14 November 2024 (Thursday) - Plov Mk IV

With no alarm set I slept like a log last night and had been hoping for a lie-in this morning. But about ten seconds after “er indoors ^TM” got up so Treacle got off the bed to follow her with the biggest crash you ever did hear. And then Morgan and Bailey embarked on a rather vigorous game of chase in which there were two play areas – on the duvet and under the duvet.

I got up.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. Yesterday I got a trophy-thingy from work for forty years service. This morning over a hundred people had clicked the “like” button. That was nice. Personally I’ve half a mind to either bin the thing or sell it on eBay; I’ve really taken against it. Perhaps had it not been three years late in arriving and been presented to me rather than posted to me, I might be a little more grateful.

There were several people posting to Facebook this morning about how they were abandoning Twitter/X as it has become very political. Apparently BlueSky is now the way to go. Personally I abandoned Twitter years ago as I couldn’t get my head round all the # and @ nonsense. And I was already spending far too much time in Facebook. I didn’t need another social media to complain about.

Will I follow the herd and get a BkueSky account? Probably. I suppose I’d best find out something about it first.

 

“er indoors ^TM” set off to work. I took the dogs up to the woods for a walk. Being rather misty I hoped we might see deer. We saw one – or that is I saw one. A dead one laying on the side of a path. Fortunately the dogs didn’t see it. Seeing the dead deer reminded me of an old friend though. Thirty years ago back in the days of the snake club my old mate Bob used to live in Challock and was gamekeeper on some of the land that backs on to the top end of Kings Wood. He once told me that part of his duties was culling the deer. He claimed that he had to shoot one deer a day every day of the year to keep their numbers in check. That sounded a tad excessive to me. Sadly Bob’s no longer with us to confirm or deny this...

It was rumoured that through the reptile keeping Bob acquired a rattlesnake. Shortly after the rumours started he was found dead in his house having died of a heart attack. When one of the snake club was called to collect and re-home Bob’s snakes no rattlesnake was found, but one of the vivaria was open. Heart attack is one of the results of a rattlesnake bite. Did he have a rattler that had him?

There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

 

We came home. Although the dogs hadn’t rolled in anything they were a bit whiffy and so had a bath. I then mowed the lawn and whilst I was at it gave the new strimmer its first go. It seems to do the job.

I put washing in to scrub and got on with the ironing whilst watching all of the second season of “The End of the FXXXing World” which featured the chap who had been shot dead at the end of the first season.

 

I then started making dinner. It bubbled and simmered until “er indoors ^TM” came home. We scoffed it whilst watching more “Bake Off”. Sadly Plov Mk IV was also a tad bland and had far too much rice, but I have plans for Plov Mk V.

But the plonk wasn’t too bad…

13 November 2024 (Wednesday) - Three Years Late

Another night with an alarm set, and so another restless night. At least I stayed asleep until after three o’clock this morning. After a couple of hours I gave up and got up. I made toast and watched another episode of “The End of the Fxxxing World” in which our heroes travelled to the Isle of Sheppey. There were some spectacular aerial shots of the Kingsferry bridge; I do like seeing places that I’ve been on the telly.

As that finished I caught the end of an episode of Bullseye in which two rather greedy idiots from the 1970s gambled some frankly rubbish prizes in the hope of getting a speedboat, and lost the lot. Personally I could never see the attraction of winning a speedboat. The things are utterly impractical. Where are you going to keep it? If you store it on your drive or in the garden you’ve got to find a slipway from which to launch it. Have you ever tried to get a boat out of the water and back on to its trailer? And if you are going to keep it moored somewhere, harbour fees ain’t cheap.

I’ve experience of boats. An uncle once persuaded my father to go half-shares on a fishing boat they kept on St Leonards’ beach and I can remember my dad constantly griping about what a load of arse-ache that was.

 

I sparked up my lap-top and peered into the Internet. It was still there. Today’s petty squabble on Facebook was about why people should leave cash tips in a restaurant (of at least twenty per cent of the cost of the meal) because the waitresses are so poorly paid. Others were taking the line that it is up to employes to pay staff, not customers. People were getting rather nasty with each other on the matter.

