Redditch, Andrew Marr Show, Young Earth Creationist, N95, Podcast, Dan Carlin, Rang George, Allotment Plough Man, Back From Camp, New Shife, Lurggy,

It was my first night back at work tonight so I needed to catch up on some sleep during the afternoon. Nat would be away until early evening and Deb and Hannah were planning to visit Deb’s parents in Redditch and collect him on their way home

I watched the Andrew Marr show and had a good laugh at the Young Earth Creationist who appeared on the following programme explaining why, he believed, Darwin was wrong and why the earth was less than Ten Thousand Years Old. What a complete arsehole of the first order. These people are so needy that’ll they’ll swallow any old bollocks and repeat the same old lies to convince themselves of the existence of their God. It’s interesting how they’re so quick to dismiss the equally irrational beliefs of other religious folk…Total F**king F**kwits! Equally amused and depressed that people can honestly believe such tosh I made my way to bed via Nat’s room where I temporarily stole back my old N95 so that I could listen to a few podcasts while getting off to sleep. Dan Carlin’s most recent Common Sense program if I recall correctly. I received an automated call from the Carphone Warehouse telling me that my phone had been dispatched and that they’d let me know when it came back which was nice if somewhat unexpected.

Before I’d gone to bed I’d rung George, who was the previous allotment site manager, to ask him to ask his successor if she could ring us today, she’d forgotten last week, with the number of the gentleman who would plough our allotment for us. As luck would have it George had his number and was able to give it to me over the phone. We planned to call him later in the week to arrange to get our plot ploughed.

I eventually got up at about half four after Deb had called me to make sure I didn’t forget that I had to get up earlier now we were starting work at 20:00 instead of 21:00. She called again at 17:00 to say that she and Han were at the camp and waiting to pick up Nat. When they hadn’t arrived home 45 minutes later I called her back only to find that they were still waiting for the scouts to finish clearing their camp site. Eventually they got home and Nat stank. They had slept in their bivouacs and he was rank but grateful for his new sleeping bag that is suitable for temperatures as low as minus 18C! He’d finally opened the survival tin that his granddad had bought him about five years ago and proceeded to display the contents. It seems that he had a great time at camp but then he always does.

I left for work at around 19:00 and arrived with plenty of time to spare. So far I like this new shift the time passed quickly and I was able when it was finally quite to catch up on these blog posts. Cycled home in the morning, back by 7:30, to find both kids were struck down with the “Lurggy”. Deb stayed home to look after them because Hannah was very poorly and she didn’t want to leave her being sick and with me asleep in bed. I posted some photos and videos onto a couple of the blogs I’d written that night then went to bed at about 11:00.

Nat off to the DoIt4Real camp in Cumbria, Coach pick up at Leicester railway station, Allotment Therapy, Hannah’s back from Cub Camp

Nat was off to Castle Head in Cumbria this morning on a DoIt4Real course. We were due to drop him off at Leicester Railway station at 9:00 to pick up the coach that would take him, and the others kids, to the central organising point in Burnley where each of them would get a coach to whichever centre they were going to. We left home around 8:20 and were at the station by 8:40. The coach was already there but with time to spare Nat and I went onto the station platform to see what renovations had taken place. I can’t say that it seemed at all different to how it was when I used to commute to London in 1988. Back at the coach we got chatting with a few of the other parents and realised how lucky we were. It seems that Leicester is the only pick up point in this area and some of them had travelled from as far as Milton Kynes that morning. The coach schedule had a built in lateness component and would stay until 9:30 in case anyone had been delayed on their way. Because Deb and I wanted to get some work done on our allotment we eventually left leaving Nat happily sitting on the coach chatting to his fellow travellers.




Hopefully he had an uneventful journey because it’s Thursday as I’m typing this and we’ve not heard from him to date. Deb then drove us to the allotment where we started making an attempt at clearing some of the accumulated mess. Because of my hip operation we’ve not really done much this year and even the covered over areas were overgrown. Eventually after a few hours backbreaking work we made some headway and cleared this area and an adjacent one which we then also covered over. The photos below don’t really show what we did but our muscles certainly confirmed that we’d done something. On the upside, I finally managed to listen to the first two of Dan Carlin’s three Hardcore History Podcasts dealing with the Punic Wars; so that was nice! When we left we took a basket of beans and marrows plus a large bag of plumbs we’d picked, with permission, from Terry’s (a fellow allotment holder two plots down from ours) trees.



Later, 2:30, Deb left to pick up Donna and together they went and fetched Hannah and Josh from camp. Hannah had been sharing a hut; it was too wet to stay in tents, with Charley who she met at camp the last time she was there. Unlike Nat she’s had the wherewithal to get Charley’s Facebook address and made contact with her when she got home. The gossip, she told us, was that Josh had been snuggling/snogging with Charley while they were away and that she was now his girlfriend!!! His girlfriend…for God’s sake they are only nine years old; what are they doing having boyfriends and girlfriends at that age? I told Hannah that she wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend until she was at least twenty! Apparently, according to Josh, all the boys in her class fancy Hannah but they’re also all afraid of her! Hopefully, this is state of affairs that will continue for a long time… I wish.

That was about it for Sunday.