22 December 2024 (Sunday) - Still Feeling Tired

“er indoors ^TM” went up to the attic room with littlun last night and Morgan and Treacle went with her. Bailey figured out there was more space with me, and so spent the night on my bed.

We both slept well.

 

I got up and raced Bailey round the garden harvesting all the dog turds I could find before she could eat them. When she was small she used to eat the other dogs’ turds, and periodically she still does; the foul creature. I made toast and had a little look on-line and found something on Amazon which might help. Once it arrives, all three dogs will get a Peking Duck llavoured chew every day and this has vitamins and minerals and pro-biotics which is good for them, and will also make their poop taste bitter so that Bailey won’t eat it. In theory.

We’ll give it a go.

Facebook was dull this morning – the highlight was it suggesting I might like to join a group about Panasonic bread-making machines (!) and an invite to a jazz concert in Hugh Wycombe (!)

Then all the dogs came down and filled the garden with dung again.

 

Littlun got up and grizzled for absolutely no reason whatsoever for half an hour, then we popped over to the Eureka park for a little geo-meet. It was a tad cold, but a dozen of us met up and chatted for half an hour or so.

 

We came home and whilst littlun wreaked havoc I argued with the bank. Having cancelled my subscription to Fabio.com, the cheeky people have taken over twenty quid. The bank said that the department that deals with that sort of thing is closed at the weekend, but the nice lady took all the details and said she’d phone me back tomorrow. Or that’s what I thought she said. What with all the noise that littlun was making I could hardly hear a thing, and the nice lady at the bank’s spoken English was so poor I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying anyway.

Perhaps she will phone me back tomorrow? Here’s hoping.

 

The plan was that we would all take littlun home, but “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” phoned with plans to go shopping. I left them to it and stayed home with the dogs. I had a minor tidy-up as best I could and put some washing on whilst the Alexa played frankly dreadful dirges which it felt was “Christmas music”.

 

“er indoors ^TM” returned. As she boiled up dinner I cracked open a box of sweeties and watched telly. “Downton Abbey”, then the “Bullseye”  Christmas special. It was always a favourite proramme forty years ago mainly because of how dreadful it was, and tonight’s special was so bad it was brilliant.

And then the final of this year’s series of “Lego Masters: Australia” as we scoffed dinner.

 

Bearing in mind I’ve done pretty much nothing today, I’m feeling exhausted. I’m blaming Friday’s night shift followed by an intense session of granddaughter. I’m going to work tomorrow for a rest.

21 December 2024 (Saturday) - Rather Tired

The night shift was one of the better ones really.... when compared to the sort of night shifts we have these days. Back in the day I used to take in a portable DVD player and we had a room in the hospital accommodation where we would go sleep. On an average night shift I would watch six episodes of "Star Trek", and it was unusual to get called out of bed more than twice. These days we are rather busier and with a constant workflow. I probably had blood samples from fifty patients overnight.

I was pleased to see the early shift arrive.

 

Ideally I wouldn't have done a Friday night, but such is life. With time pushing I went straight from work to Dog Club; it seemed daft to drive past the paddock we use, go home and immediately turn round and drive two  miles back again. When I left Maidstone this morning it had been hossing down, but the rain had slackened off to drizzle when I got to Repton.

I opened up the field, hung up poo bag and money pot, and dogs (and people) soon arrived. As did “er indoors ^TM” and our three dogs. And our little house guest - Darcie WaaWaa ^TM”. Littlun was made up with all the dogs. As was I to be honest.  So many dogs had their nice Christmas coats on, and in minutes were all covered in mud. As was I.

 

After Dog Club “er indoors ^TM” took Darcie WaaWaa ^TM” home with her via Asda to pick up shopping. I took the dogs home for a warming shower. We’d all got rather cold and wet and muddy. As I drove home I listened to Steve on the radio and stopped off to send in a message – my answer to the Mystery Year competition. The year in which the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast and the country’s first nudie beach was opened. I remember both. I was there in 1978 when it was declared that you could walk round in the nip on Fairlight beach. It wasn’t the most accessible of places; it was a pig to get to. But me and my mates went there many times in the desperate hope of seeing a nudie lady without any clothes on. All we ever saw was fat old men in the altogether.