If I’m going to leave a tip in a restaurant I’d not leave a cash tip. I’d pay it on the card so’s everyone working in the place could get a share. I used to work in the kitchen of a seaside restaurant. My basic wage was the same as the waiting staff. My take-home was a fraction of theirs. They got tips and I never did.

 

I set off to work on another dark morning. As I drove the pundits on the radio were spouting their drivel as they do. There was more talk about the Archbishop who resigned yesterday over the ongoing scandal, and talk of four more bishops who should resign. The Archbishop of York said that those who "actively covered this up" should go but he said those were not bishops. I suppose he would, wouldn't he?

As I said yesterday, in my experience bishops are a dodgy lot.

Meanwhile President Trump is planning who is going to have the top jobs in his new government. He's giving senior positions to the world's richest man Elon Musk, and to Fox News pundits and (so it was claimed) those who'd supported him in his campaign. There was quite a bit of consternation that he wasn't appointing people who'd been elected to public office but was appointing those who'd done him favours despite their having no political experience. It strikes me that Mr. Trump hasn't really got any political experience, and that's never stopped him, has it?

 

I got to work where I did my bit. In between this and that I did an external quality assessment blood film. Periodically NHS Head Office send out slides from obscure cases to check we don't miss anything important. It was in one of these that I saw some trypanosomes today.  Trypanosomes are nasty little things that get into your blood and cause sleeping sickness. I've never seen them outside of external quality assessment exercises, but I live in hope.

And I got a certificate and award for forty years service. It came in the post. Bearing in mind I hit forty years in September 2021 I can only assume it got delayed on the way somewhere.

 

I came home to find the Christmas "Viz" magazine had come in the post as well. That hadn’t been delayed.

12 November 2024 (Tuesday) - Level Two

With an alarm set I had another restless night. I woke feeling full of energy and raring to go… at twenty past midnight. I then lay awake for much of the rest of the night.

I eventually got up at five o’clock, made brekkie and sparked up Netflix. With hundreds of things to choose from, nothing appealed. I saw there was a second series of “The End of the F***ing World” so I thought I might try that; I could vaguely remember liking the first series. But I couldn’t really remember anything about it, so I started watching the first series to remind myself. I don’t remember it at all, but it was entertaining enough; two young psychos chum up and go off on a road trip.

 

I then had a quick look at the Internet in case I’m missed much overnight. I rarely do, and today was no exception. But I had an email about the household insurance. Exactly a year ago I wrote “I had an email saying the household insurance was up for renewal… at over double what I paid last year. …. Insurance companies are a pain in the glass (to coin a phrase). They always do this – they send through a renewal at a ridiculous price, and when you phone them to whinge they reduce the quote; often to lower than what it was last year”.

This morning I had the renewal email saying they were offering me the same policy as last year but two hundred pounds cheaper. I’m seeing that as a result.

 

I set off to work. One advantage of the dark mornings is that I can press the button on the car’s key and see the indicator lights flashing from quite some way away so I know where the car is. I saw it from probably about ten times the distance at which (at the last minute) I saw an idiot on an e-scooter and then another idiot on a pedal bike. Both all in black, with no lights on, half an hour before sunrise.

 

I drove to work listening to the pundits on the radio. There were calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, and as the day went on so he did throw in the sponge. Apparently some bishop or other has been kiddy-fiddling. It was alleged that the Archbishop had known about it for years but did nothing. Some official report into the matter concluded that concluded that the errant bishop might have been brought to justice ten years earlier had the Archbishop formally reported what he knew to the police.

Perhaps the Archbishop reported it to God…

Personally I’m reminded of Bishop Peter of Sussex who was everyone’s hero back in the day when I was a god-botherer. He turned out to be a wrong ‘un.

And there was talk about the COP29 international climate change conference which has started in Azerbaijan. The Prime Minister has gone, and is apparently proudly crowing about what the UK are doing. But the Americans and the Chinese are no-shows. Without them being on-board, anything the UK does will be little more than pissing in the wind.

