24 November 2012 (Saturday) - Tuned In


 ‘er indoors TM set off to the convention of candle floggers at silly am this morning leaving me home alone with furry face. We both had a quick spot of brekkie, and then I took him for a walk before the rain was forecast to arrive. Up to the Bowens Field wetland where I amazed myself by having a bit of a jog. I ran for several hundred yards. Little Fudge seemed to like having me running, and rather than doing his own thing off the lead, he kept pace with me. He could have kept going for miles. I couldn't. I had to stop, but when I did I had covered a far greater distance that I thought I could have done. We walked round to Viccy Park, down Jemmett Road and across the Co-op field where I let him off the lead again and we both had another little run.

Am I being overly ambitious in wondering if I might take up running?
Whilst we were out I couldn't help but notice the amount of houses with Kleeneze catalogues on the doorsteps. I found that rather depressing. There's far too much competition locally to really make a go of flogging that stuff.

Home, where I did the monthly accounts. They weren't as bad as I was expecting; they weren't as good as I was hoping. There's no denying that I don't like this new order of austerity. I need to find something which will bring in more cash. Not lots; just some. More cash from little effort would be good. But more cash. If anyone wants any little jobs doing, I'm your man. I will do absolutely anything for hard cash(!)
Not that I'm bankrupt - far from it. It's just that when you are used to being able to afford to spend every Saturday afternoon in the pub, it's a bit of a pain when you can't any more. Having said that, you can get too much time in the pub. I prefer looking forward to being under thirteen stone than looking forward to being over nineteen stone.

Chippy called round with a barrel. I’d been waiting for that. I got the bucket of beer for that barrel up and onto a table, and left it to settle for a few hours. Whilst I was waiting for the beer to settle, Lisa called round, and we set off for the business of the day. There’s a local geocache called “Tuned In” which I’ve had my eye on for a while. This one isn’t like your average cache – having found the first part, it then leads you on to four other stages. Each part needs you to solve a music-related puzzle. Having done most of the other local caches I didn’t have many left in Ashford. So during last week I mentioned on the Kent caching Facebook group that I was going to try for this cache, and did anyone else fancy having a go at it with me. Ten hardy souls braved the weather. The first part took some finding. We very nearly fell at the first hurdle, but having eventually found it we needed to solve guitar chords. And then we had the co-ordinates for the next puzzle. And off we went. Using apps on our phones to identify all sorts of musical thingies we eventually completed the cache and got to sign the log despite the rain.
By now we were all rather damp, but we pressed on to the local woods where Lisa had hidden six caches. I’d already found four of them before, but it was a fun afternoon out with new friends. And what else would I do on my own on a wet November day?
After a couple of hours we’d found all the caches, and with the light slowly failing we said our goodbyes and made our ways home. For us it was via another cache in Newtown, before putting the kettle on and drying out wet coats in readiness for another session tomorrow.

I then put Chip’s beer into the barrel. And had a crafty swig whilst I was at it. There’s a lot of fruit flavour there, but not a lot of beer flavour. Mind you, it still has a month for the taste to develop. But if all else fails it’s not too shabby as it is. I then checked out what had gone on in the world whilst I’d been out. I saw a friend has had a tattoo done.
Call me old fashioned if you will, but if I was going to have a word, phrase or saying tattooed onto me I would check the spelling when the transfer was applied, and certainly before the needle got involved…

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