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12 September 2024 (Thursday) - Arguing with the Geo-Feds

Another restless night. Usually I sleep like a log for several nights after a night shift. I wonder what was different this time?
I got up, made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. I saw I had an email… and my piss boiled. On Tuesday I tried to organize the monthly geocaching meet-up for October. The Red Lion in Badlesmere are up for it so I tried to set up the meet. Bearing in mind the pub is usually busy until mid-afternoon I thought we might stage a little litter picking as a formal geo-activity on the village green before.
The usual geo-fed with whom I deal is on holiday. His stand in was being rather difficult. *If* there was to be a litter picking session then that had to be the main event, and the write-up I’d provided for the session in the pub should reflect that.
I went to one of these litter-picks followed by a meet up in Deal in April this year,  and something seemingly identical took place less than two weeks ago in Seaford, Both passed off with no such squabbles whatsoever.
If there was one word to describe the geo-feds it would be inconsistent. They pick on “er indoors TM about her caches needing maintenance when two people have logged that they can’t find the things, but let other people’s ones go for over a year with the DNF logs piling up. A friend who lives ten miles away has the geo-feds finding trivial issue after trivial issue with his proposed hides, but when his wife tries to put out *exactly* the same thing there are no problems at all. It says quite clearly in the rules that a geo-meet is not to be a rallying point for people then going off geocaching but a friend who lives twenty miles west does exactly that without problems.
Bearing in mind that so few people are creating geo-events these days you’d think they’d be a tad more encouraging…
I sent a terse reply, and pointed out that the geo-litter-pick was wishful thinking at best. I pointed out that I’d sent an email to who I thought was the relevant parish clerk on Tuesday, but with a postal address in Scotland I wasn’t expecting a reply. I also pointed out that I’d tried to organize a similar litter-pick in Kings Wood over the winter, but I gave up after six months of procrastination from Forestry England.
Just as I finished typing this rant so the stand-in geo-fed published my geo-meet for October. Clearly my terse email had worked.
 
After a rather wet few days today was glorious so I took the dogs up to the woods. We took a rather shorter route than usual as I didn’t want to over-exert Treacle’s leg. But she seemed fine. As we walked we met three other dogs. Two encounters were fine; one wasn’t. If Morgan meets another dog and they aren’t scared of him then all is heigh-ho, pip and dandy. But if they show any fear he gets rather aggressive.
I wish he wouldn’t.
 
We came home. Amazingly the dogs weren’t filthy and didn’t need a bath. So I popped to the corner shop and got us some pastries. You can’t go wrong with an almond croissant.
With that scoffed I went into the garden. I harvested a bumper crop of dog turds, and then mowed the lawn and found more. The whole idea of keeping the lawn short is that you can see the dog turds at harvest time, but the lawn had shot up over the last week’s rain.
I then started a timer, ran out the big hose pipe, cleaned the pond’s pressure filter, put the big hose pipe away and stopped the timer. Before I got the pressure filter, cleaning the pond filter was a back-breaking smelly job that took over an hour. Today it took just under ten minutes from start to finish and I didn’t end up smelling of fish poo.
I got out the bionic burner and had a zap at the weeds growing in the cracks in the front garden. Back in the day I would get on my hands and knees and pull the weeds. Now I go out and zap round with the burner in a fraction of the time and don’t end up with backache.
The trick to gardening is finding easy ways to do it. Having said that I can hear my mother telling me off about it. She used to see any sort of labour-saving device or activity as cheating. My grandmother was also insistent that there was merit in doing any job the most difficult and labourious way possible.
 
Just as I put the bionic burner away my phone pinged. I had an email from the parish clerk who I’d emailed on Tuesday giving full permission for the geo-litter-pick. I *really* hadn’t expected a reply; let alone one so soon.
I spent a little while creating the web page for the geo-litter-picking and sent a grovelling email to the geo-Fed to whom I’d been rather terse earlier. How embarrassing.
Mind you I’m wondering if I shouldn’t send a message to the head honcho of Forestry England. I spent over six months last winter emailing to and fro to their local office offering the services of a bunch of volunteers to do some litter picking for them. After endless procrastination from them I eventually gave up. A local parish council were only too happy to have us turn up and pick litter and all was sorted in less than two days in one email.
 
Feeling rather worn out I sat on the sofa and spent time watching episodes of “Four In a Bed” in the hope that the contestants would get nasty with each other. In the first place visited some bloke (who acted like a precious princess) pretended there were jizz stains in his bed and insisted that the sheets be changed. Sadly in his establishment there really were turd stains on the bog brush and matted hair in the plug hole. The losers were rather disappointed to lose but didn’t seem to realise that a cabin in a houseboat couldn’t command three times the price of a proper bedroom in a proper house, and the winners squeaked through by not rattling anyone’s cages.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up a very good curry which we washed down with a bottle of Liebfraumilch whilst watching the last episode of “The Traitors USwhich to my annoyance was won by the very first contestant to whom I’d taken an instant dislike.
This was followed by some program in which the contestants of that show all came back together to talk about how the show went. There wasn’t one woman who hadn’t had her face surgically re-built and her tits pumped up like barrage balloons. I can’t help but wonder why they had all spent so much money to look so odd.
 
For a rostered day off I’ve been rather busy. And just as I was about to post today’s diary entry the geo-feds published my geo-litter-pick. Result!!

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