Musings – Page 4 – onetruekev

Mundane Is Too Mundane An Expression For This

Thursday morning saw me back in the office away from all human contact. Well, apart from the stream of phone calls obviously. The day started in a similar way to the Thursdays when I was on holiday; with a taunting e-mail from the National Lottery saying I had won a lucky dip. In the last three weeks I’ve had seven e-mails, five to say I’ve won lucky dips and the others saying important news about your ticket, which both turned out to be wins of £2.50. From occasional teasing they have moved into full on mockery now. I’m not greedy, I don’t need the sextuple rollover of tens of millions of pounds, just enough to be able to retire and never have to deal with a holiday or position management query ever again.

I didn’t realise quite how much I had written in notebooks whilst on holiday until I actually got around to typing it all up. Thursday night saw the next batch of travelogues being typed up and posted on my blog, and in the case of the Leicestershire ones on Medium as well (I can add as many, better quality, photos on there without using up all my site’s file space)..

Friday wasn’t pizza Friday this week. Instead, we were heading to a field just outside Rusper for a barbeque. This may sound a bit random place to go for a barbeque, but friends keep horses in a field here. They rent part of the property from a lunatic who uses the rest of the space to store random conked out vehicles. We have been a few times to help them sort the place out, removing ragwort (I had something else to do that day), and build stables. There is plenty of space to socially distance and so a few of us gathered.

I’d been a few times, but never walked up to the other end of the land. I haven’t seen as many old, rusted and immobile tractors in one place since news reports on French farmers’ blockades. Lots of four by fours, a couple of sports cars and various other cars are strewn in different places, most of them in danger of being completely reclaimed by nature. It is like a proper old junkyard.

It was a lovely warm evening; right up until the point where the sun started to disappear and the temperature dropped like a stone. And then the pyromaniacs came out to play building a fire, enough to keep people around it until it was properly dark and time for everyone to head home.

Saturday was wet, which suited me as I just spent all day finishing catching up on typing everything up, then linking everything to my social media, and loading the hundreds of photos to Facebook, both to my personal page and where appropriate to my interest groups (i.e. History of Leicestershire). It wiped out most of the day, as it was soon quarter to seven and time to drop Helen off at the Parson’s Pig for her to meet colleagues for a birthday meal.

I got back and had pizza Saturday, and looked at the laptop, and the next thing I knew it was nearly eleven and time to pick Helen back up. I’m sure that days at the weekend go at three times the speed of weekdays. It was the same Sunday morning, I looked at my watch and it was about eight, blinked and woke up at eleven.

Helen was taking her mum for lunch, so I had Charlie walking duties. I found out that to walk around the field at the end of the close takes exactly 571 steps and equates to 0.29 miles, which means that four laps of that (three of which used exactly the same amount of steps), three laps of the park behind the house and to and from the front door of the house works out to be two miles in total.

Whilst the final games of the Premier League season were on, I got around to collating pictures of street signs I’d taken photos of before my birthday, so were over a month old. I know we’d been away in the interim, but it was a shock to find I’d not done anything with them for five weeks. Two more collections finished – Norfolk Settlements and Forestfield Conservation Area.

I would have loved to have blinked for as long Monday morning as I had Sunday, but instead of blinking when I see the time is eight o’clock, it’s a panicked reaction as I have to get showered and into work. At which point time slowed to a trickle again and the next eight hours took four days. And then the evening went in about thirty seconds.

My mum rings me on my mobile, and she sounds all worried. “Just checking you’re alright, I’ve been ringing your landline for a few days but no one was answering”. Considering we were in most of the weekend, and at the time she said she called this is confusing. Right up until she says she copied all the numbers into a new address book last week, and she had copied the wrong number. Just leaves the question of who was she actually calling?

We’re watching the last few episodes of the last season of The Wire, and I was gutted that Omar wasn’t the last cockroach standing; he has made me laugh out loud so many times watching the whole thing from the start in the last couple of months.

Charlie has picked up two new habits in the last week or so. The first is to pick up his bowl and wander the house and garden with it, as if he is hungry, even though he’s just been fed. The second is morning attacks on my rucksack, trying to ransack it. He ignores it from when I get in, all night and before he goes for a walk, but once walked and fed he is relentless in trying to get into my bag, regardless of whether there is food in there or not.

Just Eat’s TV and radio adverts are showing up just what a rent-a-rapper Snoop has become. Seriously, get a grip, you’re showing less self-respect than Joe Hart did in the Head and Shoulders adverts a few years ago.

Speaking of things on the radio, Absolute 80s plays Wham’s “Club Tropicana” a lot. Yet it’s only recently I’ve noticed (after thirty seven years of hearing the song), that they contradict themselves in it. The chorus has the line “all that’s missing is the sea”, yet the second verse has the line “watch the waves break on the bay”.

A couple of recent meals Helen has cooked have included artichoke. To me that sounds more like an instruction than a food stuff, especially if it wasn’t chopped up into small pieces. I now can’t help but hear it as Artie, Choke!

After quite a few weeks I’ve levelled up in Jigsaw World, I’m now at level 18 and I’m called a Jigsaw Shark now. Who would have thought there could be such a thing? I’m just hoping this doesn’t mean that all the jigsaws at this level are of sharks.

Another Week Bites the Dust

They say that times flies when you are enjoying yourself. (And not when you throw a clock out of the window.) Well, in which case, all the misery I’m feeling about being in lockdown and having to work from home must be false. I must really be enjoying it, as the last ten weeks have gone quicker than any other time I can remember. I do something that I think is a quick follow up to another activity only to see that I did the original activity four weeks ago, and not four days as I thought I was.

Two more e-mails from the National Lottery Thursday morning, I’ve won two lucky dips. Stop taunting me you MFs.

Sniffles it would appear, has turned into a food snob, he now refuses to eat any of the supermarket brands, and only touches the Whiskas (and any butter he can get his tongue on). Well, the jelly from the Whiskas, he’s not too keen on the actual meaty lumps. If we could get pouches of just jelly then it would be a lot easier. Or perhaps dog food as he now checks the dog’s bowl to see if there is anything in there he can snaffle. Well good luck with that with Charlie around.

