30 June 2018 (Saturday) - Heaverham

I was sleeping well until "er indoors TM"’s alarm went off at five o’clock. She’d set an alarm for last Saturday’s walk round Essex and hadn’t cancelled it. I didn’t get back to sleep after that.
I got up and watched an episode of “Trailer Park Boys” over brekkie in which Bubbles was having troubles with a Samsquanch. And with telly watched I had a look-see at Facebook. Some morning social media is interesting, some mornings it is fun… more and more though it is becoming attention seeking and racial hatred in equal amounts.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d watched the film “Tau”; this morning Netflix emailed me to suggest I might watch it. Yesterday I also mentioned that I’d emailed Geo-HQ with a specific question. This morning they sent a standard email to which I replied asking that they might answer “yes” or “no” to the specific question I’d asked. I bet they won’t.

"er indoors TM" had plans for today so we said our goodbyes. I got the dogs into my car, seat-belted them in, and we all drove up to Heaverham. We’d arranged with the nice people at “The Chequers” to use their car park, and soon together with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte we set off on a rather good walk. The geo-series “The Heaverham Huff-Puff” is so named because of the huffing and puffing to get up the hills. We’ve walked in this part of the world before, and with "er indoors TM" elsewhere we deliberately chose to come here as we knew she wouldn’t like the hills.
It was a good walk; with one exception the footpaths were clearly marked (but we managed) and we only once found farm animals in any of the fields we had to cross. As we walked we saw buzzards circling in the sky, and the dogs smelled all sorts of things to get very over-excited about. Both Fudge and Rolo rolled in stuff; I’m sure Rolo isn’t allowed to roll in stuff when he is at home.
Geocache-wise it was a good walk. We had seen that two caches appeared to be missing; we’d contacted the chap who’d hid them and offered to replace them if we couldn’t find them. Both seemed to have gone; we replaced both. There are those in geo-circles who frown on that sort of thing; personally I wish more people would be helpful like this.

We’d promised the nice lady at The Chequers that we would repay their kindness in letting us use their car park; once back at the pub we got some drinks in and ordered dinner. I can’t recommend the place highly enough – they were so friendly and helpful. And the food was excellent. The ploughman’s lunch was *so* good. You could have two different cheeses, and ham or olives… the only fly in the ointment was when the waitress told me I was having the vegetarian option. I hadn’t considered it to be “vegetarian”.
We sat in the shade of the garden umbrella for over two hours. We had considered meeting later, having lunch first and walking in the afternoon. We were all glad we’d started early. It was warm enough in the morning; the afternoon would have been just *too* hot.

We came home; with "er indoors TM" off out I had to get my own dinner. I foraged in the general direction of the KFC fully expecting to share it with the dogs. But they were all fast asleep when I got back from the KFC. They all came over looking hopeful, and then all went back to beds and sofas and snored.
Perhaps it *had* been too hot for them today? But they had all had plenty of cold iced water as we walked, and plenty of water and shade in the beer garden. And all had been playing in the beer garden. I suspect that having Rolo along made the adventure more exciting for my two, and the adventure itself was fun for Rolo.
They were all still asleep at nine o’clock… not one had asked for dinner…


29 June 2018 (Friday) - Bit Bored, Really...

No four o’clock barking sessions, no playful dogs at silly o’clock; I had a wonderful night fast asleep.
It was only a shame to come downstairs to find a packet of “love hearts” had been strewn everywhere. I blame Treacle.

Over brekkie I had a look-see at the Internet and I’m afraid my piss boiled. Yet another of the world’s top geocachers had been announced. This chap had hidden five Wherigoes (I’ve hidden twenty-one – all with more “favourite points” than his). I emailed geo-HQ and asked if I’d *only* hidden those twenty-one Wherigoes (and not the two hundred others) would I have been part of the elite gang. I explained that I didn’t want to get into a long argument; just a “yes or no” answer would suffice. I wonder if they will reply. Somehow I doubt it.
I wondered if I should cancel the boat trip out to the Red Sands fort that I was trying to charter. A rather high drop-out rate combined with the reticence of the people at the boat hire to answer emails, and hearing that on Monday the sea was as calm as a mill pond and yet the boat’s captain felt the sea was too rough to go on to the fort have all left me thinking “no”.
I then spent an hour or so solving geo-puzzles in the New Forest area just because I could.

