I had a restless night, waking shortly after one
o’clock and seeing every fifteen minutes for the rest of the night. I gave up
trying to sleep and got up far too early. I made toast, but I didn’t fancy
watching the telly, and with nothing much happening on-line I thought I might
have a little geo-adventure before work.
I got dressed, and set about the ice on the car with
the new ice scraper, then drove off through the dark to Maidstone. As always
the lorries on the motorway were a nightmare; they either don’t see the cars
that they nearly run off the road, or they don’t care. It really could be
either option.
As I drove the pundits on the radio were all getting
rather over-excited about the allegations that Chinese spies are chumming up with MPs and their lackies
(via LinkedIn). Is this really a threat to national security? Surely MPs
and their lackeys aren’t stupid enough to pass state secrets to any old person
who sent them a friend request on LinkedIn, are they? I’m rather amazed that
the Chinese embassy has taken offense at this; to my simple mind the whole
thing reminds me of Wun Tun and Too Tun the Chinese Spies
from “The Dandy” from fifty years ago.
And there was talk of George
Osbourne. Once Chancellor of the Exchequer, he’s currently
being billed as a serious candidate to be head honcho at HSBC, or el supremo at
the BBC, or the next British ambassador to the USA. Personally I would have
thought that each job would have had very different requirements, but what do I
know?
I got to South Maidstone where I had my eye on two
geocaches. The first one was a multi-cache. I had to go to a bench on a street
on which there was a key safe containing information about where the final
geocache was hidden. It turned out that the thing was hidden in the nearby
library which didn’t open for another couple of hours. Ho hum…
I went for a short drive and found the final part of a
puzzle geocache which I’d solved months ago, then went in to work where I had a
rather good day.
Being on an early shift meant I got out before it got
too dark. Bearing in mind how busy the way home from work was last night I
wondered about taking a different route home past that library before it
closed.
What a silly idea…
If took nearly forty minutes to drive across Maidstone,
and when I got to the library I very nearly turned round there and then. The
place was in a rather run-down precinct where various teenaged scratters were
trying to pull wheelies trying to impress any passer-by who might be
feeble-minded enough to be impressed by a scratter who can’t quite stay on a
pedal bike.
Armed with the information I needed to find the
geocache I went into the library. I asked for the book I needed and said it was
for the geocache. The nice lady smiled and said that she was under orders not
to help anyone looking for it… Fair enough. After fifteen minutes searching I
gave up. The nice lady said there were two copies of the book I was looking
for… she went to the shelf and also found there weren’t any. Having fallen at
the first three hurdles I was all set to give up and go home, but the nice lady
said that*if* I’d found the book (that wasn’t there) there was a
note inside which would tell me to randomly hunt round the library looking for
a locked box. And seeing that I’d clearly lost all interest in the silly idea
the nice lady showed me the box.
It was sealed with a padlock… but nil desperandum…
in the information I’d found earlier was the combination to the padlock. It was
strangely apt that the combination didn’t open the padlock.
Having wasted forty more minutes I thanked the nice
lady for her time and help and set off home-wards.
Getting home took some doing; the roads were rather
busy. We had a very good bit of scoff whilst watching Sandi Toksvig getting all
archaeological at Hadrian’s wall. I’ve never been there… that might be a road
trip. Two days going up, a day there, two days coming back again… I might just
start planning.
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