3 September 2023 (Sunday) - Early Shift

Yesterday had been a rather full-on day, but I was still awake far earlier than I needed to be this morning. I got up, made toast and once I'd watched a bit of telly I had a little look at the Internet. Facebook prompted me with a memory - five years ago today I'd led a dozen hunters of Tupperware on a boat trip out to a geocache on a sea fort in the Thames estuary. We had a really good time, but what I remember most about that trip was the sulking and attitude from those who didn't go. At the time I booked the boat for myself. There were spaces for twelve people on the boat, so I offered spaces to friends that I thought might be interested.  But word soon got about, and I had messages from all sorts of people that I didn't know complaining about how poorly I'd advertised the trip and how they wanted to go. I also had messages from people that I didn't know telling me (not asking!) that they were coming and wanting details of where we were all meeting up. All of these people weren't at all happy that they couldn't come along, but I told all of these people that they could organise their own trip, and gave them all the details to do so.
In the intervening five years there have been several boat trips to that sea fort, but not one specifically for the geocache there.
 
I set off to work on a rather quiet and foggy morning. Once I'd left Ashford I didn't see another car until I got to Bethersden (five miles down the road).
As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how one of the researchers in the Antarctic has been taken ill and the Australians have dispatched the icebreaker RSV Nuyina to go get him (or her). Apparently it has taken weeks to get the icebreaker ready. I suspect this rescue mission won't be cheap - I hope the casualty has got medical insurance.
I found myself thinking about a rather silly idea I had in the early 1980s when I thought about spending a year in the Antarctic myself as a go-fer for the British Antarctic Survey. Whilst it would have been an experience, what put me off was that although I would sign up for a year, I needed to be prepared to be there for two years (or more) in case the weather was bad and HMS Endurance couldn't get through the ice.
This was followed by a program about pranksters; people who play practical jokes. It started off sounding rather interesting but after the first minute or so I found myself listening with a profound sense of "WTF are they talking about?". The program was best described as "pretentious bollox" with the presenter making continual references to operas and obscure historical literature about which not one person in ten thousand would have heard. I turned off when this idiot pointed out that pranksters are still in contemporary society, and quoted Bart Simpson as an example. But (to this idiot) the funniest bit about The Simpsons was the theme tune which the chap felt was hilarious, and he was laughing out loud when he played it.
 
As I drove through the -hursts and the -dens I drove past a geocache of mine that had been reported as being missing so I stopped off and replaced it. My stopping at a random part of a random lane completely confused the chap who had been driving five yards from the back of my car for the last two miles.
 
I got to work, got a Qrate out of the car park (It's a Munzee thing) and then cracked on with work. As I did that which I couldn't avoid so “Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” phoned. She's started taking “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” to feed the ducks and sent me a photo of “Darcie Waa Waa ^TM” eating the duck food. There are those who maintain that ducks shouldn't be fed bread; and that ducks should be fed lettuce and peas and all sorts of vegetables. It has been my experience that people who talk about not feeding bread to ducks have never actually tried to feed a duck. All the ducks of my acquaintance seem to like bread. They aren't at all impressed with lettuce, peas and vegetables.
“Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM” had also hurt her foot somehow or other. Perhaps I wasn’t quite the concerned parent that I might have been, but she did phone right in the middle of the day’s second ”brown alert” (somewhat analogous to Captain Kirk getting a viewscreen full of Klingons at an inopportune moment, but a tad scarier).
I also had several messages from “er indoors ^TM” who couldn't find any of the paint trays in the shed. Thinking about it I don't remember seeing any when I tidied up in there a few weeks ago. I found loads of paint brushes, but no paint trays. Oh well... as I told her, that's why God made B&Q.
 
With work done I came home. “er indoors ^TM” was still in the throes of painting so I mowed the lawn as I was too scared to plonk myself down on the sofa. But with lawn mowed, that’s what I did.
Yesterday I devised a fix to get my GPS talking to my lap-top; I thought I might test out my fix by using it to report the geo-maintenance I’d done on the way to work. It sort-of worked…
 
“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more “SAS :Who Dares Wins”. Am I being unfair in thinking that you need to have all sorts of personal issues and catastrophes before you can be a competitor in that show?
I don’t think I’d be very good at it.