9 October 2026 (Friday) - Staple

I had a restless night. I had my usual peer in to Facebook as I scoffed brekkie. Over the last few days I’m getting a lot of cartoons lambasting bad management techniques. This morning I saw one whinging about how some companies want to contact their employees at any time (day or night). It made me think… that’s how I’ve operated for the last forty years. That’s how hospitals work. What are you supposed to do if half-way through Saturday, the Sunday early shift gets mowed down by a bus?

I didn’t comment though. Life is too short.

And the Prime Minister had posted about how he was going to recognise health care workers after he’d seen first-hand how they looked after his father. I wonder what he means by “recognise”; I hope it’s not that insulting standing on the doorstep and clapping bollox we had during lockdown. I really did take some of that clapping and tried to use it to pay for my shopping. Would you believe that Sainsbury’s didn’t accept a clap as a payment? If the Prime Minister wants to “recognise” me he can do so with a hefty pay rise. I've been in healthcare for forty-five years. It took me six years to get professional qualifications, one mistake would see me out on my ear (and did), and someone I know earns more than I do by driving a fork-lift truck round. My boss's boss's boss earns less than a train driver... This isn't news

And there was a photo featuring a horse from a TV show from fifty-odd years ago. Was it “Black Beauty” or “Follyfoot”? Oh, the arguments that were going on…

 

I Munzed and Wordled. Starting with “royal” wasn’t a bad move, but “arose” took me no further. “Baron” was a step in the right direction, and I got it with “major” on the fourth go. We then cracked on with the business of the day. This weekend is international EarthCache Day(s), and again my closest unfound EarthCache was in Staple.

Pausing only briefly to pump up the tyres of the “er indoors ^TM”-mobile we were soon on our way. We got to the church, answered a few questions about the building, then went on a little walk. As always our route was laid out by geocaches. We found the first two, but the third gave us grief. To find it we had to solve a puzzle, but there was no checker. We came to somewhere which looked like the sort of place where you might stuff a film pot under a rock, but the hint mentioned a three trunked tree. The only three trunked tree we could see was fifty yards off of where we thought we were supposed to be. We gave up after ten minutes which was probably for the best. (I later established that we were in the wrong place; the right place being three quarter of a mile from where we were, and about a hundred yards from where we walked past later).

We went back to the car.. but via a circular(ish) route which took us past the Black Pig. The dogs could do with a drink, so we popped in for a bowl of water, a pint, some pork scratchings and a plate of cheesy chips, Very nice.

And the car was only half a mile down the road.

 

We came home to find the new Viz had arrived. I shall read that over the course of several “downloads” over the next couple of weeks. We did “FEED THE FISH”, we had a cuppa, and I had a message. I had an email with my shifts up until February. I made a note of them, and immediately started trying to swap some.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner. As we scoffed we watched more “Lego Masters” in which one half of the Canadian team really needs to put her chest away, and then we watched this evening’s episode of “The Traitors”. Some people are rather disparaging about the show; the trouble with it is that to play it properly you have to be quite clever. And most of the contestants are rather thick, but not thick enough to realise that to play it properly you have to be quite clever and so anyone who isn’t a doombrain gets the heave-ho fairly early on. 

8 October 2026 (Thursday) - Scaffolding's Up

My piss boiled as I peered into the Internet this morning. The leader of the Conservatives had the gall to be finding fault with the state of the nation. She talked a good fight and completely overlooked that the country’s woefully undersized army and police force, complete lack of space in the prisons, the rise of five million on the NHS waiting list and increasing the national debt from seventy per cent of GDP (which it was in 2010) to pretty much one hundred per cent (which it was when her lot were comprehensively thrown out at the last election) was all down to the previous government. And then she had the gall to say what a success privatising all the nation’s infrastructure had been. And if anyone thinks it was a success, maybe they could explain the endless drought orders and why we can pump gas across the country but not water. I’m not saying the current lot are perfect, but the Conservatives have had their chance and been found wanting.

I also saw that you can now find the price of petrol in various filling stations from the Google app, and can you believe it is six years since Argos last printed a physical catalogue?

And I had a message from the NHS app telling me what they’d told me in a letter yesterday.

I Munzed – our Munzee Guild had reached the first of our monthly targets. I Wordled from “guild” (which gave me nothing at all) and I eventually got it on the last attempt with “strew”.

 

There was a knock on the door – the roofer was putting the scaffolding up. That woke the dogs. We left them putting scaffolding up and set off to Kings Wood. It was a shame that Morgan had to be an idiot around one of the dogs we saw. Mostly he is fine, but sometimes he is just stupid.