 

With dogs washed and shopping brought home we put the kettle on, and it wasn’t long before “My Boy ^TM” and ”Auntie Chel ^TM” arrived. Yesterday before I'd left for work we had the family bingo and I won the hamper. This morning the hamper was delivered. Loads of sweeties and biccies.

 

“er indoors ^TM” and littlun went off to visit great grandparents. I decided that it was too late to go to bed, so I settled in front of the telly with the dogs and woke four hours later with neckache. And panic. I hadn’t opened today’s window of my Advent Calendar. Normally the voices in my head have all day to think about what we get each day. Today was something of a rush job.

 

“er indoors ^TM” and littlun returned and we had a rather hectic evening chucking toy cars about whilst shouting “Watch Out” and watching “Sunny Bunnies” and singing songs.

I’m worn out with it all.

 

And today was the solstice. I left work this morning before sunrise, and I woke up mid-afternoon after sunset. From here on in the days get longer…

20 December 2024 (Friday) - Pink Mouse

I slept right through till half past seven this morning I woke with a bit of a cold. That was a pain in the glass,

I opened today’s window of the Advent Calendar then made toast. I scoffed it whilst having my usual root around the Internet. It was still there. This morning there were rants about genetics and socialism in which people were queueing up to proudly show off their ignorance and loudly proclaim their opinions which were factually wrong. It never fails to amaze me just how so many stupid people are so fast to show off how stupid they are.

 

Once I’d scraped the ice off of the car I took the dogs out. As I drove Cher was on the radio on “Desert Island Discs”. She sounded rather interesting.

We got to the woods where there were far more people than usual. Sadly we arrived at the same time as a pair we’ve met before. They are pleasant enough, but their volume setting has nothing less than “bellow”. Walking a couple of yards from each other they were shouting everything they had to say to each other. And they walked fast too; no matter what diversions we took to get away from them, they kept turning up in front of us.

Then we met some immaculately turned-out woman in the depths of the woods who got the right hump when muddy Morgan and muddy Bailey jumped up at her.

And we met the yummy mummies (and dogs) running group. We see them from time to time. They are aways friendly. Today some chap had joined in with them.

The beast. Mind you they were quite happily trotting along and he looked knackered.

 

Just as I got home the car’s low petrol alarm went off. So I bathed the dogs and then drove down to Tesco to refuel. After five minutes struggling with a non-functioning petrol pump the woman in the kiosk announced over the tannoy that the pump was broken, and that was why everyone else was using the other pumps. I shouted back that in that case I would take my money to Sainsburys and did so. Eventually. The roads were rather busy this morning. I had to emergency stop twice to avoid crashing into people randomly cutting me up. And when I got to Sainsburys the queues to get into the car park stretched about a hundred yards in each direction.

It was such a relief to get home.

 

I took myself off to bed for the afternoon where I dozed fitfully. I got up after a couple of hours and set about my lap-top’s settings. I’ve struggled to see the mouse pointer for some time. It’s now pink.

Now to get dressed, scoff dinner and kick some ass at family bingo before going off to the night shift.

 

19 December 2024 (Thursday) - Walk, Ironing...

Yesterday I won third prize in the works Christmas raffle, and I posted a photo of the box of choccies I won on Facebook. By this morning over fifty people had pressed the “like” button. However only sixteen people had reacted to yesterday’s instalment of my Christmas story. I found that rather odd…

There wasn’t a lot else happening on Facebook this morning which was probably for the best. I did have an email form the credit karma people. Last month my credit rating went down by eleven points. Today it has gone up by eleven points. I’ve done nothing different this month to what I did last month – what’s that all about?

 

With the rain having stopped I took the dogs up to the woods. As we drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the scandal facing the sport of rugby. Apparently the rugby football union is losing money hand over fist, they’ve just announced operating losses of nearly thirty-eight million quid, they’ve laid off forty employees in the latest load of redundancies, and they are paying their head honcho over five times what the Prime Minister gets.

