31 May 2019 (Friday) - Another Late Shift

Over brekkie "er indoors TM" weighed the dogs. Two of them are little lumps. But Fudge came in at under ten kilograms. This is the lightest he’s ever been. He seems to be his usual wilful grumpy independent self, but I’m a tad worried about this weight loss. Trouble is, taking him to the vet’s will just stress him out. I shall keep an eye on him…

I then had my usual look at the internet to see what had changed overnight. Very little had. As I tried to see what was going on. Treacle came and chewed me. She does that from time to time.
I wondered about driving somewhere for the morning walk, but we ended up doing our usual circuit of the park. The walk was (relatively) uneventful. There was one minor incident when some old woman started hysterically screaming at Pogo. But he’d done nothing wrong; he was just bumbling down the footpath, and this old bat had reacted in much the same way that anyone else would when confronted by a tiger.
As we walked we saw the fun-fair was in the park. There had been talk of the fun-fair on the local Facebook groups this morning. Some people had claimed to have been short-changed by the fair’s staff. Had they been? Possibly. Was it deliberate? Who knows? All I can think is that whoever takes their lives in their hands on those death traps gets all they deserve.

We walked on into the co-op field where we exchanged pleasantries with OrangeHead (who is now completely grey). It was here that the dogs had a really good run about. Fudge looks really awkward when he runs; his joints don’t seem to flex anything like they used to. And Treacle has the perennial Pug issue that her back legs go faster than her front legs, and consequently her rear end starts to overtake her front end.

We came home, and I had a look at my credit card bill. It would seem I’ve not been billed for the McDonalds that we had in Whitfield in January, or the cable I bought for my sat-nav in February. Oh well… I can remember that McDonalds as being somewhat akin to feeding time at the zoo, and that cable has never worked properly anyway. So that’s fifteen quid in my back bin.
I spent a little while struggling and failing to solve geo-puzzles, then got myself organised and set off to work.
Last night I'd had to park with my car facing up the road. Rather than going round the block this morning I thought I might do a three-point turn to save two minutes. After all, there was no traffic about... By the time I'd got to the point of blocking the road (it took about five seconds for me to do that) there were half a dozen cars queuing impatiently in all directions.

Before I'd left home I'd been looking at the geo-map. I'd found a little puzzle cache I might do in Cranbrook on my way to work. I followed my sat-nav to a phone box in Cranbrook, found the numbers I needed, did some sums, found the latitude and longitude of the film pot I sought... and then spent ten minutes searching the phone box because I'd not actually put the GPS co-ordinates into my phone. Dur!
Once I'd realised my error I walked a hundred yards and soon had the cache in hand.

I drove in to work and was soon in the hospital's canteen. Fish and chips was on the menu. I had fish and chips and a yogurt. For some odd reason it cost a pound less than yesterday's sandwich and bag of crisps had done. However (much as I enjoyed it) it also gave me a guts ache which lasted for the duration of the late shift. But it was a better late shift than some I’ve had recently.

I came home to find Fudge was sulking at me. I wonder what’s up with him?

30 May 2019 (Thursday) - Busy Late Shift


I slept like a log despite a rather vivid dream in which I had to help various Z-list celebrities escape (on motorbikes) from Northern France which was under the relentless rule of a zombie apocalypse led by the late Sid James. Sometimes I wonder what goes through my head.

Over brekkie I peered into the Internet to see what I’d missed. I hadn’t missed much. So I got dressed, got the dogs organised and we drove out to Kings Wood to do a spot of geo-maintenance. Over the weekend some bunch of people walked my geo-series and found one of the caches was broken.
I say “broken”; apparently the actual cache had gone missing but the paper log (in its bag) was still there. A replacement cache was needed.
This has happened on pots I’ve hidden under rocks recently a few times recently. The pots aren’t missing; just broken.
Admittedly according to the rules it’s up to me to maintain caches I’ve hidden, but surely maintenance of caches is a community responsibility to keep this hobby going? How many people go out looking for caches compared to how many make the effort of putting the things out? So many people get *so* much* from the hobby. Is it really unreasonable to expect people to contribute something back? It’s not the money – a replacement pot costs pence – you can get packs of six from the pound store. You can get free film pots from Boots in the High Street. It’s the time that you (I) have to take out of a busy life to sort it that is the issue. What with work schedules, family weddings, cameras up the jacksie and one thing and another, time is at something of a premium for me right now. Anyone finding a broken pot might pop out a replacement in less than a minute. Demanding that I go out to do it takes me a couple of hours.

