17 August 2024 (Saturday) - A Busy Day

There was a minor disaster when I sparked up my lap-top this morning. No connection to the Internet. How was I going to survive? It was the end of the world. The connection re-established itself within seconds, but those seconds were rather worrying. Similarly worrying was a notification that the leader of my old Boys Brigade company had liked a photo that I’d posted on Facebook – the chap died four years ago.

I saw my brother was off to watch the football. An hour’s drive from Hastings to get the coach at Brighton, and then three hundred miles to Liverpool. I can’t see the attraction, but I know I’m in the minority.

This morning’s argument was on the “Lost in Space” Facebook page where it was claimed that the robot in the show was too tall to fit through the spaceship’s door. There was an impressive squabble going on with a lot of name-calling on both sides. Sadly no one ever thought to resort to getting a photo of the robot by the door to prove the issue one way or another.

 

We drove round to Dog Club. Usually as we drive we listen to Steve and struggle with the competitions. However he wasn’t on this morning, and his stand-in wasn’t the same.

Dog Club was fun. It started of a tad on the dodgy side with several of the dogs being quarrelsome, but they all soon settled.

We had one new dog along. Only one. Again during the week we’d had a few people asking endless questions about coming to Dog Club, but none of them showed up. I’m seriously thinking of replying to all enquiries along the lines of “either turn up and you will be very welcome, or don’t turn up and don’t waste my time with endless enquiries about a meeting to which you have absolutely no intention of turning up”. Harsh? Perhaps. But I’d say that for every new member who turns up we have about a dozen streams of question after question from people who never show.

 

We came home and had a cuppa, then set off to Ripple for the monthly county geo-meet. As well as being the county geo-meet, today is (was) International Geocaching Day and in a novel break with tradition I wasn’t working. Today is my twelfth International Geocaching Day, and over the years I’ve been working on ten of them.

With a few minutes spare we stopped off at the church by the meet and found the geocache there, Inside that was the co-ordinates of another geocache. We walked across a footpath to get that one…

Oh dear.

As we walked the footpath so we walked past a campsite where all sorts of normal people were camping. I say “past”; “on the other side of the fence from” would be a far better description. Sadly one of the half-witted children on the campsite saw the dogs, screamed “DOG!!!” and sprinted at Morgan and Bailey. It was totally through luck that the idiot child didn’t trample Bailey underfoot in its uncontrolled excitement. It was as well that he took being told to f… off in the spirit in which it was intended.

 

From there we went on to the geo-meet. We started off with ice creams. I got one for me and for “er indoors ^TM”, and bearing in mind there was a big sign advertising dog friendly ice cream I asked for some for the dogs. The chap on the counter said they didn’t do dog friendly ice cream. I asked about the sign; he called over the manager who said that everyone asks about dog friendly ice cream but they don’t do it. I explained they had a sign advertising the stuff; she looked at me as though was stupid.

We then walked over to where the geo-meet was happening. Despite a rather shaky start we had a good meet. Talking Tuoperware with like-minded friends whilst pouring beer down my neck is always a good way to spend the afternoon.

 

We came home where I fell asleep for a bit. It wasn’t long before Chris, Steve and Sarah were with us, and after a quick bit of KFC we had a rather good games night on the Infinity Table. A game of “Sorry”, a game of “Game of Life” and rounding it off with “Ticket to Ride” made for a good evening.

Today’s been rather good… And I took some photos.

16 August 2024 (Friday) - FTF, Backache

 

There was heavy rain in the night. Heavy enough to wake me up. I eventually nodded off again, and woke about half past seven as Bailey was having a dream and was kicking me in the face. It’s as well that she is rather small.

There was talk of relatively local pubs on my Facebook feed this morning. The Black Horse in Pluckley is to re-open after having been closed for nearly a year. It was bought out in 2022 and the owners managed to keep it going for eight months before going under.I wonder how the new owners will fare.

A few miles down the road from there is the Chequers in Smarden. Owned by celebrity chef Paul Hollywood’s wife, she’s closing it down having pumped eighty thousand quid of her own money into it to no avail.

It strikes me that however you look at it, buts are expensive things. Just popping to the pub twice a week for a single pint costs the thick end of forty quid a month.

Meanwhile a Folkestone barber has closed down his shop (because the rent is far too much) and has opened up a business from his garden shed.