Charlie however has a new trick. Once we’ve had dinner and go to have some dessert, he follows Helen to the living room, and once we’ve sat on the sofa, he climbs onto the far end, ignoring shouts to get off, wriggles into the corner and then keeps knocking Helen’s elbow with his head to get at the dessert. The only way to get him off the sofa is to take a sock off and throw it across the room. He gets off the sofa to retrieve the sock, and unrolls the end before lying on it on the rug. Three nights on the trot now. At least they aren’t clean socks.

I think the work technology has had enough of this lockdown cr@p and working from home nonsense as well. Skype voice has given up the ghost, making it appear as if everyone is a Norman Collier impersonator. And I see the mad rush to put all our applications in the cloud is paying off. Just not in the intended way, it’s giving all employees extra time, as they can’t actually do anything when the vpn internet pipe keeps falling over.

Saturday was a nice day, so we had thought about going out, only for it to be too damn hot to go anywhere during the day. We had had dinner before finally going out, another nice trip that was covered by a previous blog.

Isfield

Sunday was similar; it was too bright and too hot to venture out of the house after eventually managing to get out of bed. It was a complete unwind day, which was good.

The heat was obviously affecting everyone and everything by the time it got to Monday. One of the work e-mail servers gave up the ghost and so half of our team don’t have any access to e-mails. I was one of the unfortunate ones who were still receiving them. I spent a twelve hour day dealing with setting up a new business unit after integrations had failed and needed manually dealing with, which is what happens when the data for a planned change that has been nine months in the making turns up at half three on the Friday afternoon before go live. I really hate this job at times.

In my zombiefied state Monday evening I saw the hashtag #BLM was trending. But being in a bit of a brain fog my initial reaction was they were changing the tomato in a BLT. Not a bad thing until I tried to think of foods beginning with M. Mango, marshmallows, maple syrup, melon, mint, mushrooms, and then I thought of one that I could go with – mozzarella. Only to start reading the posts and realising I should stop being flippant. BLM is serious and is something we should all support.

The most WTF news headline I saw this week was the one “Monkeys escape with Covid-19 samples after attacking lab assistant.” They talk about life imitating art, but no one expects to see headlines straight out of a Planet of the Apes film. I suppose all we need to wait for now is for the aliens to land. Turns out the story wasn’t as bad as the headline, they were samples to be tested for Covid-19 and not phials of the disease itself. Well, not this time anyway.

Tuesday wasn’t any better; I still had access to e-mail as they tried to fix it for those that didn’t. If they could fix the others and break mine it would be a much better state of affairs. And if they could break skype permanently as well that would make my week.

And this sun can do one; nobody needs to have their retinas burnt out just putting the washing out. It’s says it is creeping up towards the thirties on the thermometer. This is not acceptable; the only thirties allowed on the thermometer are those that show in Fahrenheit. It is the one good thing about the lockdown is there is no need to go out into the nasty harsh environment.

There has been talk about being able to go back to the office, and an application form went out as a link to a HR comms mail a couple of weeks ago. It was on a single word at the bottom of a long rambling e-mail, so of course no one had noticed it until Katya pointed it out. I typed quicker than usual to fill the form in and send it off. Hopefully I will get accepted and I can go back and work in the (deserted) office.

The pets have been especially vocal about going in and out and so it prompted me to rewriting more song lyrics, this time b@st@rdising Elton John’s Passengers into Pesky Pets.

Damn the pesky pets, who want to come in

Damn the pesky pets, who want to go out

Damn the pesky pets, who want to annoy

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

To be really annoying

You need a mismatched pair

One whining little cat

And a dog that doesn’t care

They are rarely silent

When you’re trying to rest

They know it’s the best time

To act as a pest

Damn the pesky pets, who want to come in

Damn the pesky pets, who want to go out

Damn the pesky pets, who want to annoy

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

One eats a bowl of food

In twenty seconds flat

Then licks his little lips

While eyeing up the cat

The fussy little mog

Only eats the jelly

Then licks the butter dish

To fill up his belly

Damn the pesky pets, who want to come in

Damn the pesky pets, who want to go out

Damn the pesky pets, who want to annoy

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Be careful where you stand every time

Pesky pets never stand in line

Under your feet or lying on the stairs

They’ll trip you up without a care

Damn the pesky pets, who want to come in

Damn the pesky pets, who want to go out

Damn the pesky pets, who want to annoy

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Damn the pesky pets, who want to come in

Damn the pesky pets, who want to go out

Damn the pesky pets, who want to annoy

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Want to come in

Want to go out

They want to come in

They want to go out

Whereas in reality they need to make their bleeding minds up.

I’m about to start washing up, and one of the items was the fruit bowl, which had, over the last few weeks managed to get a layer of dry green mould in it from a satsuma skin. I’m thinking, that’s fine it’ll come off easily, and I go to rinse it first only to send up a small cloud of green dust. I’m sure I breathed some in, and so now, instead of worrying about contracting Covid-19, I’m worried that the inhaled mould will now grow inside of me and burst out Alien style the moment I get back to the office (just putting that image out there to dissuade any potential rivals for desk space in Atlantic House). Now I know that some of you will be struggling with the imagery above, I mean who would have thought I would live in a house with a fruit bowl.

Wednesday felt even more sluggish than normal, probably due to the fact that Charlie spent most of the night barking or making strange squeaking noises, despite being let out numerous times. He only shut up at 4am, just in time for the birds to start their dawn chorus. The cat spent forty five minutes miaowing at me to be fed when I was on a conference call, only to run off out of the open back door and out over the back gate as I took my headphones off at the end of the call.

Later in the day the People Development team call was taking place. They were doing a cookie baking master class, which was being broadcast live in the kitchen. The plus side being there is going to be warm cookies in the very near future. Now that’s something that could make me enthusiastic about going to work every day.

Isfield

Saturday was hot, as it turned out, too hot to really go out anywhere during the day, so it wasn’t until after dinner that we left the house for a random trip. I was scrolling through random maps, and was following the dismantled railway line coming out of Uckfield to the south west, only to find a restored line ending at Isfield. Having a look around the village on the map suggested it would be worth a visit for a wander and so off we went.

