12 May 2012 (Saturday) - Stuff

I had a bit of a restless night. I have a theory that I don't sleep well when I know I have to get up promptly in the morning. And that could well have been the reason why I was restless last night. Alternatively it could have been my beloved's phone bleeping every time anyone on her contact list so much as looked in the general direction of the internet.

It was eventually with a sense of relief that I crawled out of my pit at 6.15am this morning.

The weekly weigh-in: I got on the scales and couldn't believe my eyes. I am now under fourteen stones in weight. Admittedly only by a quarter of a pound. Thirteen stone, thirteen and three quarter pounds. But it's under fourteen stone. A year ago i would have thought that getting to below seventeen stone would have been an achievement. I honesty can't remember the last time there was so little of me. I must now be at my lightest weight for over twenty years.

Mind you I've now got a target. I have definitely got to lose at least another stone because I'm superstitious and being thirteen stone is unlucky(!)

To work - where I arrived for a 9am start thinking I was on an 8am start. Woops (!) Having been off for a few days, it was with a heavy heart that I went back to work today. On the one hand I don't like working at the weekend when everyone else is off. On the other hand there are distinct advantages to having time off when everyone else is working. The next time I have an extended period of time off work mid-week I should rally the troops in advance.

So whilst I was working today what did I miss? "er indoors ^TM" went off collecting the catalogues we posted out on Wednesday. The O'Latas went to London to see filth. Others went for ten mile runs; having spent yesterday "hydrating and carbing up" (me- I eat and drink!).

Once I'd done my bit I came home. Via the Chrisery for the second half of the Saturday night film show. I caught the last half of "The Golden Compasses", and got to see "Puss in Boots" - the spin-off from the Shrek movies. It was good - I can thoroughly recommend it....

11 May 2012 (Friday) - More Painting

I spent an hour job hunting this morning. But only an hour. There's no denying I'm getting quite disillusioned with the whole thing. How does one gain the required experience for the job when a prerequisite is that you have already got that experience?

I got the paints out and did another painting of taking Fudge for a walk. In retrospect I think I should have put more greenery and branches around the edge of the painting to make it look more like the view from inside the woods. I think I'm better with alpine scenes. But it's not bad as paintings go, I suppose. I enjoyed the hour I wasted doing it, and that's the main thing. If people like my paintings, then I am pleased. But I like painting for its own sake. It's something I can do. Sort of.

And (despite the drought order) with the rain having stopped for the first time in over a month I got the lawn mower out and gave the lawn a haircut. As I started, so next door's dog was half way over the fence. The bloke from next door grabbed the dog and apologised. And as I mowed I could hear the sound of the dog screaming, trying to get free, trying to have a go at me in my own garden. Don't get me wrong - the people next door are decent people; but it's now got that I can't set foot in my own garden without their dogs going mad. And me feeling that I'm intruding by being in my own garden.

I did a survey about biscuits, and then I wrote another three thousand words of novel. I've come up with another plot twist which I have fitted into the ongoing story. I hope it works. I think it does, but I would, wouldn't I? I also had a read through. I did this in two sittings as the thing is now forty pages long. And then I had the first serious editing session which took over two hours to do.

Most of the plot is there. It just needs two more major scenes, several minor scenes and a bit of padding out in places. I'm not quite sure how much padding I should do though. How long should a novel be?

And after a decent bit of fish n chips (diet, pah!) we watched "Eragon". A film which has never really appealed to me, but was actually not too shabby (to coin a phrase)...

10 May 2012 (Thursday) - Painting, Telly

I had the opportunity to do some overtime this morning. Overtime working from home as well. I leapt at the chance. A couple of hours work, and then I got my paints out. I haven't painted much lately, but having been on four walks through the countryside in the last week I was feeling rather inspired. As always I don't think the photos do justice to the actual paintings. And as always if any of my loyal readers (or anyone at all) wants to give me money for the paintings, feel free to do so.

Being at something of a lose end I thought I'd get some of the stuff I'd recorded onto the Sky-Plus box watched. "Trapped in Space" was a film that I'd recorded a few weeks ago about some people trapped on a crippled space ship. The description of the film looked good; the film itself was watchable, if something of a disappointment.

Something else of a disappointment was the "V" mini-series. It was originally aired in August 1983 when I was at Boys Brigade camp and so missed it. Over the years I'd never got round to watching it. I'd recorded it, and watched it this afternoon whilst doing over three hours worth of ironing. I suppose it was good. But not that good really.

And with "er indoors ^TM" out and up to no good this evening I got myself ready to go to the astro club's committee meeting; only to find that the committee meeting is next week. Woops(!) So finding myself with little else going on I mucked out the fish tank and had a rummage in the freezer to forage for tea. I found some left-overs and half a tin of baked beans that "My Boy ^TM" had left over the weekend. I boiled the lot up and scoffed it whilst watching a documentary about Kenneth Williams.