 

Work was work; I was on an early shift today. Given the choice I prefer those. I came home and “er indoors ^TM” went out. She was off to the cinema with Cheryl and Lacey. I settled in front of the telly and watched more episodes of “The End of the F***ing World” until she came back.

She came back with KFC, which was something of a result.

 

Oh – and our Munzee clan got to level two today…

11 November 2024 (Monday) - This n That

My old mate who travels the world from hotel to hotel rather than having any fixed abode was posting to Facebook from Hawaii this morning. There were several photos of him in various expensive-looking places. I suppose he must be happy but there’s no denying that I get homesick after only a few days away.

There were also photos of Anastasiia Pokreshchuk who has had surgery to get the world’s biggest cheekbones. She likes the look, or so she says. I suppose she would have to say that. Does anyone else find it attractive? When I was a lad there were people walking on the Moon. Shortly after we had amazing computers, mobile phones… and now we have Donald Trump and people thinking that looking frankly ridiculous is something to which we might aspire. Where did it all go wrong?

 

Treacle seemed OK on yesterday’s walk, but during the evening she had occasional limping. So rather than our usual four miles round Kings Wood we had a shorter walk today. We went down to Orlestone. We used to go there all the time, but after a couple of incidents with Morgan and Bailey (when they were smaller) we’ve not been there for ages. We went back today and all three dogs were as good as gold. We barked at some normal people who were foraging; they looked terrified. The woman foraging looked at Bailey in much the same way that I might look at a wild tiger. And we had an episode with three Dobermans, but to be fair to them they only wanted to play. It was a shame they were so big; Treacle got very defensive of Bailey, and Morgan just ran in terror.

Where we’d normally walk four miles round Kings Wood we were back at the car after a mile and a half today.

 

We came home where the dogs didn’t need a bath. In the past Orlestone has been a swamp. It wasn’t today.

I made us a cuppa, loaded up rubbish into the car and set off to the tip. A week ago I put the old poggered strimmer in the front garden in the hope that some passer-by might have been daft enough to take it. Sadly no one was.

I went to the tip and taking care not to run over the people who weren’t paying attention I get rid of a carful of rubbish then drove up to Kennington. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” had bought a sackload of remote control toys and I had to collect them. And pay for them as well.

From there I went to Bybrook Barn. I bought a few rocks and got a few ideas for what I might do with the front garden. But just like at the tip, not one person in a hundred was looking where they were going, or seemed to have any idea that there was anyone else around them.

 

And then I had a phone call from an old colleague. The chap is up before the professional regulator. Apparently he made racist comments in private messages, but the person to whom they were sent chose not to respect the confidence.

I wish there was something I could do to help him…

 

I spent the afternoon slobbing in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which some new-age hippy spent quite some time banging on about his eco-friendly cleaning products and then had the right arse when he was told how filthy his toilets were and how they needed a good scrubbing with bleach.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza and chips then went bowling. Earlier in the day I’d read a description of the film “Alien” which had been rather dubiously translated from a Hong Kong DVD so I sat with the dogs and watched it. I can remember going to see the film when I was fifteen years old and lying about my age. And now, quite a few years later, two things strike me about it.

Firstly despite being on an interstellar spaceship everyone was smoking.

Secondly just how much the film dragged on. It was about half an hour too long. I got bored with it.

10 November 2024 (Sunday) - Romney Marsh

There was a post on Facebook this morning which made me think. Apparently there is some road in nearby Headcorn with the same name as a road in Ashford. Someone living in the Ashford one has been ordering stuff on Amazon only to have found everything is being delivered to the house of the same number in the Headcorn one. Whoever lives in the Headcorn one is just taking the parcels and thinking it is Christmas. It is easy enough to get a refund from Amazon, but it is arse-ache when the replacements get sent to the wrong address as well.

Back in the day I lived in Grove Road in Hastings and we regularly got the mail for Elmgrove Road in Brighton.

We also used to get a postcard every year from someone who holidayed in Ashford-on-the-Water. We never did find who that was from, or who it was supposed to be delivered to.