Following the OS map we got to Isfield station. We briefly considered parking in the car park of The Laughing Fish, which looks a good pub to go back and visit when places are open, but parked outside the gates of the train station. Isfield station stands on one of the lines closed post the Beeching report. The section of the line that ran from Uckfield into Lewes was closed along with the two stations (Barcombe Mills being the other) on the 4^th May 1969.

A train is parked on the side of a building

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The station has been wonderfully recreated with lots of period touches, and serves as the southern terminus to the Lavender Line, which runs just under a mile north east to the Dingley Dell terminus. I thought that it had picked up the name with one eye on the larger Bluebell Railway which terminates about five miles to the north west at Sheffield Park, but it is fact named after the company Lavender & Sons who were coal merchants originally based at the station.

A sign on a pole

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When the station was originally built it would have been away to the south of the village, but houses line the street from the wonderful old village sign to the station now. There is a mixture of housing as we walked through the village. The old post office has gone and is now a private house, but it is marked by the penny black plaque next to the front door.

A large brick building with grass in front of a house

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The map indicated there should be a footpath across the fields to the old church of St Margaret of Antioch. The start of the footpath was well hidden between two sweeping drives of more modern properties. The path led through some trees, across fields and over both flows of the River Uck, which flows into the River Ouse a couple of hundred yards to the west. There used to be a ford over the River Ouse at this point, as it was where the Roman London to Lewes road crossed it. The ford was the reason for the village coming about. Although there are plenty of fields around the village, the village itself shouldn’t be Isfield, but Wasfield.

Beyond the church lies land that was a motte to a Norman Castle, built on the site to protect the ford over the River Ouse. The (old) map suggests there should be a footpath into the area where the earthworks of the Motte remain, but new fencing has been put up all around the area preventing access.

A picture containing grass, outdoor, house, building

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The church itself is quite squat, but it has a tower with a short spire atop of it. From the outside it is clear that there are some really good stained-glass windows. The graveyard shows signs of still being in use, with modern headstones and mounds that haven’t quite flattened out yet amongst the older faded and almost unreadable headstones.

We headed back out to the main road to head to what was marked on the map as Isfield Lodge, only for a car to stop next to us on the other side of the road, and some mentally deficient imbecile to lean out of the window and ask us if we could give directions. It may have been possible, but we said we weren’t from around there, so it might be difficult. Helen asked, ‘where are you going’, only for the halfwit to shout ‘mind your business’ as he grinned like a loon and sped off. Well, as fast as his broken-down looking estate would go.

A quick search before leaving the house had shown Isfield Lodge to be a grand old collection of buildings dating back to the seventeenth century. However, all entrances were closed, and besides the gatehouse none of the other buildings could be seen, but there were signs up to say building work was taking place on the site. Just what a village that size needs, executive flats.

We crossed the road and disappeared down another pretty much hidden footpath. As we did the village idiot pulled up in his car, probably to deliver another killer witticism, but he was left disappointed as we weren’t on the road anymore. The footpath took us through more trees, and then across numerous fields, over styles, through gates (one of which Helen couldn’t resist swinging on), past cows and later horses, and then back over the River Uck again before coming to a halt at a locked gate. Which was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard as it was easy to swing round the outside of the gate.

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The route had taken us past two second world war pill boxes, and there was another one in the Isfield lodge grounds. One was being used as a garage, but the second one didn’t appear the house anything.

A tree in a field

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The path popped back out into the middle of the village and we headed back to our car, passing the clapped-out pile of rust the village idiot had been driving earlier. Fortunately for him, I didn’t have any need to go to the toilet.

It was just after nine and as darkness descended below the sky’s horizon, it lit the sky up in a wonderful array of colours. We stopped at Nutley to get fuel as we’d seen the garage on our way down and it was three pence a litre cheaper than any other we’d seen in a while.

As Helen filled up, I took a quick set of photos of the village church – St James the Less. Another squat church with a small thin bell tower. Again, there were signs of some nice stained-glass windows. A modern extension has been added to the back of the church, and falls between replicating the style of the old church and a modern church hall type of building.

An old house with trees in the background

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As with other churches we have seen in the last couple of weeks the graveyard is awash with wild flowers, mainly daisies. Apart from one section with four newly filled in graves, still showing the dark brown earth, and awaiting their headstones.

On the way back we came through the town centre of a deserted East Grinstead, which was a reminder to what a nice old town it is. Something to be revisited at a later date (along with Forest Row, which was gorgeous, I’d never been through it before).

It is virtually dark when we get home, the sky is a wonderful indigo colour, and clear as a bell. The neighbours have had a barbeque and are sat in their garden trying to spot the International Space Station as it comes around with the SpaceX Dragon chasing it. Meanwhile Charlie is immensely mental to see us, with lockdown he isn’t used to there being no one in the house, and he acts as if he is as high as the ISS acting like a complete woofy lunatic. We might need to find somewhere to take him with us next time.

Another Four Day Weekend

Yes, we had managed to tag a day’s holiday to the Bank Holiday weekend again and to avoid confusion at least they had left this one as a Monday. But before four days off, Thursday had to be survived.

I started on Squirrel watch, one of my favourite, first thing in the morning as I come around, activities. I could see the squirrel on the end fence half a dozen gardens away to my left. Happily racing along the similar fence panels all the gardens share, only to come to an abrupt halt as it reaches our garden. It was already a foot lower than anyone else’s before the storms came. Now there is a gap where the gate was, as it lies on its side, only there to prevent Charlie from escaping, and the rest of the fence leans precariously against the shed. As the squirrel stops it turns its head and looks at our house as if to say “for crying out loud mend your bloody fence”. The pause is only temporary and the squirrel easily jumps the gap and carries on upon its journey. I laugh to myself, just wait until the little sod gets to the house three doors down to the right, the one with plastic orange netting as its fence. Let’s see how you go with that you judgemental little rodent.

I’m not sure what I was doing to be away from my screen for more than ten minutes, but the screensaver came up. One of the messages on it was about practising social distancing, and do you? Well I can say that I see plenty of people practising this social distancing malarkey, and I can state without a shadow of a doubt, that they need to practice it a hell of a lot more as none of them are any bleeding good at it.