As we walked we found ourselves behind a couple of women walking along chatting. I say “chatting”; “bellowing at each other” might be a better description. I could hear them from two hundred yards away. But they eventually went off in another direction and left us to enjoy the peace and quiet. We saw a deer as we went, but (as they so often are) it was too quick for me to get the camera focussed in.

We met one of the normal people who had a rather posh camera and proudly announced that he was photographing mushrooms.

We had a (mostly) good walk. A shame the same couldn’t be said about the drive there and back. I hadn’t realised that today was “drive like a dildo” day. As we drove out of the end of our road so I slammed on the brakes to avoid a mobility scooter the driver of which had randomly decided to veer in front of our car with no warning whatsoever.  And on the way home I had to do another emergency stop to avoid a taxi who just stopped dead for absolutely no reason. Add to that the arrogance in the traffic in the filtering by the new McDonalds…

 

We came home via Sainsburys where we got Belgian buns for lunch, and I had a stroke of absolute genius. I’ve got a geocaching adventure lab credit and no idea what to do with it. Saturday is the monthly county geocaching meting – I could put out an ad-lab at the pub based on previous monthly meets. So I set about downloading the web pages of the previous one hundred and eighty-two meets. Doing so wasn’t as easy as it might sound. It took over an hour to get what I wanted, and when I finally had it I had a problem. The idea of an ad-lab is a bit of a quiz… and I had no idea what questions I might ask.

So I took a deep breath and (would you believe it) had another stroke of absolute genius. I just devised a generic geocaching quiz with a few silly pictures and jokes. Hopefully it will make the punters smile.

 

We did “FEED THE FISH”, or that is me, Treacle and Bailey did. For all that Morgan is the greediest dog, he’s not at all interested in the dried rice that the fish have.

 

“er indoors ^TM” had been house-sitting recently. She took the keys back and then we settled down to watch “Celebrity Traitors”, and met with disaster. The scaffolding was blocking the satellite signal.

I-player to the rescue…

7 October 2026 (Wednesday) - Rainy Day

 I slept through till eight o’clock this morning. I got up, made toast and had my usual rummage round the Internet as I do. It was still there with its usual brand of nonsense. Someone on a local Facebook page was asking for recommendations for good psychics and mediums… I found myself thinking back to the days when I used to (try to) sell paintings at psychic fairs in South Willesborough. Several of the so-called psychics would get their friends to come along and form a queue to give the impression that they were good at psychic-ing. These people queuing would loudly big-up the ones they were queuing for and would be loudly disparaging about the others. There was some weirdo at those psychic fairs who would wave an eagle’s wing at ill people (presumably in competition with the NHS), and there was some other chap who would use flash photography to take photos of people sitting in front of an iridescent background, and would then (for twenty quid!) explain what the pictures he took meant. The whole thing was one big scam, but the punters loved it – they must have; they kept handing over their money.

I thought better about commented on Facebook though.

The minor hiccup on the Dog Club’s WhatsApp group seems to have resolved itself. There’s a new caretaker at the Repton centre who’s got into conversation with someone who doesn’t actually come to Dog Club who apparently told him that we’d volunteer to do all sorts of groundwork and maintenance for them. Whilst I’m happy to help where I can, it’s up to the people at the Repton centre to organise stuff, not us. And if their committee isn’t as active as the new caretaker would like (which I suspect might be the case) then he needs to sort them out, not try to sideline them. I’m taking the line that I estimate the Dog Club already pays over a hundred quid a month to use the field; what more do they want? I think I’ve turned people to my point of view.

I’ve got no reply from Tredington about the ichthyosaur fossil EarthCache. How long do I give a vicar to reply to an email about a dinosaur?

I Munzed, Wordled from “vicar” to “prove” in four goes. Having the “v” on the first go was a result.

 

We took the dogs out. With rain forecast we went to Orlestone for a shorter walk. We got there, barked at the other dog in the car park, then had a rather good walk round the woods. No one rolled in anything, no one waded in any swamps, it was a good walk.

We came home via the co-op where we got pastries for lunch.

I then went into the garden. I got the long-handled lopper out and thought I’d see if I could get to some of the higher branches of the stuff coming over the fence from not-so-nice-next-door. I managed to lop off quite a bit. The bushes now look like I’ve been pruning way over the boundary line because now I’ve removed all the weight on our side they are somewhat unbalanced. When I got to the point that the garden waste bin was full I thought it was time to stop. My plan was to fill that bin as it (hopefully) gets emptied tomorrow. And the rain had started anyway.