I might not have achieved much today, but if nothing else I got eight hours of drivel off of the Sky Plus box...

9 May 2012 (Wednesday) - Shadoxhurst to Coldblow

Admittedly we did have a late night last night. But we didn't wake until 10am. I spent a little while mucking about with on-line surveys, and then tried another little money-spinner that I doubt will come to anything (but you never know). Following on from yesterday's excursion and last Saturday's outing a cousin suggested I put my walking routes on-line. People will then pay me to use the routes I've lovingly created. A good idea in theory. In practice the Internet was running so slowly I got rather fed up with the whole thing and gave up in disgust having only uploaded one walk in half an hour. I then got even more angry by putting the mobile app for it onto my phone.

To calm my nerves we went out delivering catalogues to the masses. Not all of the masses were enamoured with my efforts. As I popped one catalogue through the door I heard a child screaming "Mummy - quick - Mummy - quick". Realising that what goes on in other people's houses is none of my business I left them to it. But Mummy had been alerted. Mummy followed me down the road and handed the catalogue back to me (handling it as if it was a dog turd). Looking down her nose at me, she told me that she didn't buy from the door step. Her loss, really(!)

We got a new tyre for the "er indoors ^TM" - mobile, collected Fudge, and set off to Shadoxhurst to try out my new app. I rather hoped I could record the route we walked. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but for all that it recorded time and distance, the route wasn't saved to my profile. So when we got home I did it manually. Mind you the walk was quite a good one. Six and a half miles in three and a bit hours. The paths could have been marked better in parts, but thanks to "really skillfull navigation ^TM" we got round despite serious mud. At one point Fudge was literally belly deep in the stuff. And we had a dodgy five minutes when we encountered a horse on a bridleway. Fudge hadn't seen anything like it before. If ever a dog had a "wtf?" expression, it was Fudge this afternoon.

We'll go back to do this walk mob-handed at some point. But not for a few weeks - there is too much mud at the moment. For all the talk of drought, the swamps need to dry out quite a lot before doing that route again.

And then home. We could have taken Fudge straight home. But he'd been in mud which was over half as deep as he was tall. And he'd been eating horse turds too. We couldn't really take him home in that state. So having got him filthy (for the second time in a week) we took him home for a bath. Fortunately Fudge is the rare dog that likes baths, so scrub passed off relatively uneventfully. The bath was a state afterwards though.

And with Fudge taken home we had a really good bit of scoff for tea. And a bottle of wine as well. One of the advantages of having (pretty much) given up the beer means that the wine takes its effect pretty quickly.

Hic(!)

8 May 2012 (Tuesday) - Bethersden

So much for a lie-in this morning. The most recent fruit of my loin woke us by hammering on the door. She'd somehow bent her front door key and couldn't get in. How on Earth can anyone bend a key? Over brekkie I got turned down for two more jobs, and (to add insult to injury) got told I couldn't claim expenses for last week's interview. But am I downhearted?

I spent a few minutes writing more novel. One of my protagonists has gone to a football match; the other to church. Which was nice for them both. And, feeling flushed with success after last Saturday's walk I thought I'd see about sorting out some more for the next few weeks and months. My initial thought was to lead a wander from Chilham to Godmersham, but for the contingents from Folkestone and Hastings, Chilham is just a little bit too far. So I got out my books of short walks. One of them: "Forty Circular Walks Around Kent Inns" is a good idea in theory; it lists short walks which start and finish at pubs in the Kent countryside. In practice the walks listed are a bit on the short side, and the directions are very "local" in parts - "turn left at the cottage with the green door". Bearing in mind the book is twenty years old I'm not convinced the directions will be much good now

Another book "Short Walks from East Kent Pubs" is equally dated; listing the landlords and beer selections from twenty five years ago. So I turned to the Internet which came up trumps. Mind you, I could probably devise my own walks. Perhaps I should.

Whilst I fiddled about, "er indoors ^TM" argued with the car insurance company. Having got us a super-cheap deal it turned out that journeys to and from work weren't insured by the policy. What's the good of that? After a bit of fiddling about we agreed to pay three quid a month more to insure what we actually wanted insured. "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" bustled about in the background whinging about her foot. Apparently she has lost half a toe somewhere. Personally I think that was careless of her, but what do I know? Perhaps she lost it when she bent her key?

The original plan for the day was a trip to Highclere Castle. But somehow or other this just didn't happen. So being at a loose end this afternoon we went out to check out one of the walks we found on the Internet this morning. We started off at Bethersden church and walked through a swamp up to a mud bath. There was a dodgy five minutes whilst we pondered a sign warning of low flying aircraft, before we encountered a rather savage-looking guard dog. And then we saw a kangaroo. Yes - a kangaroo. Well it was probably a wallaby, but the principle was the same. Big bouncy Australian animal. And reindeer too. I didn't realise that our route went through the reindeer farm. And from then on the rest of the walk was something of an anticlimax. But as walks go, it'll do. Four miles; taking a little under two hours. I've provisionally pencilled it in for a week on Saturday (May 19th), so if any of my loyal readers are at a loose end on that day, why not come along?

