28 January 2022 (Friday) - More of The Same

I was having a rather good lie-in when Pogo started screaming for no apparent reason. He does that from time to time. I wish he wouldn’t.

I got up and spent an entertaining few minutes watching Treacle sulk at her brekkie. She’d eaten up the dog food she likes but was glaring at a bowl of biscuits in utter contempt. Pogo was tucking into his biscuits quite happily. When Pogo had finished his biccies and turned his stare in her direction so she started eating. Silly dogs.

 

I was invited to join a Facebook group today. “Lego Scammers” is for people who have been conned when trying to buy Lego over the Internet. Having been conned, you then publish all the details of the person who scammed you to warn others. It is a sad old world when people are making a living out of pretending to sell Lego. Apparently this is big business.

I also got the link to a friend’s funeral which is taking place in a couple of weeks’ time. Despite lifting of lockdown restrictions there is only space for seventy-six people at the crematorium and there are over a hundred family members wanting to go. Watching the thing on-line is the way to go. Interestingly when I logged in (to check it worked) I was offered the chance to download a video of the service after it had happened. For thirty quid (!) Bearing in mind how much a funeral costs, someone’s taking the piss here, aren’t they?

 

I got the leads onto the dogs who seemed far more enthusiastic about a walk today than they had been all week. As we drove we listened to “Desert Islands Discs”. Today’s castaway was the businessman John Caudwell who was the chap behind “Phones 4 U”. His life sounded rather interesting, but then doesn’t that of anyone who has done well for themselves. 

We drove up to Kings Wood (yet again) where we explored more of the top end of the wood. We had a potential “near-miss episode” as we walked. Fortunately my two just walked straight on past with me, but… I blame the owner of the other dog.

If you’ve got a girl dog in season and you don’t want her having puppies with any other random dog, what do you do? Personally I would either keep her at home or walk her on a lead. I *wouldn’t* take her for a run in the woods whilst shrieking hysterically in panic at every other dog owner I met from a hundred yards away.

 

After three miles of mostly new (to us) footpaths we were back at the car. We came home to see not-so-nice-next-door in her from garden, making a point of pretending not to see us. I’m rather sad to say that such a sad state of affairs suits me just fine. She’s ignored us for years. I made a special effort to be civil to her last year and she made it abundantly clear she would prefer not to be on speaking terms, so there it is.

I washed the dogs’ paws (as they were a tad grubby), then took a mop and bucket to the car (it too was a tad grubby), then sparked up the telly and watched some films on Netflix. “Rise of the Footsoldier 3” was entertaining even if it did have the most shallow of plots. “Rise of the Krays” was good; even if I did have to keep rewinding it as I kept falling asleep.

“er indoors ^TM” came home and sorted out fish and chips which we scoffed whilst watching “Junior Bake Off”.

 

This has been pretty much the theme of the week off – a walk round Kings Wood in the morning and the rest of the day on the sofa watching the telly with sleeping dogs. There’s something oddly satisfying about doing absolutely nothing with a dog asleep on top of you.

I did have an invitation for this evening – but I’m not going back to the Astro club. For the last year of so of my involvement with it there was one member (now on the committee) who would make a point of coming up, standing in front of me (as though I wasn’t there) and starting a conversation with whoever it was I had been talking to. And whoever I had been talking to would then also pretend I wasn’t there and talk to her instead. When I last went to the club it was up to me to send out invitations to every meeting, and there was quite a bit of nastiness directed at me from this person because I hadn’t sent her a personal invite; even though she’d set her social media settings to prevent me contacting her.

Ironically it is this person who’d sent me an invite to the meeting this evening.

I am reliably informed that she may well have had no idea that her deliberately blanking me (for over a year) might be construed as deliberate and calculated rudeness, and that in taking offence I was in the wrong for having been over-sensitive.

Isn’t this just typical of today’s society?

27 January 2022 (Thursday) - Kings Wood Again

I had an alarm set for this morning and so had the worst night’s sleep for weeks. I gave up trying to sleep, got up, and made toast. Unlike yesterday there were quite a few people commenting on Facebook this morning. With the results of the formal enquiry into the Prime Minister’s conduct during lockdown (when he openly staged parties in Downing Street to which he has admitted) still awaited, it is being claimed that the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into the alleged Downing Street parties is estimated to cost one and a half million quid Bearing in mind that the maximum penalty for the alleged offence is a fine of a hundred quid, people were asking if all the fuss is it really worth it.

Specifically in this instance for me it’s more about the principle involved than the money. I wasn’t allowed to see my mother on her last birthday before she died whilst our joke of a Prime Minister was on the piss blatantly ignoring the rules he demanded everyone else followed. But in more general terms this shows the sad state of our country in that our Prime Minister can do what he wants when he wants, and is never held accountable for any of his actions.

There was also quite a bit of nastiness  on one of the work-related groups that I follow. In the world of blood transfusion, pedantry is king… I suppose it is probably for the best as the most subtle mis-use of terminology might kill someone. The difference between K and k or D and d can be fatal.