 

I came in and realised that the washing which was supposed to scrub whilst I did gardening hadn’t finished scrubbing. Because it hadn’t started scrubbing; I’d forgotten to put it on. Ho hum…

I put that on to scrub, and had a look at the fish tank filter. It is supposed to aerate as well as filter, but no bubbles were blowing out. I fiddled about with the filter – there’s bubbles now.

I cracked on with the ironing whilst watching an episode of “Lost in Space” when I got a message. Nice-next-door is having her roof fixed as there were serious issues around her chimney. The roofer had seen something that looked iffy on our roof over the weekend, and we’d sent a few messages (and photos and videos of the roof) to and fro, and this afternoon he sent me a quote for him to deal with the problem. Oh well… what is money for if not to squander on fixing the roof before it is too late.

I’m a great believer in getting in a professional to sort things about the house. Having tried to bodge repairs myself in the past I then paid cheap and got what I paid for. I’ve learned that it is better to shell out on someone who knows what they are doing.

In the first instance this chap knows where to get scaffolding from, and that’s more than I do.

 

Despite the rain we did “FEED THE FISH” …. Well, me and Treacle did. The smaller two dogs weren’t going out in the rain. They ain’t daft.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up fish and chips which we scoffed whilst watching this week’s episode of “Bake Off”. It was rather good.

6 October 2026 (Tuesday) - Charing

I’ve had a really good weekend away, but you can’t beat your own bed. I slept through till half hast eight this morning. I slipped straight back into old habits and did my usual thing of making peanut butter with marmalade on toast (and a cup of coffee) and had my usual look at the internet. Nothing had changed whilst I was away. Yet again religious nutjobs were offering absolutely anything they didn’t understand as conclusive proof of their particular brand of superstition. Yet again people were quarrelling about Lego, fish tanks, dogs, garden ponds, bands from the seventies…

I Munzed, Wordled from “habit” to “dimly” in five goes… and then the dogs came down. Dog tiddling is much easier when I can just open the back door and let them see to themselves rather than having to lead them up and take them to a park up the road.

And then I had a flashback. Gold Radio was playing “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” and I remembered my old mucker Dougal back from the seventies who really was a dedicated follower of fashion. He always had to have the right clothes and the right haircut, and would run and hide if he thought anyone he knew would see him looking anything less than his utter best.

 

I sent an email to the vicar of the church in Tredington. On Sunday we saw an ichthyosaur in the porch of the church there. That would make a good subject for an EarthCache but having wasted a *lot* of time on this sort of thing at Camber Castle in the past, I thought I’d try to get permission before I did anything else. If I’m going to fall at the first hurdle I’d rather not waste too much effort.

 

We took the dogs out. We each only needed one more Treasure to complete the latest set of Geocaching Treasures, and the closest place to do that was the geocache at the church at Charing Heath, so off we went. Finding it involved going round the church to find different bits of information. This would give us numbers with which we would do some sums and get the co-ordinated of where we needed to rummage to find the cache.

We went round the church getting all the numbers. Then we tried again until we both had numbers which agreed. I did the sums and got a location about a mile or so away which seemed to be randomly in the middle of some obscure field. So we scratched our heads, agreed there could be some ambiguity in one of the numbers and came up with a location which was only a short walk away.

We walked that short walk and came to a telegraph post. Geocaches are often at the bottom of telegraph posts, but we spent about twenty minutes rummaging round before finally giving up, sulking and getting on with our day.

 

We then went up to Longbeech Woods to walk the dogs. Again we found an empty car park. Very few people go to Longbeech Woods. We had a good walk, but a short one. “er indoors ^TM” had a new set of boots to break in. It was a shame that Treacle rolled in muck, but usually one of them rolls in something.

As we walked I thought about the geocache we didn’t find, and I had a stroke of absolute genius. Why didn’t I re-check my calculations? It was at this point that I realized that the number over which we felt there might be some ambiguity actually appeared more than once in the formula.

Whoops…

I did the sums again and with our walk walked we went back… I say “back”, “we tried another location that wasn’t at the base of a telegraph pole” would be a more precise description. Would you believe it – the geocache was there. It was a rather cute model church.

 

We came home via the co-op where we got celebratory Belgian buns. And once we’d scoffed them I cracked on in the garden. The lawn needed mowing and the pond filters needed de-gunging. I then got the ladder out and trimmed back some of the trees overhanging from not-so-nice-next-door. Back in the day before the husband completely vanished I once asked them how far across out garden they thought it was acceptable for their trees and roses to hang. He seriously felt there was nothing wrong with them reaching half- way across our garden, and told me (several times) that one day I would be grateful for that.

