28 March 2022 (Monday) - A Day Off Work

I woke feeling a tad grim. I had a shave as another negative COVID test incubated, then stood on the scales. Over the last week I’ve shifted four pounds in weight. That’s a result. But with no more Slimfast shakes just yet I made toast and had a look at the Internet.

 

Facebook presented me with two adverts today that made me roll my eyes. One was for a clinic in Madrid which specialises in making “lady bits” for/in/on (delete as appropriate) men who are wanting gender reassignment surgery. I can’t help but wonder how much these people spent on advertising their clinic, but it is clearly money down the drain as I don’t live anywhere near Madrid, and have quite enough worries with my own “tackle”, let alone having lady’s bits as well (or instead of – I’m a bit vague as to the specifics).

And the other advert… it was for a porno website. It had the “sponsored” thingy on which showed they had paid Facebook good money to run their advert. So much for their community standards.

I saw a new geocache had gone live near Orlestone Woods. Back in the day I would have chased after being First to Find, but I had things to do today. And (in all honesty) all the fun has long since been sucked out from being first anyway.

 

I took Treacle out for a little walk. She walked well, and shot away from my side twice to chase squirrels. I wish she wouldn’t, but probably nowhere near as much  as the squirrels wish she wouldn’t. Other than that, the walk passed off pretty much uneventfully. Mind you we did see one particularly “council” mother and four brats marching up Christchurch Road, all munching pies out of paper bags bearing the “Greggs” logo. I wondered what was going on there… the nearest Greggs is in the pedestrian area in the town centre, and they were walking in completely the wrong direction to have come from there.

We took a little detour on the way home to collect my car, and drove it home where I loaded it full of rubbish to take to the tip.

 

The tip was hard work. It was busier than it has been for a long time, and pretty much everyone had driven there with one small bag of tat and was emptying the tat one item at a time into the skips. And all were seemingly oblivious to the fact that anyone else was at the tip. If they didn’t walk into you, you found yourself falling over the tip operative who was clearly making a point of getting in everyone else’s way.

 

From there I went to the hospital for a post-op follow up. I got to see the ENT specialist today (and wasn’t fobbed off with his apprentice). He shoved an endoscope up my nose and after a (quite literally) eye-watering few minutes told me all was well, and suggested I come back for a check-up in a year’s time.

I then went to my car…

As I’d driven into the car park the barriers were being guarded by three hired thugs who wanted to know why I was going into the hospital’s car park. I told them because I was going to the hospital (I left off adding “dur!”). As I came out there was a fourth hired thug who insisted on operating the exit barrier for me. I asked him why there were four people guarding the barriers; he (very rudely) said that the barriers were being monitored. I can’t help but wonder what they were being monitored for? Who else but people attending the hospital wants to park in a hospital car park? And the entire thing is ticket controlled. The time anyone enters and leaves the car park is automatically recorded, as is the amount of people using the car park.

And they say the NHS is short of money…

 

Once home I had a Slimfast meal bar (still got some of those!) then had a pootle in the garden. Regular readers of this drivel may recall that last Thursday I built a garden screen to hide all the garden tat. Regular readers of this drivel may also recall that two days later it collapsed. So I put the ironing on hold, took the screen apart and rebuilt it with a right angle so it would be a tad more self-supporting. However there was a lot of unscrewing involved, and that seemed to take a lot more battery power from the electric screwdriver. But after a couple of hours farting about (interspersed with reading my e-book as the screwdriver charged) I came up with something perhaps a tad more stable than I’d had before.

 

I spent a few minutes playing “Worms”, then “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a dirty curry (!) which we washed down with a pint of stout (all told there was change out of eight hundred calories) whist watching “Richard Osman’s House of Games”; a TV show I quite like. 

I rather ache now – I think I overdid the carpentry in the garden today…

27 March 2022 (Sunday) - Mother's Day

What with receiving a drunk phone call at one o’clock, listening to snoring, and Treacle slurping on the duvet for much of the small hours I didn’t have the most restful of nights. Having the clocks going forward an hour didn’t help much either.

Having run out of Slimfast shakes I had toast and coffee as I watched “Trailer Park Boys” before sparking up the lap-top. There was a minor squabble happening on one of the kite-flying Facebook pages in which there was consternation being expressed at people giving daily spoilers for the answers to Wordle.

I had hoped to see photos of what I’d missed yesterday; there had been a Kent county geo-meet while I’d been working but no one had posted any photos of what had happened.

And a friend’s band had been playing last night but no photos of that had appeared either.