And then I had a notification of a new geocache… pretty much in the car park at Longbeech Woods. Bearing in mind that the location looked to be about ten yards from where I was planning to park the car for this morning’s dog walk I got ready a tad quicker than I might have done. However rallying the dogs takes some doing.

 

My piss boiled as I listened to the radio as we drove to the woods. I’ve ranted about the so-called “infected blood scandal” many times. But the government has decided to pay compensation to those infected. Payments should be made by the end of the year.

End of the year? Seriously? The government knows who they feel is entitled to the money, and to how much they are entitled. Why can’t they be paid today? What delays could there be?

By the time I finished shouting at the radio and got to the car park there were already four other hunters of Tupperware rummaging in the hedgerow. It was as well that this cache hadn’t gone live yesterday – that illegal campsite would have been right in our way.

I joined the fray, and after a while we had the elusive cache in hand. It took a little longer than it should have, but joint First One to Find It is always a good thing.

And then we went on to the walk that we’d planned all along.

 

After a hundred yards we were stopped by a distraught young lady in her pyjamas. Had we seen her dog? It seemed her dog had escaped her garden in Charing and she thought the dog might have gone to dog’s favourite walking place. I took her address and promised that if we met her dog I’d bring dog home. But we walked for another three miles and didn’t see anyone; dog or human. Yesterday I’d posted about Longbeech Woods to the Dog Club’s Facebook page. Some woman had said she might see me in the woods today. Mind you she also said that there was no walk in those woods listed on her walking app…

 

We came home. I made a cuppa and cut a slice of cake for me and “er indoors ^TM”, then drove up to town. I need to get some American dollars for next month’s holiday. My bank told me to apply on-line. When the woman at the counter saw how un-impressed I was they suggested I might like to go to their Canterbury or Folkestone branch as they would be better able to help me. I told her that the branch of Nat West over the road was similarly able to help.

She didn’t like that very much.

I came home via the pet shop where I got eighty sachets of dog food for Morgan and Bailey (Treacle has senior dog food now as she’s old). It sounds a lot, but it will last almost but not quite three weeks.

The box was rather heavy; I felt my back twinge as I picked it up.

 

Once home I trimmed back the overgrowth from not-so-nice-next-door’s roses and other assorted climbing plants. My hand-operated trimmer hacks it all back, but isn’t the easiest thing to operate. I had a look on-line at battery operated hedge trimmers…

What a rip-off.

The ones advertised on telly are over a hundred quid. But that’s just for the trimmer. The battery is an extra eighty-five quid, and don’t forget the battery charger for thirty more quid. So far from the hundred and twenty five quid they claim, you actually have to spend double that to be able to trim the hedge.

 

I then voomed round the front garden with the bionic burner… and realized that having twinged my back lifting dog food I shouldn’t really be doing too much gardening. So I sat down and spent the afternoon solving geo-puzzles in the Edenbridge area. As I puzzled so the postie called. “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM” had sent me a rather good pressie of humming-bird ornaments for the garden.

Now to find somewhere to put them.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the latest season of “Below Decks” in which those with far more money than sense pay ridiculous amounts of money to hire a luxury yacht crewed by the most self-centred narcissists who alternately hate each other and try to pork each other,

 

My back’s still a bit iffy…

15 August 2024 (Thursday) - Longbeech Woods Again

I slept like a log last night and woke feeling surprisingly chirpy. I went into the garden and harvested dog turds; there weren’t that many. Either dogs were baking them,  or Bailey had already harvested them in her foul way.

I put peanut butter and marmalade on toast and had a look at the Internet as I do most mornings. Back in the day I used to read the newspaper. These days the internet is marginally more relevant to me and cheaper. The sites I frequent had less jubblies being flopped out than the paper used to have, but you can’t have everything. Today the internet was dull, which was probably for the best.

 

I Munzed, I wordled, and with “er indoors ^TM” off to the office today I put a load of washing into scrub and took the dogs out. We drove through Stanhope where I capped a Flat Lou and got three scatters (as one does) then we went out to Longbeech Woods again. We had a really good walk on Tuesday, and having looked at the map I’d planned us a longer walk for today. Sadly we fell at the first hurdle when we parked up and discovered that everything to the west of Monkery Lane (about half the wood) was private land. But we had a good walk on the bit we were allowed on. We walked for over three miles and only saw one other group walking. Sadly their boxer dogs wanted to say hello, Bailey was terrified and ran off screaming, and Pogo wasn’t going to stand for that. There was a lot of woofing; fortunately the people with the boxer dogs knew what dogs were like and it all passed off amicably.

