28 December 2021 (Tuesday) - Bit Tired

Last night’s night shift was dumped on me at rather short notice, and had I known how it was going to pan out (not the best night shift!) I would never have offered to have stepped int the breach. But there it is.

As I drove home the pundits on the radio were talking about the latest pandemic news; I say “news”; perhaps “wild baseless speculation” might be a better description of their wittering. I got rather annoyed with their blatant scaremongering and turned the radio off In favour of my  rather excellent choice of music.

 

Once home I had a quick spot of brekkie whist peering into the Internet. It was still there. There was an amazing bit of spam on my Facebook feed featuring two young ladies snogging which had attracted all sorts of criticism from religious crackpots. You have to wonder about someone whose invisible friend judges the life choices of a complete stranger.

And in a complete break with tradition no one was selling off their unwanted Christmas pressies (yet).

 

We got the leads onto the dogs and drove down to Hastings. The weather forecast for today had led us to believe that it would be dry today. But it lied. The torrential rain started when we were half-way there, and we got rather wet crossing the road from where we’d parked the car to my Dad’s house. I wanted to see him today as today would have been my Mum’s eighty-sixth birthday.

Dad seemed well; he’s had a spate of starlings flying down his chimney and had just chivvied one out of the front room window. He seemed rather amused watching Pogo and Treacle running riot. We had planned to walk them before visiting, but we thought it better to arrive with hyperactive dogs rather than filthy and wringing wet dogs.

After an hour or so the dogs were becoming rather fractious so we said our goodbyes and headed home.

 

Seeing the weather had chirped up a little and bearing in mind the awful weather had stopped the dogs getting a decent walk for a couple of days we stopped off in Winchelsea and took them for a little walk guided by the Adventure Lab cache series that was there. The rain had mostly stopped, but it wasn’t very warm and the wind was a tad keen. But we got two geo-souvenirs, the dogs got their walk, and they slept all the way home.

 

We came home to find a parcel propped against the front door. Amazon had delivered my new hair clippers. On December 8^th I mentioned my hair trimmer had packed up. Despite having dropped  a few hints no one had got me a set as a Christmas pressie so yesterday I ordered a set and today they were waiting for me when we came home. Or waiting for anyone who fancied a set of hair clippers really. Just sitting propped against the front door waiting to be picked up by whoever got to them first. Fortunately I was first, but it could have been anyone.

 

I gave myself a haircut, then sat on the sofa and dozed through several “Carry On” films. They were hilarious fifty years ago… but they are rather dated now.

“er indoors ^TM” came back from the shops with a rather good bit of Chinese which we scoffed watching the Christmas episode of “Taskmaster”. 

Despite having had to go into the night shift at short notice last night, I think we made the most of today…

27 December 2021 (Monday) - Before the Night Shift (!)

I slept for eleven hours last night; finally having to get up as my back ached from laying still for so long. It is quite a while since that last happened.

I got up, set the washing machine loose on laundry and made some toast to scoff as I peered into the internet. There was a really impressive argument on one of the Lego-related Facebook pages in which someone had been given a Lego mug for Christmas and there were all sorts of arguments about whether anyone would ever use such a mug, and how the thing would or would not collapse, and how ungrateful and rude the original poster had been to whenever it was who had given them the pressie in the first place.

There were quite a few postings about geocaching-like activities on my Facebook feed this morning… “Treasure Trails” seemed to be like any series of geocaches except that you have to pay (at least) ten quid to do each trail.  And “Snag the Tag” is just geocaching’s “First to Find”-ing with the tags for which you search costing a small fortune in the first place, and once the tag has been found, game over. I can’t see either taking off, but you never know.

I also read that the actress who played “Truly Scrumptious” in the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang film died last week. She was ninety-one.

 

The plan for today had been a decent post-Christmas walk. But bearing in mind how wet we’d got in such a short time yesterday and seeing how the rain today was worse, we’d reluctantly decided to cancel. So we had a rather lazy day. We watched a couple of episodes of “The Brittas Empire” which were rather funny even if they did start with a (totally unnecessary) disclaimer that they featured language and comedy of their time.

Over a lunch of cheese and pickles we then watched the last “Harry Potter” film. Over the last few weeks we’ve watched all seven (eight) of the films and… I won’t say they are crap but I’m also reading the “Harry Potter” books on my Kindle app too. I’ve said this before, but if you haven’t read the books then the films don’t stand up to any thought and don’t make an awful lot of sense.

“Hook” was a rather fun film, and was followed by “Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father”.

 

And then I got the call – would I do the night shift… Having agreed to stand by I couldn’t really say no. I suppose it will stop me spending time eating cheese.

26 December 2021 (Sunday) - Boxing Day

Apart from a trip to the loo at five o’clock I was out like a light for ten hours last night which was something of a result. I woke to find Treacle scrambling at the bed covers; she’d got a squeaky toy for Christmas and loved it so much she’d taken it to bed last night and couldn’t find it this morning.

 

Having been woken I got up, made toast and had a look-see at the Internet. There were quite a few photos of people’ Christmases which I liked looking at. I’m a very nosey person!! The photo of myself in the hospital blood bank which I had posted to the works Facebook page had got quite a few “likes”, but not as many as last year’s. Last year the photo I posted there had more than twice the number of “likes” that the second-most liked photo had. It’s not about the numbers – all the time your number is highest(!)

There were quite a few duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate postings on Facebook as people posted photos of Lego, dogs, records, and the like to every single Facebook group of whatever the theme was. There was a particularly good posting on the Jackshund page of a little dog which looked just like Fudge destroying his Christmas coat just like Fudge would have done. I had a little blub, and then set a COVID test going.

As it incubated I looked in my in-box in the naïve hope of a new geocache… for a few years I got a First to Find on Boxing Day. But not this year. There’s been more requests to have old geocache archived this month than there have been new caches published, and (apart from the two I created) nothing new local for ages. Oh well…

 

Seeing a break in the rain we took the dogs to the park. However the rain soon started again and we brought back two seals (the dogs were that soaked) and I then spent a couple of minutes wringing out my pants. We were out for half an hour and got soaked to the skin.

Suitably equipped with dry pants “er indoors ^TM” made us a caramel latte and we downed it with a Mr Kipling After Eight Fondant Fancy which was all the better for being past its sell-by date.

As I guzzled and scoffed I started putting together next year’s birthday video. Every year I make a little video which I can post to people’s Facebook pages when they have a birthday. The video features various piccies from my life over the previous year… it’s a little unique thing that I can do. It seems to go down well. I shall post it to You-Tube in a day or so, but won’t use it until next year. Which is only a week away.

With the dogs snoring we drove round to “My Boy ^TM” ‘s house where we had a rather god afternoon. Far too much to eat and drink, and once stuffed we had a rather good game of “Monopoly”. It would have been better had I not been wiped out first, but there it is.
We then scoffed even more… I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I don’t relax when the dogs are home alone… we came home to find them fast asleep.