17 December 2015 (Thursday) - Steak Night

The dogs sneaked upstairs in the night again. I wish they wouldn't. I can cope with "Furry Face ^TM" and his fidgetting; it is Sid's snoring that *really* disturbs me.

I gave up trying to sleep shortly after 7am and got up. I was expecting social media to be crawling with spoilers about the Star Wars film that came out last night. Surprisingly it wasn't. I was pleased about that.

Mind you (at the risk of appearing to be an old sourpuss) I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about it. I've said so a few times and this has met with genuine surprise. So many people have asked me why I'm not raving about the new Star Wars film - "after all you like Star Trek" is the standard response. That is akin to wondering why a fan of West Ham United isn't interested in the exploits of the Kent cricket team because it is all sport.

I took my brother to see the first three Star Wars films (when they first came out) and wasn't impressed. I've only seen the next three once only, and slept through most of them.

Don't get me wrong - if anyone likes the genre then I sincerely hope they like the films. But I have no interest in them.

"er indoors ^TM" had plans for a haircut this morning so I put the lead on to "Furry Face ^TM" and took him out to Great Chart. I had some geocaches to hide. I didn't take Sid as I thought it might be too muddy for him. It was. The mud was *very* thick and deep. Shoulder-deep on Fudge in places. But we got the caches out. Job done.

We came home to find visitors. "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" was on the sofa and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM" was wreaking havoc with a salt cellar. I hosed the mud from my dog then scoffed the burnt cheese on toast she'd boiled up. They then set off to visit friends, and "er indoors ^TM" came home complete with new haircut. I'm not sure how much she spent on it; in all honesty it doesn't really look any different to how it was before, but what do I know?

We then went on a little drive to Surrey to the bowling ball shop. She wanted a new ball, and the place in Surrey drills out the holes to custom-fit the ball to your hand. This is the fifth ball she's had; they don't seem to last that long.

We came home, and because it is nearly Christmas we went out for dinner. We've been to the Honest Miller in Brook a few times. Thursday night is steak night. I rarely have steak when I eat out but this was really good. And the trifle for dessert wasn't too shabby at all (to quote the first fruit of my loins). Both were washed down with a couple of pints of rather good ale. And they gave us a voucher for twenty five per cent off the price of our next visit. I will definately be going back.

Mind you (like many pubs) this place really does decide what it wants to be. On the one hand was fine dining. On the other hand was drunken harpies shrieking at each other. Drunken shrieking is only acceptable when I'm the one doing the shrieking.

16 December 2015 (Wednesday) - A Wombling Merry Christmas

Last night as I listened to the radio I heard something which made me think. The average salary in the UK is £26 500. However the average house costs three hundred thousand pounds.

When I took out my morgage I was allowed to borrow up to three times my annual salary. On that basis most people are over two hundred thousand pounds short.

How does anyone afford a house these days?

I came home; "er indoors ^TM" was off work today. The plan was for us to take the dogs for a walk the moment I got home. Like I do shortly before 9am after every night shift. I came home and waited for over an hour. At ten o'clock with her still in her pyjamas I lost patience and went to bed.

I slept for a while; "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" phoned about... I have no idea what she wanted. I told her I was asleep and went back to sleep. I eventually got up to see what the dogs were barking about at 2.30pm. Fudge was rather indignant because Sid had crapped on the carpet. Again.

I had a rather late brekkie. Over that brekkie I had a look-see on-line. Recently I seem to have been added to a Facebook group which reports on the efficiency (or otherwise) of the local trains.

On the one hand I can understand people's frustrations at the delays. On the other hand I feel for the people who work on the trains. When the train runs late the poor train staff are late getting home too. It is not as though they run the trains late deliberately. And is eight minutes *really* such a big deal?

Whilst this group was started with good intentions I can't help but feel that in a very short time it has become something of a magnet for the whingers.

Also on Facebook was a friend request from Caean Adc. He is apparently rather pleased to have found Jesus. That's nice for him. He was also rather pleased that Jesus got nailed to a tree, which I felt was rather harsh.

I didn't so much respond to the friend request as told him to get knotted.

I had an email from LinkedIn. Apparently Joe Edwards is now a recruitment consultant at the therapies division of HCL Healthcare. I wonder who Joe Edwards is. This same email told me of a job opportunity that suited my profile; I could apply to become a tester of blood whilst serving on one of the Royal Navy's warships, and it also told me that I have had my skill in clinical research endorsed by someone that I've never met.

I rarely use LinkedIn; mainly because it seems to think I know all sorts of people of whom I have never heard and offers me jobs which are utterly unsuitable for me based on recommendations about me which are made up.

And I saw that an old schoolfriend of mine is to become Rye's Town Crier. Whilst I'm rather pleased for him I must admit to a pang of jealousy. Being a gobby sort of person I could do that. How does one become a Town Crier?