I took a few photos whilst we were out this morning.

 

After three miles we were back at the car park. A couple of days ago I mentioned that it was a shame that so many car parks deliberately exclude camper vans. But today I saw a classic example of why they do. A Belgian family had set up camp in the car park. A full-on camp including a toilet tent and a liberal scattering of all sorts of their clutter. They’d glared at us when we arrived and weren’t happy that as we walked back to our car we walked through where they were having an open-air family aerobics session in everyone’s way at eleven o’clock.

We came home. I hung out the washing, and squealed up the illegal camp site to the Woodland Trust. People stopping overnight, enjoying the place and moving on is one thing. People taking over more than half of a rather small car park to use as their personal domain is another.

 

There was a lot I could have cracked on with today, but I was still rather tired from Tuesday’s night shift, and it was hot outside. Nowhere near as hot as it has been, but still hot.

I slobbed on the sofa with the dogs.

I did snigger as we watched episodes of “Four in a Bed”; in this afternoon’s shows everyone seemed to hate everyone else. There was one particularly vicious woman from Norfolk who was actively sneering at another contestant for having quite so much chest on display.

 

“er indoors ^TM” should be home soon. There’s talk of pizza…

14 August 2024 (Wednesday) - Rather Tired

The night shift wasn’t particularly bad as night shifts go. It was just rather hard work being up all night. I’m too old to do night shifts. Back in the day when night work was paid as a rather lucrative overtime all the youngsters were gagging for night work, and generally you stopped night shifts on your thirtieth birthday.

Now that they are just part of the routine, people aren’t so keen to do them.

 

As I drove home I listened to the pundits on the radio spouting their nonsense. There was quite a bit of talk from Melbourne where the local council has banned e-scooter hire.  Apparently you used to be able to hire e-scooters there and scoot about the town, but the things are a hazard to public safety. Should you ride them on the roads or pavements? No one knows, and there’s been no end of accidents from careless use of the things.

And the Ukrainians have demonstrated the validity of the old adage “the best defence is a good offence” by taking the fight to the Russians. They’ve got a point. When I was little a classmate kept bothering me. This boy wouldn’t stop thumping and bashing me. Eventually I got fed up with running away and trying to hide and I gave him a rather impressive black eye. He never bothered me again, and years later he would still treat me with respect.

 

I came home, and feeling surprisingly chirpy, I took the dogs to the woods before it got too hot. I thought about going to Longbeech Wood again, but bearing in mind I’d been up all night I thought it better to stick to familiar ground.

We walked just over two miles round the west end of Kings Wood.

We had a rather good walk.

As we walked we met a dog on his own. He said hello to our wolf pack and kept going. A few seconds later we could hear a commotion from the direction in which we were going. There was quite the tribe with a dog similar to the one we’d just seen. All of the tribe were shrieking at each other. I heard one of then saying “That man is on his own and has four dogs. There’s how many of us and we’ve lost one of our two”. I took the line that they were walking in the general direction in which the other dog had gone.

 

Once home I had a quick shower then went to bed. I then had a minor fight with the dogs for bed space and slept for about an hour at which point Treacle declared “Red Alert” for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

By the time I’d got up the dogs had all gone back to sleep. So I carried on cleaning out the fish tank. Rather then stripping the thing down and scrubbing it out I just took the contents out and cleaned those and did several water changes. It looks a lot better, but…

I got the fish seven and a half years ago. At the time I said “I’m trying cold-water goldfish variants for a change. I’ve always fancied having some blackmoors”. (Blackmoors are black goldfish). However it turns out that blackmoors don’t stay black. Over the years mine have gone almost completely golden.

 

With tank cleaned I put on a film. “The Martian” is an odd film. The premise is that an astronaut gets stranded on Mars and through skill, expertise and science keeps himself alive until he gets rescued.

The trouble is that the film makers take great pains to ensure the film is scientifically spot-on in every way… except in those which might thwart the plot. But I stayed awake for the two and a half hours, which has to be a good thing.

 

Sadly I did then fall asleep a few times watching assorted rubbish on UK Gold.

“er indoors ^TM” should be home soon; she’s running an errand for “Daddies’ Little Angel ^TM”. Hopefully she’ll bring some dinner home too… not that I’m very hungry… it’s this heat.

