the weather was glorious. This morning we had rain. Not as heavy as it might have been, but heavier than I would have liked. We arrived at Dog Club where I’d decided that we’d open up and if the weather was that bad we’d come home. But having arrived expecting the worst we had a rather good session. Despite the rain we had a dozen dogs along. Morgan played nicely to begin with. He did get rather excited so we popped his muzzle on as a precaution and all was well. The dog we thought he’d been trying to nip came up to him several times and (with play-bows) invited him to play.

 

As we came home we listened to Steve on the radio. The mystery year was easy – Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” was in 1981… or so I was convinced. It was actually 1988… It is strange how your memory plays tricks on you; I can distinctly remember listening to this when still living at my mum’s. Another reason why it is worth my while writing a diary. Clearly I remember wrong.

We got home and dried off. I put on dry trousers and looked out my waterproof leggings, then scared up a couple of prizes for later.

 

With the rain finally looking as though it was clearing up we drove up to Badlesmere where I was staging today’s geo-meet. We started off on a litter-pick around Badlesmere Village Green. There wasn’t a lot of litter to be had, but what there was we had. Prizes were awarded for most litter collected (quite a bit) and most unusual litter (perfectly useable garden fork).

Mind you it has to be said that for all we collected some litter, we left some. Treacle’s lead went missing whilst we were there.

And with litter gathered we retreated to the Red Lion for a pint and a chat.

Bearing in mind the frankly dreadful weather forecast I was very pleased with the amount of people who came – there must have been twenty people along to the event today. Some people were old hands at the geo-meet game; others had their first meet-up today. As always the event passed off rather well. And just as it began to get a tad nippy so people went their various ways, and together with Karl and Tracy we came inside and had a rather good bit of dinner.

 

I took a few photos of our day. We came home, and we both had a little sleep. But not as much as the dogs did. It’s three hours past dog-dinner-time and they are still snoring.

18 October 2024 (Friday) - Early Shift

I was wide awake and raring to go far too early this morning. I got up and as I scoffed my brekkie I watched some utter drivel on Netflix about some West Indian family living in London in the 1980s. I doubt I shall watch any more.

 

I got dressed in the dark and went off to find my car. Having no idea where I'd left it yesterday I was rather pleased to find it right outside the house. I set off, and immediately did the first of the many emergency stops I did this morning.

Back in the day when I cycled to work (which I did for about fifteen years) I had lights on the front and back of my bike, and I wore a bright yellow hi-vis vest. An hour before dawn this morning I lost count of the amount of half-wits on bikes that I nearly ran over. Not one had any lights on their bikes, all were clad entirely in black, and all had those stupid ear buds in preventing them from hearing anything; least of all me shouting at them.

 

As I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing one of the head honchos at Netflix who was talking about the popularity of one of their subscription packages. If you take this deal you don't get bombarded with adverts. Apparently they've done research and found that the general public doesn't like adverts and tend to fast-forward through them. If the public can’t fast-forward through them then they go to toilet during the adverts or make a cup of tea, and it turns out that if the public are forced to watch an advert for a particular product then they are more likely to buy whatever it is from a competing company.

How long had it taken them to realise this?

And there was news from the Middle East. The Israelis have killed the boss of Hamas but intend to continue the war anyway. I can remember an interview on the radio about the situation in Gaza about five years ago. People from all sides of the conflict were harping on about grievances that happened twenty years before any of them were born. All admitted that no one was prepared to give an inch, and all admitted the fighting would continue indefinitely. The people being interviewed at the time all but admitted the hatred they had for each other was so strong that they really would rather have war than peace. And (as always) it is the little people that suffer.

I would say that five years later nothing has changed, but today's interview on the matter was with someone whose accent was so think I couldn't make out a word he was saying. I wish Radio Four would sort out their phone interviews. They always go one of three ways.

The phone line keeps dropping out.

The interviewee mumbles and stutters.

The interviewee barely speaks English.

 

I got to work and did my bit. Today was rather busy. I don’t dislike work, but it is seriously getting in my way. I spent much of today looking out the window at rather good weather thinking about what I might be doing in my garden.