"er indoors ^TM" apppeared at 4pm. She'd been shopping for (or should that be for?) "Daddies Little Angel ^TM". We took the dogs out then. It was a shame that it was dark, but Fudge enjoyed his walk. I don't think Sid did much. He did straggle rather a lot.

Once home we had a little tidy up and prepared for the evening. "er indoors ^TM" was staging a candle party. Much as I can be cynical about the things, the candles aren't bad. And we had a really good time laughing and chatting and even Chromecasting wombles with old friends... really must do this more often.

15 December 2015 (Tuesday) - Poor Service

I stopped off at Morrisons on the way to work last night. In much the same way I have done several times over the last four years. As I queued at the checkout there was a minor altercation in the queue behind me. One chap was standing with a basketful of packets of sweets. Loads of sweets. As I looked at them I vaguely wondered about stocking up with the things myself for Christmas. And then some rather officious woman in Morrisons uniform bustled up and aggressively demanded that he put most of them back. She would only allow him to buy six packets of sweets.

He seemed to accept this; I mentioned to the chap that if he wasn't allowed to buy them I would have some of them - they would be ideal for Christmas. Five minutes later the same officious busybody marched up to me and told me that the checkout girl had accused me plotting with the other chap to somehow defraud Morrisons. She accused me of buying shopping to then pass on to this chap, and rudely went on to say that for reasons that she could (but wouldn't) explain it is illegal for anyone to buy more than six of any given item from a shop.

This is patently nonsense and has no standing in law. Even if it is a strange regulation peculiar to Morrisons it is not one whach I have ever seen enforced. The people in the queue in front of me were buying *lots* of bottles of a certain brand of wine.

Over the years I have come to accept rather shoddy service from Morrisons but this was an all-time low. I told her (in no uncertain terms) where she could put her groceries and drove round to spend my money in Sainsburys.

The manager at Sainsburys confirmed my suspicion that there is no legal bar to buying as much of any given item as I choose. He also had an attitude which could not be described as "obnoxious" which has made me wonder if I might not be better off spending my money with them in future.

I sent them a rather scathing email, then did my night shift.

As I drove home I had a wry smile at the news. Ex-Radio One disc jockey Neil "Doctor" Fox has been cleared of all the horrible allegations made against him.

Following this, Britain's most senior magistrate questioned the pursuit of historic sex attack cases. "The most difficult aspect of this case was most of the allegations were historical," he said. "While the events were undoubtedly memorable for the complainants, it's appropriate to approach with caution accounts which happened of a brief period so long ago."

Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, who was also arrested over historic claims before charges were thrown out, called for Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe to resign.

Meanwhile in America Bill Cosby (who despite all the rumours has still to be formally charged with anything) has sued seven women saying they lied when they accused him of historical sexual assault with a plan to make money from the allegations.

Whilst the alleged crimes in these cases are terrible (*if* they actually happened) the supposed victims have had quite long enough to bring their cases. But so many people really do beleive in the "no smoke without fire" philosphy and innocent lives are ruined.

I've ranted about this before, haven't I?

Once home I had planned to take the dogs for a walk. The rain was against us, but we had a go. After a hundred yards Sid sat down and refused to go any more. I managed to coax him on a little, but we didn't go far.

I then spent most of the day asleep. I'm off to another night shift now...

14 December 2015 (Monday) - Before the Night Shift

Both dogs sneaked upstairs last night. I can (just about) cope with "Furry Face ^TM" taking up all the space on the bed taht "er indoors ^TM" allows me, but Sid's snoring was just too much. I took them both downstairs and after a a quick trip to the garden I settled them in their baskets. Within half an hour I was taking them back downstairs again...

Over brekkie I checked out the Internet; other than Dick Van Dyke having had his ninetieth birthday little had changed overnight.

I put the lead onto a bouncing "Furry Face ^TM" and "er indoors ^TM" coaxed the lead onto a rather disinterested Sid, and I took both dogs for a walk. As we walked neither dog was paying much attention to the other, and there was an embarrassing incident when Fudge stopped and Sid bulldozed right into him.

We carried on to Singleton Lake and round to Viccie Park where Fudge made a nuisance of himself with some old friends. Sid was noticed only for the fact of how he was straggling. Sid was odd; when on the lead he was by my side all the time. When off the lead he seemed to fall further and further back.

Once home both dogs immediately settled and Sid (in particular) was soon snoring. I spent a few minutes fighting with Christmas wrapping paper then put some stuff into the washing machine. Since the nice man fixed the program timer, the washing machine seems to take much longer to scrub stuff.

I then took the rubbish from last Friday's astro club meeting to the tip, delievered a vaccum cleaner to "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" and went on to the hospital for an appointment about that troublesome lump in my neck.

