1 January 2025 (Wednesday) - Wet New Year

When I went to bed last night I’d left the landing light on in case littlun got up in the night. This morning I rolled over and saw the light was off. Panic immediately set in. “er indoors TM had clearly got up in the night and turned it off. The bedside clock and my CPAP machine were both going, but I keep fretting about the leccie and after that shock I wasn’t going to get back to sleep. I got up. So did Morgan. He’d spent the night with me but on seeing I was going downstairs he went upstairs to join everyone else in the attic room.
It was only a shame I’d not woken in panic a couple of hours earlier ten I could have driven out to Ramsgate for the sunrise geocaching meet. We’d decided against going to this one as getting to Ramsgate for half past seven on New Year’s Day would have been a tad keen, but if I’ been up in time…
Back in the day there was always a geocaching event on New Year’s Day. I organised two of them myself. One in 2016 when thirty-six people and four dogs went for a walk round Great Chart, and another in 2022 when thirty people (and a few dogs) went over to Frogs Island to play Wherigo. Sadly other than a lady from New Zealand staging a meet outside her hotel just before her brekkie, no one organised anything for this year. Several people had asked it there was anything on the cards; no one had offered to do anything though…
 
As I made toast I peered into the internet. It might be a new year, but some things never change. I’ve taken to following a Facebook group all about people taking early retirement and sharing their experiences. It makes for interesting reading if nothing else. One chap in his early forties had saved up half a million quid and wondered if that was enough to retire on. How can you have saved up half a million quid by your early forties? And other people were asking where the best place to retire to would be? Several people on this group (and a few I know personally) have left everyone they know and moved hundreds (if not thousands) of miles away to lead their dream retirements. I suppose if your dream retirement is a lonely one then this is the way to go?
And my Facebook feed featured seemingly endless adverts for on-line dog training classes and chess-related groups.
 
I put washing in to scrub. I sorted the undercrackers I’d washed last night. I braved the elements and harvested the dog dung from the garden. Our plan for today had been a gentle walk before taking littlun home, but the wind and the rain weren’t good and were forecast to get worse by mid-day. So I spent a little while looking at the geo-map searching out a relatively easy geo-find that we might pick up on the way home from having dropped littlun off.
 
After slightly more than four hours “er indoors TM and Darcie WaaWaa TM got up. Littlun was in something of a bossy mood; poor grandad wasn’t allowed to play with the cars or the Lego. She then got the hump that the dogs wanted to eat her breakfast, and got even more stressy when she threw it at them and they ate it.
After a little while we persuaded her to allow Nanny to get dressed, and it was time to take her home… once we’d persuaded her that I was allowed to come along. We drove down to Folkestone where “Daddies’ Little Angel TM and Pogo were pleased to have littlun back.
I’d planned a few possible geo-targets for our way home. Logging a geocache find today would give us a souvenir. Fortunately we found the first one and didn’t need to go on to any of the backups; the forecast wind and rain were getting worse.
 
We came home and settled ourselves in front of the telly where I slept through a re-run of the new Wallce and Gromit film, and then slept through Mary Poppins. Having been wide awake far too early this morning I slept through what I wanted to watch on the telly.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up a very good curry which we washed down with a rather good bottle of plonk whilst watching the second part of the Christmas episode of “Lego Masters: Australia”.
According to the Internet the Northern Lights are visible tonight. Such a shame it is still hossing down.

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