Today I got their trees stuff cut back up to level with the boundary about twelve feet up. I can’t get much higher than that. If any of my loyal readers have a hedge trimmer on an extendable pole…

And then suddenly it was half past four. Where had the day gone?

 

I Meowdoku-ed for a bit, and “er indoors ^TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching last Friday’s “The Traitors”. It was rather good. 

5 October 2026 (Monday) - Cobham... And Home

I slept reasonably well… apart from a nightmare in which I was having a rather bitter argument about fish tank husbandry with some of the people with whom I went to Boys Brigade fifty years ago.

I woke shortly after seven o’clock and made toast as quietly as I could. Effectively only having one room made it difficult for the early riser (me) not to wake those who like a lie-in (“er indoors ^TM” and the dogs)

 

Whilst “er indoors ^TM” had a shower I took the dogs over the road to the park to do what dogs do. Our accommodation had been billed as having a garden in which presumably dogs could do things, but there was no garden… just a manky courtyard. But the park was close and pretty. The dogs did what was expected of them. It was a shame that Morgan did his over Treacle, but that’s dogs for you.

As I waited for them to rake out so a rather foxy young lady asked if she could take photos of the dogs. She seemed enthralled with them. They seemed utterly disinterested in her.

 

We went back to base, and it wasn’t then long before we were all packed. Now we were leaving I’d rather taken to where we were staying. Once we’d turned the heating down and realised that one of the kitchen worktops was on wheels (and so could be used as a table) the place was perfectly serviceable… but for two main drawbacks. The doors were heavy and would slam closed, and if a dog got caught it would have done serious damage. And the pub next door did attract the element that likes shouting profanities as loud as it can as late as it can.

But on reflection I’d probably stay there again when we next visit Cheltenham. Which we will.

 

We set the sat-nav for Cobham, and off we went. But not the motorway services at Cobham; the village. We’d seen there were a couple of adventure lab series there, and they made for a good half-hour’s walk. And (just like the ones in Cheltenham) they took us to the sort of places that aren’t mentioned in the tourist’s guide books. We saw dragons and tigers on shop roofs, a skate park that only the locals would know, a seven hundred year old cottage…

And we found The Bear where we had a very good bit of dinner. The idea was to have a light snack. Just a sandwich… the steak sandwich was huge. The beer was good. The chap behind the bar was very helpful and friendly. If every anyone wants to break up a long journey, rather than Cobham motorway services, why not try this pub instead?

 

We came home. It wasn’t long before we were unpacked. I then did all the geo-admin for the weekend’s adventure. Geocaching-wise we had quite a productive time logging finds on:

 

40 Ad-lab

4 Traditional

3 Puzzle

3 Multi

3 Earthcache

1 Wherigo

1 Virtual

 

but none were “yet another film pot under a rock”. Each one took us to somewhere unusual and interesting and quirky. A huge redwood tree, a dragon on a roof, an Italian fountain in the most obscure location, two war memorials… and we got three pirate Treasures too.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up pizza and chips, and went bowling. I hung out the first load of washing and put the undercrackers in to scrub, then watched another episode of “Lost in Space”.

I’m feeling exhausted… it’s been a busy few days.

4 October 2026 (Sunday) - Forty Years Later... In Tewksbury

The drunken shrieking from the pub next door eventually fizzled out around half past midnight. I slept a bit better last night, but Bailey had a nightmare which woke me earlier than it might have done.

I made toast… the toaster in our accommodation has two settings; “Mildly take the chill of the bread” and “INCINERATE”. The trick is to go for the most vigorous setting, watch the thing like a hawk, and pull the plug at the vital moment.

Next time I might just bring my own toaster. I know where I am with that one.

 

As I scoffed toast I tried to peruse the geo-map. I started with Tewksbury,,, and tried a few nearby villages. Everything I tried gave me the American version. You’d think it would give me options.

 

We got ourselves and the dogs together and drove off to find Irene. We all then drove out to Tewksbury where we had a rather good day. Irene had found a guided walk round the battlefield of the Battle of Tewksbury (no – I’d not heard of it either). We started with a very chilly and very foggy morning, but the fog soon lifted and the sun came out. We found our tour guide, and about thirty of us went on a two mile walk. The leader was not only very knowledgeable about the history of the area, but he was also enthusiastic and brought it all to life too. And as an added bonus the dogs behaved themselves too.