To cut a very long and tedious story short I'm being sent back for yet another urgent ultrasound-guided biopsy at some point.

I came home, scoffed a bit of lunch then took myself off to bed for the afternoon. I slept for a couple of hours and dozed fitfully for a little while after that.

I came downstairs and watched "Upstairs Downstairs". Sid seems to have taken a dislike to Her Ladyship. I must admit I have too; whilst the Master is away fighting in the war she is having it away with a junior officer from Yorkshire.

I'm off to the night shift now...

13 December 2015 (Sunday) - Visiting Santa

Sid had a woofing fit five minutes I went to bed last night. I settled him doown again. He had another woofing fit five minutes after I dozed off. I slept well and woke raring to go at 8am. I got up and my right knee immediately collapsed underneath me. It was a good job the bed was there.

I came down and was very pleased to see that there had been no "accidents" overnight. Over brekkie I pondered geo-puzzles. There is one in particular which had had me thinking (on and off) for well oover a year. As i devoured my toast I had a stroke of genuis when I realised.... well, I won't say what I realised as it has taken me so long to realise it. However my genius seems to leavee a lot to be desired. I think it isn't giving away any secrets to say that it is (probably) is in the general area of a triangle with vertices at Tunbridge Wells, Paddock Wood and Cranbrook. Unfortunately my calculations have placed it in a parrallel universe which features a negative latitude.

As I tried to correct my error "Furry Face ^TM" was snuggling closer and closer to me. For all that he acts the problem child in public, he is actually a rather affectionate little dog, and since Sid moved in with us, Fudge has become rather clingy.

Once "er indoors ^TM" was ready we set off to Bethersden. Santa was at the Reindeer farm today so we thought that Lacey might like to go see him. Again. We went on the weekend before Christmas last year and it was so incredibly busy. It was busy today, but not as bad as last year. This year we saw Santa after about an hour's wait. Last year we queued for an hour just to get tickets.

We saw Santa; he was really good. And then we walked through the winter scenes; even seeing the foxy one from "Frozen". I then spent a small fortune getting fridge magnets and keyrings and snow globes of our visit to Santa.

We weree peckish; we had a quick sausage roll in the restaurant, and then had a go at the tombola. Cheryl told the Mayor off for being a cheapskate and Lacey walked away with three prizes.

From here we went on to the animals. Reindeer, drizzledeer (like reindeer but smaller), stormdeer (like reindeer but bigger), donkeys, emus, meerkats, iguanaa, ducks, pythons, pigs. All sorts of creatures. "My Boy ^TM" blagged some carrots and had a whale of a time feeding them to every animal that eats carrots (and one or two that don't).

You can see what we saw by clicking here.

All too soon it was time to go; family had things to do and places to go. We drove over to Canterbury. "er indoors ^TM" had bought a jumper from "Go Outdoors" a while back only to find a hole in it. The nice people at "Go Outdoors" were really helpful and changed it right away.

We then went on to the Cheapo-Bargains shop for some cheapo-bargains, and then on to McDonalds for a spot of McLate McLunch. Again I had McKFC and was loudly telling "er indoors ^TM" that I like McKFC when the little boy at the next table told me that KFC was rubbish.

Once back in Ashford we ran the dogs round to the park and back just as it was getting dark. As we walked I met an old friend from my days as a cub scout leader. She too had become disillusioned with the way things were going at our old scout group, and we spent five minutes whinging before saying goodbye for another few years.

We came home; the dogs had their tea and soon both were snoring. Sid on one sofa, Fudge snuggling up to me on the other. Did I mention that Sid's visit has made him rather clingy?

12 December 2015 (Saturday) - Sid's First Geo-Walk

I was woken by a huge crash at 3am.Sid (our house guest) had opened the stair gate and was trying to jump onto the bed. But he's not of the most athletic physique and couldn't make the jump. I got up and chivvied him back downstairs where "Furry Face ^TM" was sitting in the sofa with a look on his face not entirely unlike that which behaving cub scouts used to wear whilst watching the thicker of their companions failing to misbehave.

Seeing no little accidents in the living room (yet) I sent both dogs outside for two minutes, then went back to sleep. Amazingly I actually got back to sleep, and slept until 5am when I woke in a cold sweat following a vivid dream in which because of my involvement with the astro club I had been given the task of providing the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher practical advice on dealing with nose bleeds.

Over brekkie I checked out the Internet, and then had a rather irate text from "Daddies Little Angel ^TM". Apparently Sid *is* house trained. He knows how to tell people that he needs the loo. But if everyone is asleep when he needs to go and consequently no one can see him then what is he supposed to do?