 

I left home earlier than I have done for some time and drove round to the tip. Back in the day the queue for the tip at opening time would be two streets long. Today there were five cars. The tip opened (two minutes late), and within five more minutes we had all emptied our rubbish and were on our way. Ever since the local tip started operating an appointment system (rather than turning up and chucking your rubbish) there have always been far fewer cars there. I’m left wondering where all today’s rubbish goes. Are people just hoarding it at home, or fly-tipping it?

 

With the car emptied I came home and collected the dogs and drove round to the garage where we picked up “er indoors ^TM” (whose car was in for a service) and drove her to work. As her work is only a stone’s throw (with a BIG catapult) from Kings Wood I took the dogs up there and we found a path from the upper car park to the paths at the south side of the woods that we know well. We had a really good walk; taking “Hannah” to record our route it was interesting to find that the milestone that Fudge tiddled on (all those years ago) was three miles from the car park. Unlike yesterday we pretty much had the woods to ourselves; we only saw one other group of dog walkers, and that was at the five and a half miles stage.

Mind you they were an odd bunch. Two people, too many dogs to count. I used to find that three dogs were probably too many, and nowadays two dogs are plenty. How did these people cope with five or six dogs each?

 

We came home (via the petrol station) where I sat on the sofa and was soon buried under two snoring dogs. Bearing in mind that the rules say you can’t move a dog that is asleep on you (fact!) I spent the afternoon watching films on Netflix.

“Villain” was a very good film (if you like that sort of thing) sadly let down by the ending. “Screwed” was supposedly based on the books of the same title, but like most film adaptations had nothing in common with the books but the title.

 

I eventually managed to wheedle my way out from under the dogs and drove off to collect “er indoors ^TM” and drive her to the garage where her car was ready. As garages so often do, they found one or two things that needed putting right… It is odd how people lay an egg whenever I suggest getting a Lego set that costs a hundred quid, but no one bats an eyelid when the garage bill comes in at four hundred quid more than you were expecting.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came up with a rather good dinner which we scoffed whilst watching “Junior Bake Off”. In a novel break with tradition as well as all the talented baking children, they’ve got one lad who is rather crap. Is it bad form to laugh out  loud at what he boils up? I tried not to.

We’re currently watching “Schmigadoon!” on Apple TV – it is one of those shows that is so bad it is actually worth watching… *if* you’ve got Apple TV.

26 January 2022 (Wednesday) - Watching Too Much Telly?

Every morning as I scoff toast I peer into Facebook. Some mornings it can be fun seeing what everyone else has been getting up to. Some mornings it can be rather dull. This morning I would have described as “repetitive”. Some chap in America was selling a Lego set and the same advert had appeared on half a dozen Lego pages I follow. A friend of “My Boy ^TM” had bought far too much massively overpriced fishing bait and was trying to sell most of it (on every fishing-related group I follow). The same Sparks-related memes were on every Sparks-related group… Social media can get rather dull sometimes, but I wouldn’t be without it. Today marks fifteen years since I first set up my Facebook account.
With no emails of note I got dressed, got organised and took the dogs out…

Taking the dogs out isn’t quite as straightforward as it used to be. Back in the day Fudge would be raring to go and everyone else would be caught up in his excitement. These days Treacle is vaguely keen on the idea of going out (if she can tear herself away from “er indoors ^TM”), but more and more Pogo seems to be going off of the whole idea. He’s not quite as bad as Sid was (who used to scurry away and hide at walk times) but he certainly shows very little enthusiasm to get going. 

We drove up to Kings Wood again mainly because of how little mud there was up there yesterday, and went for quite a long explore of the northern part of the wood. I’ve got a vague plan to replace my geocaches in Kings Wood with two loops of caches starting from the top car park, and with this in mind we had a rather good wander. I’ve not really explored the top of the woods before; today it was infested with normal people, but once we got over half a mile from the car park we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

I took my GPS unit “Hannah” along to record our track, and every so often I recorded where I might hide a cache… not so much an actual location but a minimum distance from the previous potential hide. There are those who delight in my producing these maps and use them to hunt out the geocaches I’ve hidden before anyone else can get close (they really do!!), but these ones will be something of a disappointment. They are more of a “proof of concept” than actual locations. I shan’t be looking for actual locations for some time.

 

After two hours and five miles we were back at the car and heading home where I spent a few minutes getting a car load of rubbish together for a tip run in the morning.

Over a spot of lunch I finished watching “Kiss Me First”. The show started rather well, but left me with something of a feeling of “WTF was that all about?” I then popped over the road to the Polish shop and got a humungous tub of salted caramel Haagen-Das and scoffed it whilst watching “Wild Bill” which was a rather good film.

I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the telly these days… I suppose I’ll find more to do when it isn’t so cold outside. I should really make the most of it – I’m back to work next week.