I did the shopping Thursday evening, Sainsbury’s had a long queue, but it is so much saner in there than as Asda, a nice calm shopping trip all told, and only took an hour. However, when you buy a loaf of wholemeal bread, this isn’t exactly the kind of hole you are expecting in the bread.

Someone asked about the garden and whether I was green fingered. After stopping laughing I pointed out that the only way I was going to get green fingers was if I picked my nose.

Every time someone mentions the word “furlough” I can’t help but think of the word furlong instead. And then I think that wouldn’t be a bad thing to relate to social distancing. If everyone stayed a furlong away from everyone else it would be great. It would be amusing to try and watch people trying to work out exactly how far two hundred and twenty yards was though.

The back fence had been doing fine for a couple of months since the February storms. However with it being quite windy on Friday, they went again. In doing so it broke the restraining plank at the bottom, and then took to falling over every time someone breathed on it too heavily. After four times of propping it back up on Friday and Saturday morning it got to the point of sod it, just send Charlie out into the back garden with an armed guard to prevent him from escaping into the park.

Friday saw us take a picnic and get out of the parish for an afternoon. Full details are on the previous blog post

Bramber Castle

Saturday was a little bit changeable weather wise. The wind blew the fence over again, bright sunshine, thunder and lightning, rivers running down the street and ponds in the back garden, and then marble sized hailstones setting off car alarms up and down the street. All that in an hour as I welded myself to the sofa. We had a second attempt at one of these online quizzes hosted on zoom. But, as with the first attempt, we weren’t really impressed, and not sure we’ll be doing another one.

A nice relaxing start to Sunday was shattered; first by the neighbours hammering and sawing away at something (not our fence unfortunately), and then by a phone call from my mum. Not for anything important, only to ask for help with half a dozen crossword clues. Seriously, who rings someone up to ask them for answers to crossword clues at ten in the morning on a Sunday?

With it being a Bank Holiday weekend, what else is there to do apart from going to a garden centre, now that they’re open again. And not just one, not two, but three of the bloody places. The first had quite a queue snaking around the car park, which I waited in only to get into the shop to find they only had 8ft long arm thick poles, which weren’t really what I needed to prop the fence up. I came out to find Helen waiting in the car for me, which was a nice surprise, seeing as it was now turning ridiculously hot. We went to garden centre two, who had no wooden poles at all. Which meant it was off to location three, where we should have gone in the first place; Dove’s Barn always has what is needed in stock, and lots of random plants for Helen to pick up as well.

Despite the previous day’s flash floods the ground is still bulletproof, but there are six stakes hammered into the ground to prop the fence up, and it is now safe to let the dog back out unsupervised. We’ll see how long this lasts for.

Meanwhile the cat is being a P.I.T.A. Every time there needs to be a new pack of butter, the butter dish is washed up, and the new pack is placed by the side of the toaster still covered so we can use it until the butter dish is clean and dry. This is on the next part of work surface to where the cat has his bowl. But, he’s not interested in his cat food, oh no, as soon as our backs are turned, he’s there trying to open the wrapping to the butter to lick the hell out of it. Every single time. It wouldn’t be so bad if he ate the cat food, but he just eats the jelly and leaves the meat bits. We probably end up having to throw away more meat than he eats. We could give it to the doggy dustbin Charlie, but it doesn’t necessarily agree with his stomach.

Speaking of the doggy dustbin, although he was done at an early age, Charlie still likes to have a good session. To prevent him ripping carpets up, and destroying pillows and cushions, we got him a massive teddy bear from one of the charity shops. It works a treat; he takes out all his urges on the teddy bear. He is on bear two, and to be fair, we’re not sure how he keeps getting the stuffing out of the bear, but all that is left is this. When the charity shops reopen, bear number three is the first thing on the shopping list.

On Monday I was only nipping out to take a few photos of some road signs. I thought I would go out whilst it was still in the morning, which would leave the rest of the day for relaxation. Of course, I got carried away. I ended up taking photos of forty-seven road signs across five different themes, three pubs and five churches over the course of three hours and eight miles of walking. Even my fat-bit got excited, damn near shaking my arm off to celebrate me walking ten thousand steps in a day for the first time since returning from the US. But, as I sorted the pictures out the following night I found I’d managed to miss some streets, despite ticking them off on the list I had, so I only had one complete set – artists.

And it was hot, which meant that three hours in the sun lead to a lobster faced Kev. We didn’t need to use the grill to do the halloumi; just put them on my forehead for twenty seconds and they were done. Then they were able to slide down my face and straight into my mouth. The after effects of the sun exposure meant that there was a role reversal in the house on Tuesday. Helen is in shorts and t-shirt, and I’m shivering despite being in jeans, t-shirt and hoodie, with the hood up.

Tuesday – eeurgh. It doesn’t matter how many days you have off, whether it is a standard two day weekend, a four day weekend, or three weeks, when you come back to work it feels like running into a brick wall as fast as you can. You bounce back, fall on the floor and feel broken. I logged on at 8:30 only to find I’d missed a meeting at 8:00 that was only requested on Friday. I refer back to previous blogs – sociopaths. Everywhere. By 11:14 I had officially lost the will to live and I’m sure I could hear my bed calling from five feet above where I sat looking distraught in front of my monitor. I’d love to be able to go a single work day without having to deal with some kind of annual leave scheme / time account / quota drama. Just one day. Not much to ask for surely.

I’m not saying the day got to me, but, when I went to go to nip up to the shop, I went into the cupboard to get myself a bag. We have a bag of bags hanging on the back of the cupboard door. I put my hand in the bag and pulled something out and went to leave the house. Only to realise I was holding a coat hanger. I’d gone into the wrong bag hanging on the back of the door. Attempt two was more successful.

Wednesday morning I was rudely awakened at Jumbo Jet time (7:47) by the sound of a chainsaw in the park at the back of the house. I calmed down once I realised it was the council trimming the hedges around the kids play area, and not some random lunatic wrecking what is left of the fence.