 

13 August 2024 (Tuesday) - Before the Night Shift

 

As I scoffed toast this morning I saw an advert for a specialist honey shop in the lake district. Selling jars of honey at three times the price of Tesco, and only selling it via their shop. There were quite a few comments on the advert from people who were complaining about being spammed, and the poor people whose company it was were apologizing profusely. On-line advertising is a good idea in theory; in practice it doesn’t really work, does it?

Rather like this lap-top of mine which is forever trying to predict what I want it to do, and invariably getting it wrong.

 

I had a quick Munz, struggled with Wordle, and seeing it wasn’t quite as hot as it had been yesterday, I got ready for the morning. At the weekend a new puzzle geocache had gone live just north of Ashford. “er indoors ^TM” solved the puzzle and sent me the co-ordinates, but it was dark before I left work on Saturday night. I thought that geocache might be somewhere to explore today. I’d never been to Longbeech Wood before; it made for a very good walk. Far smaller than Kings Wood (about the size of Orlestone), the paths are narrower and consequently there’s a lot more shelter from the sun. We parked up and walked about half a mile out to that geocache, then using the map took a bit of a wander back again.

As we’d parked up so there was a couple in a camper van having their brekkie. They were packing up when we got back after our walk; they’d quite obviously been there overnight. Admittedly the car park was rather small and they’d taken up a lot of it, but they were leaving about an hour before most people would turn up to use it (not that many people would). They hadn’t hurt anyone or done any harm. Either they knew about the car park or they had been rather lucky to find it. There’s a lot of Woodland Trust and Forestry England sites locally all of which have those height restriction gates on the car parks. The car park at Kings Wood annoys me on this score… People with camper vans who hurt no one are actively excluded, but after dark the place is “dogging central” – everyone knows this, no one cares…

 

It had been twenty degrees when we left home. It wasn’t too bad in the shaded woods; I’d taken quite a bit of water for the dogs. But it was twenty-two degrees by the time we’d got back to the car, and twenty-four when we got to Ashford.

I took a minor diversion on the way home to cap a Flat Lou. If you cap a Flat Lou this week she scatters French food, and we need that for this month’s Clan War. There’s never a dull moment in Munzee.

 

We got home. AS I had a cuppa so “Oscar” then called from the Three network. Obviously he wasn’t from the Three network at all. There are a lot of scammers at the moment all claiming to be from the Three network. None of them are. And then “David” from the Three network phoned. Having told “Oscar” to piss off it was only fair that I told “David” to piss off as well.

In between scamming phone calls I did a tad more CPD. I traditionally do that on the morning before a night shift. 

 

“er indoors ^TM” had an errand to run at lunch time, so when she went out I went to bed. The dogs followed. We slept well for an hour or so until the nice man from Amazon delivered our bog roll (we get our bog roll delivered; no – I have no idea why either). The dogs went mad. And just as we all settled so “er indoors ^TM” returned. She then commanded peace, and I got three hours asleep. I wouldn’t say peaceful though. I had a nightmare in which I had patented a way in which spaceships could land on water and was trying to sue NASA for not having discovered enough (any) planets with water on them.

 

“er indoors ^TM” is hopefully boiling up my dinner, then I’m off to the night shift. Via Stanhope where there are a few Flat Lous which I intend to cap.

I’ve only got this week to cap them; they won’t scatter after this weekend. Mind you I’ve no guarantee they will cap this evening.

Never a dull moment in Munzee, eh… I said that earlier, didn’t I?

12 August 2024 (Monday) - Still Too Hot

I slept surprisingly well bearing in mind how hot it was last night. It was far too hot as I gathered dog turds at eight o’clock this morning.

I made toast as I do, and peered into the Internet. There was quite a bit of consternation being expressed over how the Munzee game had been running slowly to the point of being unusable over the weekend. GPS games do that. In theory great fun; in practice the technology simply isn’t up to it. At least with geocaching there is a sort-of offline mode but the offline mode in Munzee was deliberately turned off some time ago in what was billed as an upgrade.

There was also consternation on the pond-related Facebook pages in which people were getting incredibly aggressive about whether or not you should change vast amounts of pond water on a regular basis. I try to keep out of those squabbles; there is no sense to them. The very people who fanny around testing the pond water and getting every chemical to a precisely controlled level regularly then chuck out much of their supposedly perfect water and replace it with heaven only knows what and then fart around with all sorts of chemicals trying to get the balance right again.