Last night I had a whinge about this on the “Geocaching in Kent” Facebook page. I intended it to be a general whinge, but the bunch of people who’d seen the problem at the weekend took offence and things got rather nasty.
In the end I deleted the thread.
The social side of hunting Tupperware used to be such fun. Back in the day I organised at least one geo-event for the local geocachers every month. We had some wonderful walks here and there. Great fun out on boats, and in the deepest countryside, and some rather good trips to London.
Now it is just one big argument. The sad thing is that through this silly hobby I’ve met a *lot* of good friends. Those who cause the nastiness are all “keyboard warriors” who live miles and miles away.
Such a shame.

But in the meantime maintenance needed doing… We drove up to Kings Wood, and despite Fudge’s straggling we had a rather good walk to and from the problematical pot and back again. As we walked we met one cyclist and a couple of runners. You can walk for hours in Kings Wood without meeting anyone else.

We came home. As the dogs barked at their own shadows I hung out the washing until they fell asleep, then I set off towards work. Narrowly avoiding being run off the road by a bus I negotiated the new traffic lights at the end of my road. I felt it rather ironic that the bus had huge signs all over it saying about the driver being under instruction. Don't bus driving instructors cover traffic lights?

I headed west as I do when heading for Pembury. Yesterday and a couple of days ago some new geocaches went live on my way to work. I took a mile's diversion to see if I could find them. I did.
I then went to Tesco where I got some money so I could pay for for dinner, then went into work where the canteen let me down. Usually the food is rather good. Today they were having a "burger day". I could have whatever I wanted for dinner provided it was burger and chips. I got a sandwich and sulked until it was time for work.
The rest of the day passed in something of a blur…

29 May 2019 (Wednesday) - Bit Dull


Over brekkie I watched the third episode of “Bonding”. It was rather good.
I then sparked up my lap-top for a quick look to see what I’d missed on the Internet overnight. Last Friday I’d rated a bottle of wine on Vivino as being “better than a kick up the arse”. Overnight someone had posted that they liked my review. I see that as something of a result. Mind you, other than that, pretty much nothing else had happened on-line overnight. So I got dressed and set off for work a little earlier than usual.

I got to the petrol station to find that power had been restored (after yesterday's debacle). I got myself sixty quid's worth of the stuff and went to pay... What is it with the people behind the counters in petrol stations? This one was so busy giving the "get *it* here" at the workmen loitering round the coffee machine that she didn't actually bother speaking to me *at all* as I paid for my petrol.
You'd think that with so many petrol stations round Ashford she could at least have managed to grunt at me before I start taking my money elsewhere?

I then set off to Pembury listening to the news as I drove. The pundits on the radio were talking about the aftermath of last week's European elections. It would seem that the election has resulted in quite a serious shake-up to the European political position. France and Germany are squabbling over who will get the number one job, and what with the entire European political structure up in the air it would seem that no one has any time for the British in-fighting. Apparently European leaders are now just rolling their eyes when questioned by British journalists. Generations yet unborn will look back on these days as some of the most momentous in British and European history, but certainly for me it is all getting a tad tedious.

I got to work, I did my thing. I came home through rather heavy rain. "er indoors TM" boiled up a rather good dinner which we scoffed whilst watching the last every episode of “Big Bang Theory”. We’d recorded it some time ago but only just got round to watching it. It was… OK. It was a good end to the show, but I wonder if the program didn’t run for several years longer than it might have done?

Today was rather dull…