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2 August 2012 (Thursday) - Grrr...


My piss boiled this morning. Regular readers of this drivel will know that go to Teston kite festival whenever it is on. For the last few years I've helped the organisers out by being the designated key holder at the event. For every day of the long weekends at 8.30pm I locked the gate to the site. And then at 6am (regardless of how much beer I'd guzzled) I would open the gate again. And if any bona-fido person needed to come or go overnight I would do the gate for them. I've done this for the last half-dozen (or more) festivals. Locking the gate every night; unlocking it every morning.
I am reliably informed that the County Council have made it known that they have several problems with the kite festival. One of their major gripes is that they are claiming that whoever had been responsible for locking the gate for the last few years (me) apparently never did so, but left it permanently unlocked. 
 
And that's when my urine evaporated. This is a blatant lie. I'd like to find out exactly who is making these malicious and unfounded accusations. Probably someone who would never get out of their pit at 5.45am to do someone else a favour, I expect.
Other county councils throw money at kite festivals. Kent want to make money from the festival at Teston. They want to charge the people who are putting on the free show for the public. If they want to kill off the festival, why don't they just announce that they won't allow the thing to go ahead any more and be done with it? Why go through this rigmarole of causing bad feeling and putting people's backs up?
For example they want (for no apparent reason) a written list of everyone who will be present at the festival; which would be nigh on impossible to produce. And they don't seem keen on having people camping out there; they'd rather people paid a fortune in petrol to put on a show for them every day.
If they want to take a mercenary line, then I shall do so as well. I've told them that I shall be arriving to collect the key next Thursday at 10am. I shall bill them for the time I expect to be kept waiting for them. They've also asked me to be key holder. I won't be doing that for free either. I think that if they waive my camping fees (and those of my immediate party) then that might just about cover my fee.

Talking of kiting events I hear this weekend is one of the kite world's high points. As I was giving credit card details over the phone to the nice lady at Kites Up (they have made some banners for the astro club) she mentioned about the Jolly Up this weekend. I've been meaning to go to this for years; and i always hear about it after it's happened. This time I heard about it with one day's notice. Oh well; such is life...

And so to work where I went back to find the geocache I couldn't find yesterday. Sure enough the given co-ordinates were slightly out when I compared them to the clue about being underneath three cables. Mind you, I searched for quarter of an hour but couldn't find it. Perhaps with all the greenery on the trees I've picked the wrong time of year to make an easy find. I spent a little while talking geocaching at work today - I seem to have made one or two converts to the hobby - one of whom went out looking for the nearest geocache in her lunch break. Fortunately (for my dignity) she couldn't find it either; so she went looking for it after work.
I've also found that there's a dozen geocaches within half a mile of Teston Bridge picnic site. And half a dozen near Hosey's house. I shall see if I can get him geocaching at the weekend.
I've also decided to have a geocache of my very own in the front garden. News on this will follow....

I spent much of the evening sulking. er indoors is having a birthday today and with the vagaries of shifts and booked leave I found myself working on a super-late finish which I couldn't easily swap, whilst over twenty of my family and friends went out for curry...

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