And there was talk about water bills. Apparently my personal water bill is set to go through the roof as after years of giving all their money to shareholders, water companies have finally realised they are supposed to be providing fresh water and taking away used water.

Water, rugby… I blame Margaret Thatcher. I really do. She came to power over forty years ago with the mind-set that absolutely anything and everything could turn a profit. And this is our society now, isn’t it?

 

We got to the woods and had a good walk. About a third of the way round there was a minor commotion as Morgan woofed at a bush. Some joggers emerged hoiking up their drawers. They were all very nice about it; giggling that they would tiddle elsewhere, and ran off. Presumably to have that tiddle.

About three quarters of the way round my watch wobbled, and I pondered. My watch has unilaterally decided I should walk six thousand steps every day, and it tells me off if I don’t. Our standard walk round the woods comes in at about eight and a half to nine thousand steps. For some time when walking this route my watch would make the six thousand steps announcement at pretty much the same point (by one of the smaller sink holes). But over the last few weeks the announcement has been coming later in our walk. Today it was a good half mile further on, even though our total step count was a shade over eight and a half thousand steps (what it has always been). What’s that all about?

 

We came home and tested out the new shower attachment on its first dog bath. It worked very well. That was something of a result. I messed about doing some CPD, harvested a bumper crop of dog turds from the garden and put some washing in to scrub.

I then cracked on with the ironing whilst watching episodes of “Four in a Bed”. I like that show as usually people squabble and fall out. Sadly today’s episodes were a disappointment. Everyone loved everyone else, everyone said they would go back to everyone else’s place, and with people making overpayments, the one in last place had full payments from everyone else.

 

I put up today’s instalment of the Advent Calendar. Frosty the Snowman has arrived in our world. Usually Frosty arrives earlier.

“er indoors ^TM” went shopping, and I settled in front of the telly underneath a pile of dogs and watched today’s episode of “Downton Abbey”. I say “today’s episode” – it was first aired over ten years ago. Atticus Aldridge appeared today. Spoiler alert – he tries to do the dirty deed with Lady Rose…

And I did some dog photography too…

18 December 2024 (Wednesday) - Early Shift

As is so often the case, with an alarm set I was awake far too early. At half past four I was watching another episode of “Victoria” and wondering. Just how accurate was this TV show? I’m rather vague about history. Like the episodes of “The Empress” I was watching last week I was wondering just how much had been made up for the telly. I found myself thinking back to dull afternoons in room K at the Hastings Academy for Budding Geniuses where our history teacher showed us how to kill a subject stone dead. The history teacher’s idea of teaching was to give us a text book and over the course of a year have us copy it out in the hope that we might remember something.

I certainly didn’t.

 

I then had my usual root about on-line. Not much was happening so I set off to work on a very dark and rainy morning. As I drove I listened to the pundits on the radio spouting their drivel as I do. Apparently the storms last week did damage to the port at Hollyhead which is now closed for at least a month. This is causing major issues for the transport industry. Apparently. Exactly what those issues are is anyone's guess though. Out of the three experts wheeled on to discuss the matter, only one spoke passable English. The other two were speaking in accents so thick I couldn't make out a word they were saying.

There was also a lot of talk about the WASPI women. When the government brought in changes to pension provision some years ago a lot of people felt the government failed to provide adequate notice about the changes to pension provision.  They probably didn't. It turns out here was a two-year delay in sending out letters to those affected.

Ironically the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall apologised for the balls-up, but said there was no compensation forthcoming even though she'd previously implied she would sort it all out.

I suspect Ms. Kendall has found that being in charge is much more difficult than standing on the sidelines throwing rocks at those in charge.

 

Work was work. But being on an early shift I got out early. I didn’t get home early though. It took three quarters of an hour to get to the motorway. Having spent most of the year rebuilding the Coldharbour roundabout, after a couple of weeks whoever it is that does the roads had coned half of it off… then gone home leaving chaos. And then having got through that I then had to face “Operation Brock”; ten miles of motorway cordoned off for absolutely no reason whatsoever with absolutely no vehicles using it.

