2 April 2017 (Sunday) - Doing the Chores

My piss boiled as I read the morning news. A seventeen year old boy is laying in critical condition having been brutally assaulted by a gang of thugs not fifty miles from where I live. He was attacked for being an asylum seeker. In today’s Britain asylum seekers are seen as people coming to Britain for an easy life. The reality is somewhat different. The asylum seekers of my experience are intelligent people who have fled their homes because it is not safe to be in a war zone. The asylum seekers of my experience work hard and work unsocial hours, and do the jobs that most Brits are unprepared to do or are unqualified to do. And now they are getting beaten almost to death.
It makes me ashamed to be British. Perhaps if people think twice about posting racist hate-provoking memes on social media, people wouldn’t think it was acceptable to kick someone half to death for wanting to live in safety.

I checked my emails – I had a rather nice log on one of my geocaches – you can read what the chap said by clicking here. And talking of geocaches…. Usually we’d go off on a rather long walk on a Sunday (if we hadn’t on the Saturday) but "er indoors TM" had plans for the afternoon. So with only a couple of hours spare we thought we might do some maintenance on our own caches.
Mind you geocache maintenance is something which boils my piss. I’m expected to perform maintenance on the caches I’ve hidden. It says so in the rules, and (to be honest) I knew that when I hid them all. But knowing what a pain geo-maintenance can be, whenever I go off to walk an extended series of caches I make myself helpful. If the series has been out for any length of time I email the person who hid them to ask if there are any issues, and to ask if there is any maintenance I might do on the way for them. It is silly for someone to go out of their way and waste their time when I am walking past the problem anyway. But I seem to be in the minority here. No one ever messages me to ask if there are any problems to sort. Rather than carrying a few slips of paper in a pocket to replace wet logs, so many people would rather put a “Needs Maintenance” flag. And if a “Needs Maintenance” flag isn’t dealt with promptly, the geo-feds will archive the cache.
Perhaps I’m just a bit pissy here because the chap who had me give up my Sunday morning has found twice as many caches as I have whilst only having hidden three of his own (and consequently has pretty much zero maintenance of his own to do) whereas I have over a hundred active caches to deal with.

So we drove out to do some geo-maintenance this morning. I had four issues to deal with. The first was a cache which was reported as missing. It was missing, so I replaced it. It was one which has gone missing a few times; I think I might need to re-think the hide.
The second one needed a new log. Yes – the log *was* wet. Did no one have a slip of paper with which to replace it?
The third one was broken, and the fourth one missing. Ironically a couple of hours after I replaced that fourth one (in a slightly different hide) someone else came along and just put down a new cache for me. If only I’d known he was going to do that. Still, better two than none.

We came home and scoffed a Belgian bun for late lunch then "er indoors TM" went off with her pals to see the Pet Shop Boys live. Finding myself “home alone” for the afternoon I did some gardening. I got all the weeds pulled out of the gravel, and I got the gravel round one side of the pond organised. Gravel doesn’t organise itself you know. The other side of the pond still needs doing, but I shall need help for that. Firstly the arbour needs lifting out, and then the gravel and membranes need some serious work because a certain poo-eating puppy has been digging.
I intended to pressure-wash the yard and some paving slabs but the shed was in such a mess I couldn’t get to the pressure washer. I need to do a couple of tip runs before I can get to the pressure washer. For all that I do like my new job, the shift system where I used to work was useful in allowing me time to do things like tip runs.

I then spent a couple of hours doing the ironing. Dull, but it doesn’t do itself you know. I then fed the dogs (and myself) and we all settled down in front of the telly. I expect we shall all be asleep soon – two of us are already…
I’ve worked rather hard on this last day of my little holiday.

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