 

We drove up to Meopham. Regular readers of this drivel may recall that last Tuesday I went to Meopham to look at puppies and I wrote “There were two puppies to be seen. One is a dead ringer for Fudge, and for all that I wanted a boy, looking so much like Fudge I would subconsciously be expecting that dog to be my Fudge, and that wouldn’t be fair on him. The little girl is a sweetie, though. I shall go back with “er indoors ^TM”  in a few days’ time”. In the intervening time I’ve been looking at photos of the puppies and decided that there are marked differences between the little boy and my Fudge. And seeing how the little girl seemed to be hiding behind her brother I wasn’t happy about separating the puppies. Seeing how no one had been up to buy them in the meantime I saw this as fate telling me to get both of them. The nice lady seemed delighted that brother and sister puppies would be staying together. I amazed myself by doing a bank transfer from my phone… and we collect the babies in a couple of weeks’ time. Hopefully by then we’ll have names for them. I was thinking “William” and “Spud” but have been told “No!” from pretty much everyone who has heard the suggestion.

I took a few photos of the puppies, and after half an hour’s fussing them we really had to make a move.

 

We came back to Ashford where we collected “My Boy ^TM”.  “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” has known all along about the puppies, but we decided that the first fruit of my loin might not be as receptive to the news as his sister. We thought it best that the news came from his mother rather than from me; the difference being his just laying an egg as opposed to going full-on bat-shit-mental at me.

We then drove down to Dymchurch where I’d been told there was a family get-together going on. Having been in a caravan for a girlie weekend Cheryl and Lacey were meeting us at the pub in Dymchurch…Having got to Dymchurch I then drove along the coast for several miles to where we were supposed to be.

It wasn’t long before a dozen of us were all together at The Neptune for Mother’s Day…

 

Have you ever been to The Neptune? Being right next to a caravan park it has a captive clientele and the fact that it has a captive clientele was obvious. The food was good; most of us had the carvery, but the staff were a tad hopeless. The chap dishing out the food was dealing with each plate as though that was the first one he’d ever done.

Bless him.

 

It was good to catch up with family, but after a while we all went our separate ways (as we do). We drove home, collected Treacle (once we’d woken her) then together with “My Boy ^TM” and Rolo we had a little walk round Singleton Lake. Treacle really enjoyed the walk. Having spent every single walk since Pogo went home last Monday stuck to my side it was good to see her running about and playing.

 

Having had a decent bit of dinner earlier we skipped tea (and had a cuppa and biccies instead) and watched an episode of “Richard Osman’s House of Games”.

Today has been rather busy.

26 March 2022 (Saturday) - Bit Dull Really

I slept better last night, but was still awake earlier than I’d have liked. I scoffed the last of the diet brekkie shake thingies in my Slimfast box, then watched an episode of “Trailer Park Boys”. Two of our heroes had decided it was time to turn up the heat. However Ricky thought it was time for “turnips in the heat”. In the end they were distracted by an altercation with a porcupig.

Facebook was rather dull this morning as was my in-box, so taking care not to wake Treacle or “er indoors ^TM” I got ready for work.

 

As I drove up the motorway the pundits on the radio were spouting their usual drivel. In the past their usual drivel used to be a balanced summary of the day’s news. However these days their usual drivel is endless speculation about what is going on in Ukraine. Will the Americans do this? Why aren’t the Chinese doing that? There must be something happening in the world other than the conflict in Ukraine?

 

I got to work and had a far busier morning that I had intended to have. If anyone ever tells you that blood group O Negative can be transfused into anyone, ask if they would have liked my morning in which I had an O Negative patient whose blood would have made short work of pretty much most of the population. A long time ago I once described working in a blood bank as hours of tedium interspersed by moments of stark panic, and after many years’ reflection I think that is a fair summary.

 

I came home, woke Treacle (she was fast asleep) and took her round the block for a little stroll. Her flea treatment stuff was ready for collection from the vet so we went to get it. She wasn’t keen on going in there at all. She cried and wanted me to carry her and quivered in terror when the receptionist tried to pet her. Fudge never liked the vet either.

 

We came home and I had a little look in the back garden. It was as well that I did; the screen I built on Thursday had collapsed. That lasted a long time (!) I shall have another look at it in the week, but I think it might well be going to the tip. Rather than sorting it out I slobbed in front of the telly until “er indoors ^TM” came home. She boiled up a Slimfast recipe – a fry-up with sausages, bacon, fried egg and change out of six hundred calories.

As we scoffed it we watched the first of the Stand Up To Cancer “Celebrity Bake Off” episodes in which one of the celebrities started off by admitting that she wasn’t so much a baker as a cake enthusiast. A little later she said that some people were meant to be, and others were meant to be baked for.

I can agree with those sentiments. 

And my Munzee app told me we’ve got to our Clan War target for this month, which was a result.