Quite a few people were posting photos of their weekend at the beach. Personally I’m not a fan of days at the beach. There is absolutely nothing to do but sit and get sunstroke, and unless you are prepared to pay extortionate prices from the stalls hundreds of yards away you are restricted to whatever refreshments you lugged along with you. But as always I’m in the minority. Thousands of people love the beach. So many that tickets for beach car parks in Sussex had sold out by half past eight this morning.

 

Usually I would take the dogs up to the woods after brekkie, but the temperature was already twenty-five degrees, and looking set for twenty-seven degrees when we would be finishing our walk. So we skipped our walk for today. I put a load of washing in to scrub, and cleaned the glass of the fish tank instead. The entire tank needs stripping out and scrubbing, but I’ll do that some other time when it isn’t so hot.

I then wrote up some CPD. After a while the washing machine beeped. It took five minutes to hang out the washing, and that was five minutes too many.

 

With it being far too hot to do anything at all I sat on the sofa and cracked on with something I’ve been meaning to do for some time. Many years ago I worked in a rather nasty place. Management was done by bullying, and at the time I wrote a few diary entries about episodes at the place. Following getting a formal written disciplinary warning for bringing the place into disrepute (after posting a selfie at six o’clock in the morning and saying I was tired) I self-censored a lot of what I’d written. But none of it identified any individuals, and all of it was true. And it was a long time ago now. And I’ve not worked there for many years. So today I spent a few hours un-censoring; I’d kept copies of my original blog entries.

Looking back I think I quite possibly had grounds for a case of constructive dismissal, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

As I edited I read the old diary entries and reflected on how things in my life were about fifteen years ago. I went fishing and drank a lot more back then. The astro club was still fun and there was talk of building an observatory. Kite festivals and beer festivals featured highly in the itinerary, and my life was dog-free. Was it better back then? Work certainly wasn’t, but as for the rest… I think the best word I can use is “different”.

 

After five hours I finished getting the changes made to my backup site done. What with copying and pasting a lot of the pictures were lost after uploading and it look a little while to put right. I’ll sort up the main Blogger site another time.

I got out the watering can and had a go round the garden. The sun had gone down somewhat so the plants were in shade, but it was still twenty-nine degrees as I got the washing off of the line. By the time I’d fed the fish the sweat was dripping from me, and I’d only been outside for ten minutes.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a good bit of dinner then went off bowling. I cracked on with the ironing and watched something I’d recorded over the weekend. I can distinctly remember “Confessions of a Window Cleaner” as being rather good fun.

It hasn’t stood the test of time; it was rather crap.

11 August 2024 (Sunday) - Too Hot

We had a vague plan to go to the geo-meet which was taking place at Challock at half past nine this morning.. but not getting out of bed until after nine o’clock put paid to that idea.

I made toast, dropped it on the floor, and scoffed it anyway whilst peering into a very dull internet. Apart from a photo of one of the bosses in the hot tub quite obviously in the nip there wasn’t anything else at all going on on-line. I pondered as to what a Munzee scatter event was, and in a novel break with tradition got Wordle on the second attempt.

 

With silly-hot temperatures forecast for the afternoon we thought we might get a little walk in this morning so we drove down to Ruckinge, parked up by the canal and walked across the fields hunting out four geocaches.

We had a good walk. On the way back we came through what looked to be a metal detectorist’s rally; about thirty cars were parked at the bottom of the field in which the Bilsington Monument stands, and loads of people were wandering the freshly-ploughed field brandishing their detectors.

We got chatting with one chap who had unearthed three strange metal lumps.

From the detectorists the path came along the canal. Treacle went in a few times. She loves the water.

 

We got back to the car and came home. I ran out the hose pipe and topped up the ponds; they’ve been rather suffering with evaporation in the heat recently. And I cleaned out the big pond’s filter too. When I had the filter boxes this was a job which took an absolute age to do. It was physically hard work and smelly too. With the new pressure washer the thing is done in five minutes. It takes far longer to set up the hoses and put them away than it does to actually clean the filter..

I bionically burned the dandelions in the garden, then dozed for much of the rest of the afternoon feeling rather ill. Too much sun earlier, perhaps?

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted a light dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the celebrity Bake-Off. I say “celebrity”; I had no idea who any of them were.

It’s supposedly going to be even hotter tomorrow… Given the choice I’d rather be far too cold than far too hot, but I’m not given the choice.