 

As I watched today’s instalment of Downton Abbey “er indoors ^TM” went off to Aldi. I did volunteer, but being worse than useless there was no telling what I might have brought home. Being worse than useless has its advantages – you don’t get sent shopping.

We scoffed pizzas whilst watching “Mary Does Christmas” not out of any desire to watch Mary Berry, but because I’d had the heads-up that an old friend would be appearing in the show. If you are going to watch it, fast forward to about five minutes from the end. The Town Crier – I went to school with him fifty years ago.

17 December 2024 (Tuesday) - New Taps, Ice Cream

There was talk yesterday of someone in the family moving house. And also of a combi boiler. This morning as I scoffed my toast my Facebook feed was filled with adverts for heating systems and removal companies. We are definitely being watched, aren’t we?

There was also a really nasty argument on one of the local Facebook pages. People were finding fault with the local council, and a local Green activist (who I once knew reasonably well) was doing her party no favours in the way she was carrying on.

Local politics is probably a thankless task, but in my experience the last MP (who I would never have voted for) actually replied to emails on their first sending, and replied promptly too.

Our current MP replied to me on my fourth attempt.

Independent and Green councillors still haven’t replied to emails sent a month or more ago.

The trouble with politics is that people choose a political party in much the same random way they would choose a football team and then stick with that party through thick and thin cheering everything they do and belittling everything any other party does regardless of what any of their policies are, and of what actually is going on.

 

I had an email telling me of a new puzzle geocache. I solved the puzzle in a couple of minutes and saw the thing was on the way to Pembury. I also saw from the answer-checker that a fellow hunter of Tupperware had already solved the puzzle an hour previously. I suspected that he was already flying off west-wards, and didn’t bother charging off out myself. I was right not to have done so – he’d logged First to Find before I finished my toast.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off to the office at quarter to nine, and the builders arrived minutes afterwards At half past ten they finally got the old tap off and announced they needed some part or other and set off to wherever you get plumbing parts from. I sat with the dogs desperately hoping they would come back. They were only gone forty minutes, but I did worry. It has to be said that the new taps went in much easier than the old ones came out, and once all was done and dusted they spent a few minutes talking about the cowboy who’d fitted the bath. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that when (thirty years ago) we wanted a new bathroom my old Dad wouldn’t hear of us spending out on a professional and he did it for us. The builders showed me several place where it was obvious he’d bodged it. But we now have a non-dripping tap, which is a result.

 

With the builders finished and off to wherever it is that builders go, I settled in front of the tell and watched a couple of episodes of “Victoria” on Netflix. I can remember liking that series, so I thought I’d give it another go.

 

“er indoors ^TM” returned from the office, and I set off to Folkestone. I was on babysitting duty, so I took favourite smallest granddaughter to the park. Having been chattering all the way to the park about going on the red slide, she had one go on it before losing interest.

We then wandered round the back streets looking at people’s Christmas decorations. Back in the day every house was blinged up at this time of year; it doesn’t seem to happen quite so much these days. We walked on to the town centre where we stopped in Will Brown’s Ice cream parlour. Littlun made great fuss of wanting pink ice cream; she had three mouthfuls before announcing that she wanted to go home.

 

With littlun deposited back with her mother I came home and tried out the new taps in the bath as I had a shower. They worked. Part of me had spent much of the day wondering if they would ever work again.

And then I watched another episode of “Downton Abbey” in which having lambasted Lady Mary for her dirty weekend in Liverpool, Grannie turned out to be in no position to claim the moral high ground having porked Prince Kuragin in years gone by.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up omelettes for dinner. I’m thinking of an early night – I’ve not really done much today, but I’m worn out.