Mind you the ground was quite wet and muddy in parts today. If there is much rain in the meantime we'll abandon the walk and go to the George on our bikes instead.

Tonight was Tuesday - the clans gathered at our house for the beginning of Season three of "Being Human". Not bad - is it my imagination or is all of the BBC's output set in Wales these days?

7 May 2012 (Monday) - A Rant

It has been said that I am a creature of habit. And I'd probably have to agree. Take May Day for example. May Day for the last four years has either been spent in an alcoholic haze at the Jack in the Green celebrations in Hastings with family and friends I've known for over thirty years, or exerting myself walking serious distances round the Weymouth area with other really good friends. All of which have actually made for very good May Days. In retrospect May Day has always been one of the year's high points for me.

So getting up early this morning to do a twelve hour shift came as something of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong - in this new world order of austerity I am very grateful for the overtime. But there's no denying that I had more than a passing thought about what I might have been doing today. Especially bearing in mind that "er indoors ^TM" and "My Boy ^TM" had gone down to Hastings to meet up with the Sussex bunch of the family to do Jack in the Green.

And I spent some time this evening being rather angry about the family reunion being planned for September. The last one we went to was in Ringwood in Dorset. It took three hours to get there, and today the journey there and back would cost just under sixty quid in petrol. We went to another one a couple of years ago that was in Kingsfold which was a round trip of one hundred and fifty miles.

It's our turn to organise the event this year. We're looking at staging it somewhere near Leeds Castle for no better reason than its being equally convenient for us and contingents from Hastings, Folkestone, Tonbridge, Eastbourne and South Mimms. And people from further afield can get more or less all the way on motorway. And being our turn to organise it means that it's our turn to go somewhere relatively local. And the vast majority of the family live in Kent or Sussex anyway. So somewhere near Leeds Castle is central for the majority. Good choice?

I'm feeling rather miffed to be told that Maidstone doesn't suit, and to be told about the amazing merits of Hayling Island. I looked for Hayling Island on the Internet. An hour's drive the other side of Brighton; it'll cost me the best part of fifty quid just to get there and back. If it's to be in Hayling Island I won't be going. End of story(!)

Going to lie down now......

6 May 2012 (Sunday) - Flying Foxes, Simon Pegg

The weekly weigh-in. Another pound lost. My weight loss has really slowed down, but I feel that I'm actually getting a lot thinner at the moment. I feel that I'm getting bonier by the day. And thinner too. The pair of trousers I bought on 28 March is now rather baggy. And I've had to add notches to a couple of my belts. A few years ago I gave a belt to "My Boy ^TM" as it was too small. He's given it back. It fits me now. My BMI is now 28.6. It was knocking 35 not so long ago.

I then fiddled about with my ongoing novel. For all that have a plan, the bits that I've done so far have all been written in isolation, and there was quite a lot of contradiction between the various bits. I've (hopefully) got it all to be consistent now, and got something of a time-line together. Things are now happening in some sort of order, and in a timed order too. There's still a way to go with the thing, but it's now over twenty thousand words long. And it's quite depressing in parts. I need to write some lighter bits. I'll do that next.

We then popped out for a bit. Catalogue collecting, and then round to Dobbies garden centre. We have a problem with the fish tank with stringy algae. We'd heard that the solution would be algae-eating fish. Either American Flagfish or Flying Foxes. We didn't like the look of the American Flagfish, and they'd sold out of Flying Foxes. So we went round to the old favourite: Bybrook Barn. Where they had Flying Foxes over a pound cheaper. It pays to shop about. Whilst there we had a look for charcoal biscuits for the grand-dogs's flatulence. Or more specifically to cure the grand-dogs's flatulence. They didn't have any, which was a shame for Sid's local environment.

We came back home. I mucked about with on-line scrabble. As did a lot of people. I suppose that it was some consolation that as everyone else was mucking about on-line I wasn't missing anything. But I did spend most of the afternoon in a sulk. Yesterday was a great day. Today was something of an anticlimax, and I spent a lot of it sulking about having to work tomorrow when I will be missing one of the year's highlights.

We spent some time clearing more stuff from the Sky-Plus box. Several episodes of Time Team, and the last episode of the ITV's Titanic drama series. I must admit I didn't like it much. It was the same story from several different viewpoints, and as such was rather repetitive. Which was a shame. And a film - "How to lose Friends and Alienate People". Simon Pegg was in it. He was in the Mission Impossible film we watched last night, and I've seen him in lots recently. He's certainly the actor of the moment. When I was younger I wanted to be an actor. I could do what he does..... I expect.....