But an early start meant for an early finish. I came home, and saw my screws and drill bits and new wellies had arrived. I was rather pleased about that. I then took the dogs out to the garden to do the “feed the fish” ceremony. Treacle particularly likes “feed the fish”; she gets very over-excited about it. As I feed the fish I give the dogs some fish food. Are a few dried rice flakes really that good? The dogs certainly seem to think so.

Mind you, Treacle was limping a bit… perhaps she needs to take it easy? She’s getting rather old. And grey.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted some ribs for dinner which we scoffed whilst watching The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin on Apple TV. It was rather good; yet another show which seems to have slipped past most people. But what with Sky and Amazon Prime and Apple TV there’s far too many channels to watch.

“er indoors ^TM” said I could scoff a box of choccies she had for her birthday. Last year. Their best before date was a year ago, but I scoffed them anyway.

I feel rather sick now.

17 October 2024 (Thursday) - Home Alone

This morning’s petty squabble on Facebook was about the national Town Criers’ Championship which took place recently in Rye. No? – it passed off pretty much unnoticed, didn’t it? Traditionally it has been held in Hastings but over the last couple of years it has moved to Rye as Hastings Town Council say they can’t afford it any more. Those who like town crier competitions are up in arms about this. Those who don’t were pointing out that council-funded town crier competitions attract dozens of people whereas self-funding events (like the bonfire parade and Jack in the Green) attract tens of thousands. Time for a change in the way the thing is funded, perhaps? It strikes me that town crier competitions are the Radio Three of public entertainment; only there because someone else is paying for it. I wonder how long Rye town council will carry on shelling out for this event?

 

“er indoors ^TM” was having an office day today so she set off leaving me with the dogs. Yesterday Treacle had a dodgy leg, but this morning it seemed better. We went to the woods and I thought that if her leg was playing up we might cut the walk short and come home. We walked four miles; she seemed fine.

Sadly as we walked we had an “episode”. Some child was toddling along with its father, and on seeing Bailey went absolutely hysterical. I could understand it if Bailey was the size of other dogs, but she is XS of the dog world.

With walk walked we came home; I was expecting the dogs to be filthy; their bellies needed hosing off but they weren’t that grubby at all considering the overnight rain. And seeing how their backs were dry I did the monthly flea treatments. In a novel break with tradition Treacle didn’t run away. All three were as good as gold for a drop on the back of the neck.

 

My plan for today was to screw together all the wooden sleepers of the bog filter. I had a look in the shed and saw I didn’t have quite enough screws. And (to be honest) my drill bit isn’t what it once was. So I ordered up some more from Amazon, and whilst I was at it I ordered some new wellies too. My ones sprung a leak a week or so ago, and they let quite a bit of water in whilst we were up the woods earlier.

 

With plans poggered I cracked on with the ironing whilst watching a DVD. “Quadrophenia” was nowhere near as good as I remembered it. Once it had finished I got up. Treacle leapt up thinking she was missing something and she hobbled after me. Having seemingly been fine whilst in the woods she was certainly struggling this afternoon. I sat on the sofa rubbing her leg for much of the afternoon.

As I massaged I watched more episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which the proprietors of four bed and breakfast establishments competed to see who was best. The loser had the right arse about losing; amazingly he didn’t seem to realise that his establishment’s gimmick (they didn’t actually do a breakfast) would count against him.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home. I fed her Plov Mk II. It was an improvement on what I’d boiled up a week ago. Having said that, it has still got a way to go. Mk III won’t have carrots, and korma might be a better flavour than tikka was.

As we scoffed we watched the most recent episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”. I won’t give the game away, but I will say that in this episode the weakest team were eliminated, and I smiled.

 

Oh – and Pigsy died today. He was an absolute hero back in the day. Sandy died from heart issues four years ago, and Tripitaka died of leukaemia nearly forty years ago. When you bear in mind that him who played the horse died seven years ago, there’s only Monkey left.

They don’t make TV shows like that any more.