I took the dogs round the park for our morning constitutional. There was a minor hiccup when one of the normal people (and his dog) wouldn’t leave us alone. He was a bit odd, and Rolo was continually trying to fight with his dog. Eventually he pissed off, and we had a fun five minutes playing in the river.
With our walk done I had a plan to put the old lino from the kitchen onto the shed floor. After five minutes I decided against this idea. There was just too much stuff in the shed which needed to be shifted before I could do the job. Instead I tidied the back yard and did a tip run. However there was a little problem. The tip doesn’t take half-empty tins of paint. Apparently I have to let them dry out and then the tip will take the dried paint and the tins separately. I was reliably assured that tins of wet paint are the most dangerous things in the world. I reflected on just how brave I’d been yesterday dealing with the stuff myself, and decided to restrain myself from laughing out loud at the jobsworth idiot who *really* did think that tins of wet paint are the most dangerous things in the world.

I came back via B&Q where I picked up a new yard brush. There was quite a queue at the tills. One of the self-service machines was broken. One of the members of staff who was standing idly by said he couldn’t help as his shift was over and he was going home. I thought it was odd that he was still standing there doing nothing ten minutes later, but what do I know? After all, I’m silly enough to handle tins of wet paint.

I had a spot of lunch, edited Wikipedia some more, and then (once I’d set tins of paint to dry out) set up the pressure washer. I gave the back yard a serious scrubbing. The idea was that it would take some time; it was done in an hour. So bearing in mind I’m supposed to be on holiday I put my feet up and watched a film. “Tau” was something of a disappointment. So much so that I slept through much of it.

Over fish and chips we watched last week’s episode of “Humans”; again something of a disappointment. Mankind is faced with armies of sentient robots; friends or foes? Science fiction did this them to death (much better) seventy years ago. I’m just waiting for one of the androids to be named “George 10”.
Mind you yesterday’s episode of “Young Sheldon” was rather good, if only for the fact that Meemaw is dating the Grand Nagus (from Star Trek)

28 June (Thursday) - Painting the House

Treacle woke me with her whimpering and crying at half past six. Expecting the worst, it turned out that she wanted to play and everyone else was asleep. By the time I’d got up for her she’d lost interest and was settling to sleep herself.
I got up, watched an episode of “Trailer Park Boys” then sparked up the Internet as I do most mornings. It is obvious that some gremlin in cyberspace is watching what I do on-line since as I opened Facebook I was presented with an advert for a trolley which would be ideal for what I need for my fishing gear. And it was only thirty quid. However the thing was “collection only” and by the time I’d done a round trip of two hundred miles the thirty quid would have become seventy what with fuel costs.

I took the dogs round the park. The nice people from the council had turned the Hubert fountain off and were giving it a good clean. They’d also roped off the lower half of the park for tree felling so we cut our walk short and came home. That wasn’t a bad thing; Rolo does try to fight with every big dog he meets.

Once home I hung out the washing, and made a start painting the front of the house. I’ve not painted it since 29 September 2009, so it was rather overdue. After two hours I had the job done, so I painted the wood out the back (again) before settling the dogs and going on a little shopping mission.
I was determined to get a trolley for fishing. B&M bargains had nothing, neither did Wickes or B&Q. I saw exactly what I wanted in Halfords, but they only had one and they had promised it to someone else. They assured my they would have one for me for tomorrow though, and took my phone number so’s they could give me a ring when they came in.
I came back home and over lunch I watched the episode of “Gotham” from two weeks ago. It was rather good.

I considered saying “sod the painting”, but what else was there for me to do? It was too hot for the dogs to go for a walk, so I got ladder and paint brush and gave the front of the house a second coating. A tedious job; in many ways like gardening. You spend ages doing it only to have the end result look no different from how it looked when you started.
As I painted I had a message on my phone. Where had I been last night? There had been a geo-meet last night at McDonalds. That was kept rather quiet.

Just as I was finishing the painting my phone rang. It was the nice people at Halfords. The person for whom they had reserved the trolley didn’t want it any more. Did I want it? I was round there in less than five minutes. I’d been after one of these trolleys for ages. And having fifteen quid off was a very nice bonus.
I lugged it home, and once home I thought I would take a photograph of it and put the photo on Facebook. That’s the sort of thing I do. There was one minor hurdle to overcome though – it didn’t take *that* long to scoop up all the dog poo from the back garden.
As I was in the garden I thought I might weed the gravelled areas. That took over an hour.

"er indoors TM" came home and boiled up a rather good bit of scran. As we devoured it we watched an episode of “Humans”, then watched some celebrities charging round the Crystal Maze. Katie Price was one of them. She used to be rather attractive; now she looks more artificial than the androids in “Humans