 

There wasn’t much else happening in the Internet today. I sparked up the Munzee app and saw that a friend (who lives near Bluewater) had Munzed our Skyland at five o’clock in the morning. He was up and about early.

I munzed, got Wordle on the fifth attempt, and then got a message. The first fruit of my loins had poggered his back. “My Boy ^TM” and Cheryl were planning to come on a rather short walk with us today, but they had to cry off.

But we went ahead with our walk anyway. There is a short series of a dozen geocaches near New Romney which we thought might make for a good dog walk. And it did. About a dozen geocaches over four miles on flat ground took us a couple of hours. Treacle was allowed off-lead but we took no chances with the littluns after a pheasant shot out of a ditch and we saw another dog-walker with his dog caked on fox poo. Whilst we kept Bailey and Morgan out of the fox poo, Treacle went wading in swamps.

I took a few photos as we walked. With walk walked we drove round the marsh finding up a few of the puzzle caches I’d solved in the week.

 

We came home where in a novel break with tradition “er indoors ^TM” took command of dog bath time.

Oh dear…

Personally the first thing I do when I’m doing the dog-scrubbing is to chuck all three in the tub so I know where they are, and so that they are contained and captured. Bathing them one at a time gets the first dog clean, but the second two can see what is coming and they escape still caked in whatever it was that made you want to bath them in the first place.

Eventually the dogs ended up scrubbed and we had a cuppa and a hot cross bun.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted a rather good curry which we scoffed whilst watching today’s episode of “Lego Masters”. We recorded it and watched it later so’s we could fast-forward through the adverts. What took an hour and a half to record took fifty-five minutes to watch. Bearing in mind how easy it is to avoid adverts I can’t help but wonder why they are still made.

9 November 2024 (Saturday) - Another Lazy Day

When I went to the loo at three o’clock this morning I saw all the lights were on next door. She was up late or early. Whichever it was. I went back to bed.

 

I got up a few hours later, made toast and had a look at Facebook and rolled my eyes. Several people weren’t happy this morning. One of the triumphs of Brexit (!) was that it created an environment in which all the UK’s immigrant workers didn’t feel comfortable any more and so many went back home. This left the country with massive shortages in the hospitality and agriculture sectors. It would seem that as well as the illegal immigrants, Donald Trump now wants to send home naturalized Americans too. Bearing in mind that America imports a *lot* of its more intelligent and highly-skilled workforce this isn’t going to end well. I’m reminded of my whinging at school about how dull the history lessons were, and our French teacher telling me that those who don’t learn the lessons of the past will repeat them for themselves.

Mind you, what is Mr. Trump actually trying to achieve? Since when has any politician ever acted in the national interest rather than just doing whatever they can to appease those who are more likely to vote for them?

And I saw an advert on-line. There’s a “Samhain Pilgrimage” tomorrow – a five mile walk across the South Downs doing all sorts of hippy things along the way. And it is only sixty quid a ticket, but if that is a bit much you can make your payment in smaller amounts. Hippies never used to charge that much back in the day.

Meanwhile on one of the nerd sites that I follow was one of the most bitter and acrimonious arguments I’ve ever seen. This one was about who would win in a fight between a Star Wars death Star and a Star Trek Borg cube. Oh, people were getting angry…

I suppose people being more worked up about hypothetical fights between fictional spaceships than they are about innocent people being deported speaks volumes about why the world is in the state it is in.

 

Being Saturday we set off to Dog Club. We had quite a few first-timers along today, and one episode. Some old chap came along with his dog. He immediately let the dog off the lead and stood and watched it trying to hump all the other dogs. This happens with dogs. Those getting humped generally tell the humper off and all is fine. However this dog wouldn’t be told, and the chap whose dog it was just stood watching. When not humping, this dog was playing rather roughly and the excitement was winding everyone up.

Morgan got so excited he had his muzzle put on as he is easily provoked.

After a few minutes this dog walked past his owner who put it on a lead for a few minutes.