I spent a few minutes solving rather fiendish (I thought) geo-puzzles until "er indoors ^TM" was ready and then we set off on today's mission. Usually we go for a serious walk on Sundays, but there is other stuff on the agennda for tomorrow so today we went down to Peasmarsh. Often when we walk we go mob-handed but bearing in mind that today was something of an experiment (Sid's first serious hike) we thought we'd keep things low-key just in case I ended up carrying a pug for several miles.

We drove down to Bixley Woods and we hadn't even left the car before I wrenched my back by swinging up my haversack. But I soldiered on; we wandered up the lane and into some woods. I was brave and let Sid off of the lead. And he was as good as gold. Whilst the other two were their usual excitable boisterous selves, Sid pootled along sniffling and snuffling. Whenever he got more than ten yards behind I could see panic set in and he would run to catch up.

There was a dodgy five minutes when we could hear F-birds (pheasants) in the distance, but we got the dogs onto their leads before they reallised what was happening. There was a funny five minutes when Fudge fell in a stream. There were some rather tricky geo-hides to find, and there were some rather clever ones too.

We found twelve geocaches along a well-marked route over a couple of hours and found ourselves back at the car much earlier than I had thought we would be.

We scoffed our sandwiches and with time on our hands we drove a mile down the road to a smaller geo-series of eight caches. We thought this would fill the spare time nicely...

I don't want to be negative; someone has gone to a lot of time and effort to hide these things for me to go hunt them. But, on reflection, the first series seemed so much better. For all that there were a couple of really good ideas on this second loop, the GPS units didn't settle down, we struggleed to find caches, and when we did the co-ordinates of the caches seemed to be rather out. Also there didn't seem to be any clearly marked footpath route; at one point we found ourselves doing a "follow the arrow" through the jungle for two hundred yards when it became apparent that the path was going in entirely the wrong direction.

Or perhaps I was just sulking as I nearly (but not quite) bent my knee backwards when struggling with one of the two caches we couldn't find.

I slept most of the way home, and when we got home I forrgot that I'd done for my knee and nearly fell out of the car when I lunged out. Woops. I hosed the mud off of both dogs and it wasn't long before they were both snoring.

I took a few photos whilst we were out today. I put them on-line as the dogs snored.

The plan for th evening was to go out on a night walk. But I ached; my right elbow's not been right for some time and after my little episode in the mud today my right knee was playing up too. So I backed out of the night walk and stayed indoors.

Hope it gets better soon....

11 December 2015 (Friday) - Games to Play

I got up this morning and spent a few minutes clearing up Sid's turds. As I did so, Fudge watched from his basket with a most odd expression. I could tell that he knew it was wrong. Sid however seemed oblivious to his misdemeanours.

Over brekkie I found myself enthralled by the Christmas episode of "George and Mildred" on ITV3. Did people *really* enjoy this sort of drivel?

I set off to several streets away to find where I'd parked my car last night. As I walked the dustbin-men were doing their thing. For once they weren't noisily making a mess whilst scattering emptied bins all over the pavements. And they were being civil to passers-by. Obviously they were after something. Do people still give bin-men a Christmas tip?

I got my car and drove it home where I unloaded the baby seat and put the box of my stuff back into the boot. As I did that the fox I saw yesterday walked down the pavement. As he passed me he glanced up in the same way that I would nod at a passing acquaintance.

I spent a few minutes watching Foxy. That animal is completely fearless.

I drove to work; as I drove the radio spewed its usual brand of drivel. I stopped off at Morrisons as we'd run out of jam. It was a shame that I didn't realise I'd left my packed lunch at home as I could have bought some sandwiches there. I didn't realise that until I actually got to work.

The League of Friends shop sells sandwiches but I don't like encouraging that sort of thing. I got some coronation chicken sandwiches from them. They weren't too shabby (to quote "My Boy ^TM" ) but I wouldn't tell them that.

Today at work the talk was all about Chess-Boxing; a novel sport in which three-minute rounds of chess are interspersed with three-minute rounds of boxing. In all there are six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing; the winner being decided on points, knockout or checkmate. It is actually a proper sport. I wonder if I can find any takers for this over the Christmas holiday - it might make a pleasant change from charades.

After work I set off to McDonalds. Usually before astro club we go to the McD in Eureka Park, but today we went to the one on the Orbital Park. If nothing else it made for a change. I had the chicken strips, or as I prefer to think of it, McKFC.

And so on to Astro Club. Over a year ago the committee had actually arranged for the December meeting to be next Friday, but it seemed that only some of the committee could make that date. So we met tonight instead. The meeting was billed as a "social". Generally I read any club's "social" as "we've not actually arranged anything" and I went along with rather low expectations. But I was wrong. Despite a rather disappointingly low turn-out we had a great time.

Especially with the custard pie throwing machine intended for five year olds. Must get one for myself.

Chess-Boxing and custard pies for Christmas...