Important Information About Your Ticket

Those are the words that you want to see in your inbox, whether its Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday or Sunday morning. After signing off the previous blog complaining about a lack of e-mails from the National Lottery, I got two on Thursday morning. However both of them read – Congratulations! You’ve won a Lotto lucky dip. They’re just taunting me now.

We found the probable cause of Charlie being under the weather last week, there was an enormous tick attached to him. When I saw big, it was a toss-up as to whether we were removed the tick from Charlie, or Charlie from the tick. Since separating the co-joined twins, Charlie has been back to his normal annoying barking self. Not content with trying to escape every night, he now waits until the lights are turned off before going off on a barking spree. Being so intent on trying to escape he forgets to go to the toilet and then barks the house down to be let out to go. This inevitably leads to the cat appearing in the kitchen to be fed. Then it’s back to bed, the light goes off and there is a whining cat outside the bedroom door sounding as if he’s being murdered. I open the door to deal with him and he’s in and on the bed like a bloody ninja, kneading the covers over the feet of a fast asleep Helen. He then has to be removed to one of the other bedrooms, and closed in so the dog can’t bother him. And then finally I can get to sleep.

I saw Lianne moaning on social media that it appeared that cold callers were back at work now. And I had a little vision of a call centre full of people ringing people up and going through this script.

“Hi, I’m calling from Temperature Check UK, and we’re doing a quick one question survey today. Are you cold?”

The sesame seeds are back. When rinsing with mouthwash last night a mystery sesame seed came out from between my teeth. This has been happening on a regular basis for months, despite not (knowingly) eating anything with sesame seeds in. The only respite for this was last week when I was working my way through a pack of sesame seed bagels; not a single sesame seed to be found whilst mouth washing. But now they are back and it’s bugging the hell out of me as to where they are coming from. If anyone has any answers to the conundrum, then I’d be glad to hear them.

Dress down Fridays, do you remember them? It happens every day now, jeans and t-shirt is the standard dress code here every single day – including weekends. If I went to try and dress down on a Friday then I would need to take some clothes, stab random holes in them and bury them for a month. Then they might just be trampy enough for a lockdown dress down Friday. I’m already showing the signs of having the unruly hair and beard for it.

As the poor attempt at lockdown and social distancing goes on, the greater the clamour for us to use tools and apps like Zoom, Houseparty, Kahoot, or Menti. “It’s easier to stay in touch, and you can see each other and interact in “fun” games.” I hated people before lockdown, so really, now that there is literally no chance of people being able to turn up at my desk or on my doorstep, what chance do you think there is of me using an app to connect to people? That’s right, absolutely none. The only upside of the lockdown is less people and less interactions. Why would I want to spoil that?

I’ve taken Charlie out for a couple of walks this week. Now, it may not be known, but I’m terrified of dogs, having been bitten over thirty times by all shapes and sizes of them. I’ve just about got used to Charlie, but it’s still a bit sphincter tightening when he starts being woofy and growly. Whilst out on walks he is like a magnet for other dogs, so I spend a great deal of time muttering under my breath “stay away, go on eff off back to your owner.” Charlie doesn’t encourage this, and he tends to ignore all dogs. However, on Saturday there was one little thing. Now, I’m not great on what the different breeds are, but this was some kind of pug or bulldog, because it looked like it had been smacked in the face with a shovel. This thing would not stop following Charlie around, sniffing his backside. Right up until the point where I had to drag it away as Charlie squatted to poo. Charlie looked much aggrieved that it wasn’t on the other dog’s head. It did stop the other dog from following him anymore though.

I took a look in the mirror and realised I’ve got eyebrows that can be seen from space. I’m not saying they are bushy, but when I wiggle my eyebrows, we have a force nine tornado appear in the house. I even got a message from Denis Healy on the Ouija board saying “well jel”. But at least they’re not permed like some bloke from Kibworth on “The History of England”.

After three weeks of it being sat next to me at the kitchen table the framed jigsaw finally made it up in to the hall of maps. How long it will stay there based on the last wall fixture DIY I did is anyone’s guess. We’ll probably be revisiting this in a couple of weeks, when the frame, glass and jigsaw will all need putting back together. Meanwhile on Jigsaw World, I’m up to level 16 and only have a dozen or so left to do, all the larger ones on there at 294, 300 or 315 pieces. But they take a bit longer now, so it’s down to one a day.

I got myself a cheapo Fit-Bit equivalent back at the end of February. It would emit little buzzes as I passed goals. However as time has gone on, it seems to be less impressed with me as lockdown continues. It’s more of a Fat-Bit now and it turns on its bright white display in shock if I move at all, including turning over in bed, blinding all around. I might have to go back to wearing a normal watch for the rest of lockdown.

Monday; monotonous, maddening, melancholy, miserable, moaning, meeting-filled, moronic, muppet-filled, misanthropic, meandering, muddling, manic, morose, morbid, mysterious, monkey-tennis, murderous, malevolent, mithering, messy, moping, misfits, merciless, myopic, mundane, masochistic, mindless, misery-laden Monday. And Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t much better.

I hadn’t realised that the Do Not Disturb feature on Skype automatically turns itself off after twenty four hours. It’s like being in a video game, and you’re smashing it with a power up; you’ve just reached the big boss level and then the power up runs out and you’re suddenly overwhelmed and defeated. Only in this case with random Skype messages.

Ooh look another e-mail headed important information about your ticket; it’s a life changing £2.90. Damn it, another week of work is required.

Shave The Whales

Well, not exactly whales. Dogs are mammals though. And it’s a way to get a Dilbert reference in.

Due to lockdown, Charlie’s grooming appointment has been postponed twice, and with the new date pencilled in for the end of June, it was decided to buy some dog hair clippers and do the job at home. If left until June he may well have ended up looking like an Old English sheepdog.

You will be pleased to know I had no involvement in the shaving of the dog. Everyone else in the household had a go, well, apart from the cat, which looked extremely nervous whilst the dog was being done, just in case he might have been next in line.

At the end of the day we now have a Dalmatian lookalike, and a lot of dog hair. So if you know anyone who would like a genuine springer spaniel dog hair filled pillow, then let me know. I can do you a very good price. (N.B. it’s not going cheap, it’s going woof.)

