Yesterday evening we had a dodgy five minutes when the
Internet died. The same happened again as I scoffed my toast this morning which
was a bit of a worry.
When it came back I saw there was a new series of geocaches
near Tenterden – going right past the brewery that let us down a couple of
months ago. I wasted no time in reminding people about that. Interestingly the
new geocaches were hidden by people who’ve found fourteen thousand of the
things but never been to a local meet-up. I must invite them personally to the
midsummer event.
Not much else would seem to have happened overnight. I
Munzed, Wordled from “broke” through “spend” and “cheat”
and “fleet” to get it on the fifth go with “tweet”.
I took the dogs up to Kings Wood. As we drove there
was a total half-wit being interviewed on the radio. I wish I knew who that
person was; they were clearly someone in some position of authority to be on
national radio at peak time. They were ranting that in China “they” have
two weeks’ worth of food in reserve whereas in the UK the reserve is whatever
is in the supermarkets right now. However when challenged about exactly who it
was that holds two weeks’ worth of food in reserve, the chap got rather
twitchy. Clearly in China “they” is the communist Chinese government.
However the UK government doesn’t get involved in the trivia of what the free
market is doing, let alone hold billions of pounds worth of food. Listening to
the idiot showing his utter ignorance of basic international political theory
was rather embarrassing.
We got to the woods and had a good walk. Shortly after
we started Morgan was nearly run over by a jogger who wasn’t looking where he
was going. Being rather shocked, Morgan barked and then growled a bit. In
retrospect I probably didn't help by patiently explaining that Morgan
is a small dachshund and not a ravenous sabretooth tiger, and it was rather
embarrassing meeting the chap again two miles later.
At the three mile point we met a woman with two large dogs.
I felt sorry for the dogs; each had a huge cow bell tied to their collars, and
if either dog got more than a couple of yards from her she went hysterical. And
she went absolutely bat-shit when her dogs tried to join in with our group.
They seemed nice dogs, they got on fine with my three and would have been
welcome to walk with us, but the odd woman wasn’t having it.
We met some chap who was walking with those silly Nordic
poles; he really did look like he’d lost his skis.
We got back to the car park to find it was heaving.
Several people were standing at the start of the wooded area looking at the
bluebells. Two old dears got chatting with us. I pointed out the far end of the
field and said that the bluebells fizzled out there, but they were really
pretty some two miles into the woods. The old dears (and the others
listening to our conversation) looked at the far end of the field in much
the same way that I might stand at the base of Mount Everest and look at the
peak. It would seem that when people go to Kings Wood to see the bluebells, a *lot*
don’t go much further than the car park.
We came home.
The dogs went straight to their water bowl. I must take water for them next
time we go there. I put a load of washing in to scrub, made us both a cuppa
then had a look in the garden. A couple of days ago we’d seen a rat going into
the garden storage box. I had a look inside; there were no rat turds or any
evidence of rat. Now that I’ve dinged out a load of tat, we can close the box.
A simple thing, but one which should keep the rat out. I spotted a likely hole
in the fence from not-so-nice-next-door where the rat probably came
through, so I bunged it up. It needed bunging; with a little effort Bailey
could have forced herself through the hole and I *really* don’t want
that. The obvious answer would be to replace the fence. I’ve offered to pay for
that, but not-so-nice-next-door just started shrieking. Perhaps I’m
being racist but she seems to take offence at the slightest provocation.
I had a little pootle round the garden, topped up the
bird feeder, hung out the washing and cracked on with the ironing, giving the
new ironing board its first session. As ironing boards go it did the trick.
As I ironed I watched a couple of episodes of “The
Man In The High Castle”… I suspect that some of the names and places would
mean more if I were more up on mid-twentieth century history. Again I found
myself wondering if I did the right thing by dropping history in my fourth year
at secondary school… but the history teacher we had wasn’t the best… I hesitate
to say that he was crap, but there must be better ways to teach history than by
over the course of the year reading out the entire history text book and having
the class write down what you are reading out.
And with telly watched I stood up. Treacle jumped up
and looked at me expectantly. We have this little ritual… she knows what is
coming. She knows it is time to throw handfuls of fish food into the pond. But
she stands and waits, quivering with excitement, for me to say that I’m going
to “FEED THE FISH” at which point she charges down the garden in
excitement. She won’t go until I make the announcement.
I ran the hair trimmers over my head… and again
realised that I’ve turned into my grandfather. Before he won a fortune on the
football pools (it’s all gone now) he used to live two doors down the
road from us. I can remember going to visit so many times only to be told that
grandad had popped to the barbers. I always wondered why; he too was as bald as
a coot. He used to go to the barbers at least once a week… which is about the
rate at which I run the hair trimmers over my head.
I then started writing a new Wherigo. The other day
Chris gave me a rather good 3-D printed pressie which would make a very good
themed geocache. While we were out earlier I found somewhere to hide it. So all
that remains is to write the Wherigo… this one will feature my latest
anti-cheating software in the cartridge, so those that go cheating (one day
I will publish a list of them!) will have to do the thing properly.
Over dinner we sparked up the Disney app (we get it
free with our Sky subscription now) and started re-watching “The Orville”.
When the third season came out it moved to the Disney channel, but that was so
long ago we’d forgotten all that had happened so we started again.
It’s rather good, but just a shame that every time the
captain speaks we hear the dog from “Family Guy”.
Today was a day off. I’ve not really stopped, and I’ve
walked three times yesterday’s step count…
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