With walk walked we then took a little walk through Tewksbury. Irene knew quite a bit about the area, and knew the best pub too. We made our way to the Black Bear where we sat in the garden on the banks of the river Avon and washed down a few plates of roast beef with some rather good ales.

From there we drove to nearby Tredington where there is the fossil of an ichthyosaur in the porch of the church.

 

We came back to Chelmsford where we said our goodbyes. We’d not seen Irene for ages. It was good to catch up and we will do so again soon.

We came back to base and had a cuppa, then had a little wander up the road. We had a vague idea to go to The Swan for pudding. Instead we went to Sainsburys and got pizza and pudding and beer and took it all back to our room.

We had a rather good evening scoffing and playing on the Infinity Table. Being a Sunday there was no drunken shrieking coming from next door…

 

I took a few photos today… As ruby wedding anniversaries go it wasn’t too shabby.

 

3 October 2026 (Saturday) - Exploring Cheltenham

I stayed in bed as long as I could this morning; the sound of Treacle whimpering eventually prompted me to get up. That took some doing: the bed is very low.

I had a shave once the water had run long enough for the warm stuff to come through, and then I used my lap-top to tune in to Radio Ashford. Steve’s “Guess the Lyrics” competition today was “And I’ll have all the love I need to keep me satisfied”. I had no idea either. It was “Can’t Get By Without You” by the Real Thing.

I had a go at Munzing; there’s not many locally. I Wordled. Starting with “hovel” I got to “peeve” in four goes.

I Meowdoku-ed, and after an hour’s listening to everyone else snoring I put the kettle on.

Steve then did the Mystery Year on the radio – Mambo Number 5? – I knew that one. 1999.

 

We brekkied, then got ready for the off. The plan was to walk though Cheltenham looking for Earthcaches and geocaches as we went going as far as Irene’s flat, and then to come back doing the ad-lab caches. And that’s what we did. We started off with a geology lesson at Cheltenham Minster where we met one of the normal people. He came over and without so much as a “by your leave” made an epic fuss of the dogs… then had the right hump when they started jumping up at them. And then he flipped Bailey over to see if she was a boy or girl.

Why is it that no one else meets this sort of idiot?

 

We then carried on past all sorts of statues and memorials and went through several rather pretty parks. At our furthest point we turned from “geo-mode” to “ad-lab mode” and had an equally good wander back. On the way we stopped off at Harry Cook’s Free House where we had a rather good bit of dinner, and once we’d done the last ad-lab we found ourselves opposite the Swan where we’d been yesterday so we had a crafty pint of mild.

 

We came back to base. We recharged our phones, and had a cuppa and a cake. I sent the Earthcache answers to those who pass judgement on that sort of thing, and we went for another walk. We went up to the park just up the road and followed another ad-lab series, We found a rather pretty pond, and a boules court, and on the way back to base found a rather impressive redwood tree.

As I waited with the dogs outside Sainsburys for “er indoors ^TM” to get some shopping, a passing normal person remarked on how well the dogs were behaving and asked what the trick was to have them sitting so nicely. The obvious answer was to walk them for eight and a half miles, but saying so would have appeared sarcastic so I just smiled sweetly.

 

We came back to base where the dogs had their dinner and we had ours. We got a take-out from the German Kebab Shop. It was rather good… even if you only got half the amount that you get from the kebab shop at home.

As we scoffed so the dogs snored; they’d been worn out by their super-walk today. And as we scoffed we played a few rounds of “Ticket to Ride” on the Infinity Table. We had a few beers, and cracked open a bottle of cherry liqueur which had been in the cupboard at home for years. It was dreadful…

 

I took several photos today…

 

And in closing, yesterday I was rather critical about the place we are staying in. It’s probably not *that* bad… but it is certainly leaves room for improvement.

There’s a hallway, a bathroom and a bedroom with a kitchen in an alcove. It’s poky; certainly not big enough for all of us

There’s no light switch for the hallway. The light comes on automatically when you go into it from the front door or the bedroom, but not from the bathroom.

There’s a decent sized telly, but what’s the point of having a wall mounted telly of the only seat is underneath the telly.

The kitchen is… there’s three tea-spoons. There’s complimentary coffee pods, but nowhere to put the machine into which they go (which is stored in a cupboard).

Billed as “dog friendly” the doors are far too heavy and would kill any one of our three if one closed on them, and they slam with the slightest provocation.

It’s not unlike the bedsits that were popular forty years ago, but with two of us and three dogs, space is at a premium.

On reflection we decided that moving just for one day is too much arse ache. I shall just content myself with giving the place a one-star review on every review site there is…

It really isn’t helped by the noise of the “council element” in the pub next door…