Five minutes later the same dog was causing more problems and the owner was nowhere to be seen. I managed to catch the dog just as the owner bumbled round the corner from the next part of the field (he thought he’d go for a little walk). I marched the dog back to him and he got the idea. This dog stayed on the lead watching and calming down. With that dog under control things went back to usual. Which was probably for the best with (at least) seventeen dogs along today.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off to craft club. I drove home listening to Steve on the radio. Having totally failed to guess the lyrics on the way to Dog Club I got the mystery year on the way home. ELO’s album “Out Of The Blue” and Elvis Presley dying? 1977.

We got home where the dogs had a bath. There was a distinct whiff of fox poo. And then I set about the ironing. It doesn’t iron itself.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came back from craft club and sorted a ham and pickle roll. Very nice. And then we had another lazy day. “er indoors ^TM” practiced what she’d learned at craft club and I looked at geo-puzzles in the area where we’re going on holiday next year.

“er indoors ^TM” announced she was cold and turned on the fire. Our electric heater fire blows out warm air. At the first sound of the thing working, Bailey runs and sits in the flow of warm air. When the thermostat kicks in and turns it off, she goes back to her basket until it turns on again. The other dogs aren’t at all bothered by it, but Bailey was up and down like a thing possessed all afternoon.

 

Over a rather good bit of scoff washed down with a decent bottle of plonk we watched more “Bake Off”, and having had half of a decent bottle of plonk I expect I shall spend the evening snoring in front of the telly.

8 November 2024 (Friday) - Lazy Day

I think I overdid the heavy gardening at the start of the week – I’ve been aching ever since. I hurt when I got up this morning.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. It was still there. One or two people were posting about having put up their Christmas decorations already. If people want to do that, then that’d up to them. Personally I’d just rather people didn’t start so early. By the time late December comes I’m not at all hyped up for it; I’m fed up with hearing about it all.

I had a message about one of those geo-puzzles I’ve been working on. Apparently I’ve found the location I need. If so then the chap who set the geo-checker up had made a mistake in the next bit. The thing has only been found once, and that person found it without using the checker, so that was my excuse why I wasn’t getting the green light from it.

 

I turned off the lap-top (as my brain was exploding at geo-puzzles) and drove the dogs up to the woods. As we drove Desert Island Discs was on the radio. Today’s castaway was Dr Nicola Fox. Born in Hertfordshire she is currently NASA’s head of science.

Something she said made me think… She was off on some works conference a few years ago and had left her small children with her husband. He didn’t answer his phone when she phoned home one evening. She tried again later to no avail. Eventually she got through and a small voice said “Hello”. Her three-year-old son answered the phone and said that daddy was asleep laying against the wardrobe and wouldn’t wake up. When the police arrived it turned out that daddy had died a few hours previously from an aortic aneurysm.

Could you imagine that happening?

 

We got to the woods and had a good walk. We didn’t see any deer, but Morgan and Bailey found deer poo. We probably didn’t see any deer because of all the noise. The other day I commented on how quiet the woods were. Today there were a few groups walking along bellowing at each other, and the local special school was up there too. They regularly go to the woods where, rather than doing anything educational like learning their lessons, they (quite literally) run round in circles screaming. The teachers just stand watching them with rather bored expressions.

 

I came home and sorted a cuppa and a slice of cake. “er indoors ^TM” had brought coffee and walnut cake home yesterday. That was rather good. I then took a deep breath and had another go at that geo-puzzle. I’d been told I’d found the right location… had I? The whole puzzle hinged on finding a fire hydrant sign on Google Street View. Had I found the wrong one? I found another, did the sums and got the thumbs-up.

 

I had a lazy afternoon. What with gardening and pond work earlier in the week I deserved one skive this week. I slobbed on the sofa and watched episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which some vindictive old harridan had the hump that other people had better guest houses than she did and were charging less than she was. It’s a standard theme of the show, but always amusing to watch the jealousy.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a decent bit of curry which we scoffed whilst watching more “Bake Off” which we washed down with a bottle of coffee stout.

I’ve done pretty much nothing today but walk the dogs and watch telly… I still ache from sorting “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”’s garden earlier in the week. I needed a lazy day. So why do I feel guilty that I’ve done so little today?