16 December 2024 (Monday) - New Door, Plumbing Issues

Last night we watched the Royal Variety Performance on telly. Leaving aside just how crap the show was (it was crap with a capital turd), I found myself fascinated with the woman presenting it. Although she denies having had plastic surgery done, her head looked about thirty years younger than the body to which it was attached. With a pure smooth unsullied face and a neck with more wrinkles than a wrinkled thing she really did look as though someone had pulled her head off of a teenager and stuck it on that teenager’s gran’s body. I commented on Facebook about it last night, and this morning it seemed I wasn’t alone if wondering what was going on there.

And talking of Facebook there was a very impressive squabble this morning about illegal building techniques in Lego models. Grown adults were getting *really* angry, upset and annoyed. Apparently you aren’t allowed to join thin bricks to standard bricks by shoving an edge of the thin brick between the studs of the thicker one. You'd think they'd have better things to worry about, but I suppose for them the long winter evenings must just fly by...

 

The plan for today was to have the living room door and bath taps replaced. The taps have been dripping for quite some time now, and the living room door needed to be replaced with a thick fire-resistant one when we had the loft conversion done twenty years ago, but we never got round to it. I must admit to a degree of scepticism about the door. It’s all very well having a fire resistant door, but the walls either side of it are of the same construction as the door that was coming out. However as I’ve said before there’s no point looking for sense in the law, is there?

The chap was due to start at half past nine… He arrived shortly after eight o’clock.

He spent an age measuring the old living room door then went off to cut the new one to shape. I had a plan that I might take the dogs out so as not to get in his way, so we went out shortly after nine o’clock. Bearing in mind that the bath might not be accessible on our return we didn’t go to the woods. Instead we walked one of the walks I used to walk with Fudge many years ago. Through the park out to the Godinton estate (where we failed to find two geocaches), then down to Great Chart and home past the Environment Centre and South Ashford. About six miles… I thought we would have stayed out of the nice builder’s way. We got home at half past eleven only to find he hadn’t started.

 

I made us both a cuppa and wrote up some CPD until the builders arrived with the new door at half past twelve.

After a lot of bashing and thumping the door was in place by two o’clock. And then we had quite the performance. Turning off all the water was hard work. We found several taps which turned off this and that, but nothing that seemed to turn off the hot water. The builder chap was reluctant to drain the entire system so he’s coming back tomorrow with a bit of kit which will freeze it all, and he says he will do the taps then.

Realistically all the plumbing needs stripping out and starting again. The builder chap suggested we got shot of our boiler and replaced it with a combi. I nodded sagely at this; pretending I knew what he was talking about. Once he’d gone I looked up what a combi was. Apparently a combi is some device which does both the central heating and the hot water at the same time. It would sit where the current boiler is and would do away with the need for the water tank and immersion heater.

According to the Internet a boiler is good for ten to fifteen years. Bearing in mind our current boiler is fourteen years old (we got it on 8 September 2010) perhaps getting a combi might be something for the new year? Sadly at the time of getting the boiler I wrote “if I bung ten quid aside each month, when its time comes the cost of replacement shouldn’t be anywhere near the shock I had this time”. Had I bunged ten quid aside each month like I said I should, I would now have one thousand seven hundred quid which is about the cost of a combi boiler, and all I’d have to find would be the cost of paying someone to install it.

Sadly I didn’t bung anything aside for a new boiler.

 

With the builder gone I sorted us a cuppa and also sorted out today’s Advent story. I had this vague idea when I started this year’s story (only two weeks ago) about a carol-singing robot, but today we’ve got the Easter Bunny taking over Christmas. I can only assume that the voices in my head know where this story is going: I certainly don’t.

 

“er indoors ^TM” then went bowling as she does on a Monday. I settled down with the dogs and sparked up the telly. I started off with “Dad’s Army”. I’ve seen those episodes so many times that I know them pretty much off by heart, but they are rather good nonetheless. I followed this with an episode of “Downton Abbey” in which Lady Mary was off on a dirty weekend, then slept through another episode of “The Silo”. I can’t remember what happened in the first season. I shall have to start again frorn the beginning with that one. And then an episode of “You Rang M’Lord” in which Henry had forgotten to put methylated spirit in the hotplate.

Perhaps that’s where my plumbing has gone wrong?