23 August 2025 (Saturday) - Late Shift

Finding myself wide awake far too early I got up and watched an episode of “Black Mirror” in the small hours. Imagine a world in which you had an implant which recorded all your memories and could cast them to a TV screen to watch with your mates later. The episode featured Jodie Whittaker who was rather good in the show, and not just annoying as she was in “Doctor Who”.
In the past I always used to get back to sleep after getting up and watching telly in the night, but sadly that didn’t happen this morning. I lay awake for another two hours before giving up and getting up.
 
I made toast and had a look at the Internet. It was still there. It usually is. Social media was dull but I had a couple of emails from geocaching dot com. The Wherigo I created on Thursday had gone live. And some people had stayed in a nearby travel lodge and been round Kings Wood finding the geocaches I’d hidden up there. Sadly they’d had issues with one and had said “The cache, cammo and tree was swarming with ants. I had to use a stick to retrieve the cache and then knock the ants off the cache to retrieve the log. Noting the quantity of anthills in the forest I have moved the cache for the next finder and left the hint in our log. Cache is currently behind a silver birch tree which is behind the original host tree, under log cammo”. There’s no denying that they meant well, but the law says it’s up to me to move the thing. Bearing in mind the entire wood is swarming with ants at the moment I’d be intrigued to see where they’ve put it. I’ll find out on our next dog walk.
I Munzed, and got Wordle (union) on the fourth attempt. I forgot to Wordle yesterday.
 
As we drove to Dog Club so Steve was on the radio doing the “Guess the Lyrics” competition: “You make me acknowledge the devil in me”. No? - Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You. OK – it was over thirty years ago.
Dog Club was fun. Attendance was down again, but fourteen dogs ran riot including two newcomers who got on famously. As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year competition on the radio. “It’s a Hard Life” by Queen? 1984. The same year as Edwyn Collins. I wonder if that was deliberate?
 
I set off to work. The "Operation Brock" stupidity had gone which made the motorway easier. I took a little diversion to pop into the Notcutts garden centre. 
Notcutts was heaving with people... the place seems to attract incredibly fat people (all wearing silly football costumes) who are totally oblivious to the fact there's anyone else on the planet, let alone anywhere near them.  They were waddling in each other's way (and mine), randomly stopping every few paces, and being incredibly surprised when another couldn't stop in time and then bounced off of them. Several times.
I wanted to have a look at the rucksacks in their branch of Cotswolds. They had a nice one... for two hundred quid. But (in all honesty) it wasn't as nice as the nice one I saw on eBay last night for seventeen quid. Mind you those silly football costumes worn by the fat people aren't cheap. Cotswold and Notcutts clearly seem to know their target audience.  
 
I got to work  and sulked. The original plan for today had me working the early shift at Tunbridge Wells. I managed to swap the early so I could do Dog Club, but that still left me with the late shift.  Being at work this afternoon meant that I missed the monthly geo-meet which was being staged at a micro-pub (with a particularly good beer selection) which was only a hundred yards from an ice-cream parlour. Oh well… by not going I probably saved about thirty quid. If nothing else that will pay for my new rucksack.
 
And there was cake at work… four hundred calories of cake…

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