Home grooming should save us money in the long run; well that’s the theory anyway. It has to be said that the finish is a bit patchy. You’ve seen all the memes about lockdown haircuts, well; it applies to dogs as well. It may cost more in professional groomer fees to sort out the mess when lockdown ends. As it is Charlie is reluctant to go out for walks, he’s obviously seen himself in the mirror.

Now, he hasn’t been on top form, leaving deposits on the kitchen floor overnight a few days this week, and Helen has been worried about him, and how she would miss taking him out for her morning walk / run / cycle. I’m worried too, but for different reasons, mainly that I’m going to end up as the replacement on the lead and I’m going to have to go out for early morning exercise. I’m not convinced my ball / stick chasing skills are up to that. (Update, the vet says he’s fine, which is a relief as I’m not sure the lead would be big enough for my fat neck.)

The weather has been a little bit changeable. Downpours, bright sunshine with not a cloud in the sky, thunder and lightning, more bright sunshine, then clouds dark enough to see in the apocalypse, and a hailstorm of such force it set car alarms off in the street while a rainbow could be seen over Crawley town centre. And that was all during one e-mail response. Plus I’m not convinced there would a pot of gold at the base of the rainbow, being in Crawley it’s more likely to have been a crock of something. It did look like the end may have been near Atlantic House.

No idea what happened on Saturday apart from a very nice couple of hours in the afternoon, but Sunday saw the weekly shop. For a change it was a trip to Asda. What a mistake. I noticed it was moron central when queuing up. I was the only single person in the queue; everyone else was in couples or family units. They have arrows on the floor to indicate which way people should go up and down aisles. Less than half of the people managed to go the right way. And they would push / manhandle my trolley or me out of the way. Which part of social distancing don’t you understand you bunch of utter effwits. I can safely say it was the closest I’ve ever come to have a complete meltdown, and it was the first time I’ve cried whilst shopping. Only to come out to find some utter tuuat in a BMW had parked so close to the driver side of my car (well over the dividing line) that I couldn’t have got a fingernail into the car from that side. I had to clamber in from the passenger side. If I had had a baseball bat the Beemer wouldn’t have had any intact glass. I won’t be going back to Asda during lockdown, and doubt I’ll ever be going back.

To say I was less than enthused to be starting another working week was an understatement and a half. I would like to extend my bucket around sociopaths and when they organise meetings to include anyone who invites me to a meeting. Just don’t. I hate you all. There’s more than enough cr@ppy work for me to do without having meetings to add to it. It appears the only reason I get invited to meetings is because someone wants me to do something. It was so sh1te on one call I ended up with bruises on my forehead from banging my head on the table.

I need a lottery win, or at the very least another job.

Other teams at work have been putting together videos of them in lockdown, some have created and performed songs, others have motivational messages on, and so it was only a matter of time before our esteemed leader jumped on the bandwagon for us to do something similar. I would ask the question that if the other teams were filming themselves jumping off cliffs lemmings’ style, would we be copying that, but we all know the answer would be yes. Selfies or short clips of us holding a sign of what we are proud of. Not something that is easy at the moment, as it feels that it’s a negative list – getting out of bed in the morning, not going postal, not telling everyone to eff off.

To be fair, although I have poked fun at our head of several times over my ramblings of the past few weeks, but she has been very good at reaching out to make sure I’m not too far on the ragged edge.

It is only going to be a three day week though. With the Mayday Bank Holiday moved to the Friday, we have also booked the Thursday off and have a four day weekend. It looks like it will be nice weather, so we can go for a weekend break and get away for a couple of days. What? Lockdown? Apparently we can’t, unless it’s the Costa Del Lounge, which I suppose is an improvement on the Le Merde De Kitchen.

Time To Explore

Friday was better, the idiot laptop didn’t keep dropping out, and I was able to get some work done. Quite a lot of work in fact and was virtually caught up by the time the weekend started, but feeling annoyed at every little thing. Not even pizza helped that as the delivery driver ran off without leaving the dips that should have come with it.

Saturday morning, I had positioned myself in the usual seat at the kitchen table, staring morosely out the back window. Helen intervened and said perhaps it was time I went out for a walk that didn’t involve just getting fizzy drinks and crème eggs from the local shop.

So I went and did something really really exciting. I took photographs of street name signs. I had done this the weekend before full lockdown kicked in, taking those of the streets close to where I live where the streets are all names after occupations.

This time I was going a bit further afield and I was going after explorers. Fourteen of them in all. I had plans to move on to painters, and cathedral cities, and even people linked to London, but I hadn’t charged the camera and it called an end to my wandering by running out of power just after the last explorer had been found and photographed.

I still did some shopping, but being on a different parade of shops from normal I found that the Co-op still had a supply of crème eggs. I resisted the temptation to buy the whole box on the counter and kept it to just the ten.

In the evening we were out in the garden in the dark, with clear sky and stars above us, using the barbecue as an impromptu fire pit. Charlie was mithering for us to throw the ball, well single juggling sack I’d been given at the last SUG conference. His eyesight isn’t the best and so he can’t see where the ball is being thrown, he only reacts to the sound of it landing and then finds it by sense of smell. Most of the large bush down the side of the garden had been removed, so some of it was in the green bin, and more was on the ground. Instead of bringing the ball straight back he was going through a routine. He ran around the bin, through the bush remains before coming and dropping the ball under the rose bush at the edge of the patio. He then would do his version of Riverdance, emitting a strange squeaky growling noise whilst staring at where he dropped the ball. When we didn’t move he would pick the ball up from where he had “buried” it in the bush and then drop it in the large plant pot so we could see it and throw it again. Every single time. And he would stand there looking hurt as to why I was killing myself laughing at him.

Back inside the TV was turned on, and as usual it was on Dave. But unfortunately it was an ad break and therefore sponsored by some company where they have a bloke carrying a dog asking “is there room for Mr Snuggles”. There is no limit to the number of suggestions for where exactly he could stick Mr Snuggles. None of which would be printable.

Going to bed we found the cat with his nose pressed to the gap of where our bedroom door would open whining to be let in. As if he was desperately trying to find somewhere Charlie free for the night. This isn’t a surprise as every time the poor cat passes the dog, Charlie busily tries to stick his nose up the cat’s backside.

Anyway, Helen picked the cat up, and he looked most put out as he was placed in the spare room instead. It did sound like he was tapping away on the keyboard of Helen’s laptop after the door was closed. I had visions of the cat writing up his Trip Advisor review.

“I booked a comfortable double room with extra body heat, but couldn’t get in to it. The hotel owners placed me in a single room instead, with no coverings or facilities. The blind didn’t work, and it looked more like an office than a bedroom. I tried typing up this review on the computer in there, but despite my furious tap dancing across it, I found there was no power, and no warmth in the device when I settled down to lie on it.”

Sunday saw my turn to do the weekly shop, so it was off early to a not very full Sainsbury’s. (Full of people that is, the shelves were fine, got everything on the list.) They also had boxes of crème eggs so another top up happened; I’ve got enough for another week or so now. Even with less traffic on the roads it’s still amazing just how bad Crawley drivers are. I wonder if it’s got anything to do with the layer of sand that seems to have settled over all the cars in Crawley in the last week and that they can’t actually see where they are going.

I have mentioned that the bush in the garden was being removed. It was completed on Sunday, and so Monday morning there was a forlorn, confused looking cat. It had been a couple of weeks since the fencing had been set up in its current format, and the daily changes had stopped, and so the cat was nicely settled into a routine. So he wandered over to where the bush had been, turned all around to see if he’d walked in the wrong direction and then sat in the spot where he would usually be covered by the bush and scowled at Helen putting the washing out. I think the previously low Trip Advisor score may well become a minus score now.

I know the feeling, after what was quite an animated weekend for me, the general feeling of meh! had kicked in again by the time it got to midday on Monday. The poem written over the weekend might have had different lines (or even missing lines) towards the end if I’d written it on Monday.

What day is it please? Does anybody really know?

Not that it matters of course, I’ve nowhere to go.

Nothing to do except maybe gaze out of the window

And get fatter eating pizza and some hot cookie dough

The lockdown at the same time both sucks and blows

And when it will end is something nobody knows

The lack of motivation for me to do anything grows

And my stomach is so big now I can’t see my toes

I stare at a screen for countless hours every single day

Whether working or personal use all I feel is dismay

All the colour is gone and now all around me is grey

For someone to shoot me I might just fork out and pay

I wonder if the next time I move will it be sometime in May

Or will it be later in the year just in time for Santa’s sleigh

By which time God only knows how much I will weigh

And I’ll have forgotten how to speak, instead I’ll bray

The news is depressing it’s all about death and misery

Or people who are self-obsessed chanting me me me

I sit and wonder how on earth it is they can’t see

How their selfishness affects absolutely everybody

It’s not rocket science and they don’t need a degree

To see that there is more to life than taking a selfie

It isn’t as if everybody in the world always has to agree

But wouldn’t it be good to try and make others happy

Now I know I’m not known to have on my face a smile

And that every day in lockdown can be such a trial

It’s difficult to prevent my usual outpouring of bile

But perhaps a change of outlook would be worthwhile

I could go la la la, fingers in my ears in a state of denial

And keep everything the same on my personal file

But I am going to try and go that extra mile

So that I end up being at the top of the dial

I may have framed my jigsaw, but it still hasn’t made it up onto the map wall, and it sits next to me at the end of the kitchen table. We still haven’t started on the next physical jigsaw, but I’m keeping my hand in online. Reading has slowed, only three books this week. I did think about writing, but only got as far as writing a list of chapter titles. It all adds to the word count I suppose.

I’ve been seeing a lot of people online have been doing online diaries. I did think about doing this, but got distracted (and a little dyslexic), and so my only entry has been.

Dear Dairy,

Thank you for your supplies this week. It has been good to upgrade from semi-skimmed to full fat milk, it is just a shame that you no longer do gold top. With crumpets for breakfast, and additional baking in house, can I get an extra pack of butter delivered each week please? Yes, and keep the cheeses coming, double the halloumi order, keep the Cheddar, Feta, Mozzarella and Danish Blue at the same level, and some nice Applewood slices would appreciated this week to put on the burgers. Don’t forget the yoghurts and double cream; we have to keep the deserts going as well if I’m going to achieve the pudding look before lockdown ends.

Grrr. I mentioned meeting sociopaths last week. There are some more I need to add to this. Those that add meetings in over possible lunchtime hours. Now half an hour or an hour isn’t that bad by itself. It’s those who add them in when the rest of the lunchtime period is already booked that need a good slap. And as for those who book two hours meetings from noon to 2pm, they need Eddie Honda to come and do his signature hundred handslap move on them.

And now it’s raining most of the time. There are some positives to this. The sand has been washed off the car, and there are fewer morons out and about. Plus there’s less chance of having to go out and exercise if it’s raining. Onwards and upwards.

Life In The Backwards Lane

Life carries on at a pace never known before. It appears there are now only two speeds in this life. Dead stop and backwards. In the last week I have managed to leave the house just twice, each for about ten minutes, as long as it takes to walk up to the local parade of shops to restock the supplies of Pepsi, Crème Eggs, bread, milk and cereals. I’m doing quite well at this isolation thing. If only another member of the household took it so seriously, not content with going out several times a day, including round to their friends flat, over the weekend they’ve now wangled their effing girlfriend to be living with us. It was thought this might reduce the number of exits from the house, but it hasn’t, they still aren’t paying a blind bit of attention to an increasingly irate Helen.

We had booked a couple of days off to bookend the Easter weekend, so instead of four days sat in the house unable to go anywhere whilst not working, we now had six. Which meant that there were a number of things that needed doing around the house. And worse for me, the garden. If you haven’t heard me moaning about being outside, then you haven’t known me very long. There was a reason I liked living in second floor flats.

However, to get me to do jobs you have to prise me out of my office chair at the kitchen table. Whereas the previous weekend had been spent doing a physical jigsaw, this extended weekend found me unable to continue in the same vein, as I had bitten the bullet and ordered a frame for the old London map one I’d completed the weekend before, and needed to wait for that to turn up before I could start on a new one. (Jigsaws have to be zipped up in the case overnight to prevent pet related problems.) What I was doing instead was using the jigsaw world app on Facebook to do virtual jigsaws instead. Twenty-eight of them since last Friday. I’d say it was helping me to pass the time. Helen may have other words for it (effing obsessed for example).

When I did manage to drag myself away from jigsaws, it was rarely to jobs anyone wanted or needed me to do. I did shuffle the records and books around in the living room, cleaned the patio with the pressure washer and erm that’s probably about it. I’m fairly sure an accurate spoonerism to describe me in the last week will have been twazy lat.

I did spend some time away from Jigsaws. Mainly reading and looking at maps. Three old ordnance survey maps of Leicestershire from various years back to 1831, a modern-day A-Z of Crawley, and two old maps of Crawley and Three Bridges. I’ve read this year’s Playfair Cricket annual, and I’m now fully up to date on all the cricket matches that won’t be taking place this year. Then a book called “Logo for London” about the design and use of the roundel, and onto a very geeky book called the “Atlas of Closed Railway Stations”. I’ve also read five novels, Dean Koontz’s “The Night Window”, the last in his Jane Hawk series, Robert Crais’ latest “A Dangerous Man”, Phaedra Patrick’s “The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper”, Gail Honeyman’s “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine”, and last night finished Stephen King’s “The Outsider”, which means I can now get round to watching the TV series that is stacked up on the Sky box. I like to read the book first before watching things. I did the same with “Good Omens” earlier in the year.

Some of this reading has lea to me doing bits of writing. A couple of pieces on the lost railways and station of Leicestershire and Rutland (I know, riveting stuff), and a couple of pieces for Crawley Library’s competition on writing inspired by Crawley’s history. But, despite all this enforced time inside and no work for six days, not one word written towards any of my three novels in progress or any of the list of competitions I’ve ringed in the diary to try and enter. Refer to my previous twazy lat comment.

Of course, because I was on leave, the large screen I’d ordered from work turned up in the middle of the Bank Holiday weekend. I managed to ignore the urge to rip open the box and use it to plug into my personal laptop and do jigsaws on (that really might have pushed my luck too far), and left opening it up and setting it up for work use until last thing Tuesday night. Knowing full well that my eye hand coordination is even worse first thing in the morning, so it would be better to set it up whilst awake the previous night.

Which was probably a good job, as Wednesday morning, as Helen was setting up to start work in the spare room, my previous DIY (more apt to be Destroy it Yourself) handiwork was coming to its inevitable conclusion, as the wall mounted desk parted company with the wall. Therefore, we are both working with big screens on the kitchen table, which is doubtless distracting for both of us. I don’t need any excuse to be distracted at home (no squirrels, but a demented cat chasing and harrying a stationary tennis ball and falling out of a tree have kept me entertained this week), so my efficiency might not even hit the high of thirty percent it did last week.

Now it’s a case of waiting for lockdown to be over so that I can pay for someone competent to put the desk back on the wall so that it will manage to stay attached for more than two weeks (during which over half of those days were non-working ones). Buying a foldaway table in the meantime is a sensible stop gap measure to prevent the wall ending up with more holes than a string vest.

On a positive note, as I’ve been away from work for most of the last week there has been a great reduction in pest led skype messages. Speaking of which, where’s that Do Not Disturb button?

P.S. The frame has turned up, to paraphrase myself when timekeeping on pub crawls. NEXT JIGSAW.

Mixed Messages

Just as an aside, it obviously wasn’t an old plane we were flying on. It’s all done out in a very plush style, new seating and entertainment consoles and the like. Yet, when you go to the toilet, there is a big sign saying.

“NO SMOKING IN THE TOILETS”

Another smaller one directly above that one saying,

“It is a Federal offence to tamper with the operation of the smoke detectors fitted in this toilet.”

A third sign covered the lid of the bin and says,

“Rubbish only, no cigarettes.”

Part of the safety briefing says there is no smoking permitted anywhere on the plane, and that the toilets are alarmed. (They are even more alarmed after I’ve been obviously.)

Despite all these messages, what is that I can see in front of me just below the lock to the toilet door? A fold down ashtray. With the words “For Cigarettes” on it.

Perhaps you wouldn’t need all the other signs if you didn’t have an effing ashtray on the door of the toilet. There’s another one on the outside of the toilet door too.

Talk about mixed messages.

If they can upgrade the rest of the plane why the hell can’t they replace the doors to the toilets?

More Crawley Morons

What is it with the people of Crawley? Do they take special classes to become halfwits? I’m not asking for a friend, I’m asking because I want to know what makes so many of the inhabitants such utter morons.

I was stood waiting for Helen to come out of Lush. I’d been to do something else and there’s not a hope in hell of me going in that shop. It smells bad enough when you walk past and the doors are open.

Now, not wanting to be in the way, I went and stood directly in front of the signpost that is in the middle of the walk up from Queen’s Square to the entrance to the Mall. And I stood still. Now, I’m not exactly inconspicuous, but that doesn’t stop people either walking into me, or only noticing a couple of steps before they get to me.

And then the abuse starts, or the dirty looks, or the muttering. “Get out of our way they” say or indicate. Then they’re not very happy when I reply along the lines of, “Don’t be so stupid! Were you planning on walking in to the signpost? If you weren’t then stick your inability to avoid inanimate objects where the sun doesn’t shine. If you were intending to walk into the sign post then I’ll happily move and let you do it.”

Cue more muttering.

Anyway, as I was stood there a couple came along with a dog. Now, I’ve no idea what breed of dog it was but it was a big, tan brown thing and it looked less than impressed at being in town amongst lots of people. It was even less impressed at being near Lush with all the smells emanating from there. I don’t blame it, it drives me mad and my sense of smell is shocking. And then the owners of the dog took the bloody thing into Lush with them.

Seriously, how can you not know that a dog, with their ultra-sensitive sense of smell, is going to be driven insane by the sensory overload of being in Lush? After a couple of minutes one of the couple came out of the shop with the dog. It was making strange whinnying noises.

Simply jaw dropping that they wouldn’t realise the effect on the dog.