12 December 2012 (Wednesday) - 12-12-12

Geocachers are closet numerologists, They like confluences of numbers, and so today's date (12-12-12) got them rather over-excited. There was a midnight meeting arranged, so we went along. About forty of us met up at the Tesco car park by Junction 12 of the M20 motorway. We chatted for a bit, and then at the stroke of midnight it was suggested we checked the local cache list. Sure enough, twelve new geocaches had gone live in honour of the occasion. Everyone sped off on an impromptu geocaching mission, and we joined in too. Signing logs as "Team ELF" we got five "first to finds", got stuck in ice, and got very cold too. But for all that I was frozen and couldn't see a thing I wouldn't have missed the event for the world,

We thought we'd do a few caches. We ended up finding eleven of the series of twelve, finally coming home shortly after 3am, rolling into my pit just before 4am.

I awoke shortly after 9am, and leapt out of bed thinking that Furry Face would be wondering what had happened. I came downstairs and I felt sick. He was laying in his basket, totally oblivious to my having come downstairs. Opening doors and turning on lights got no reaction from him at all. I honestly thought he was dead. Then he gave the biggest snore you ever did hear. He was fine; just absolutely worn out from the night's fun. I stroked him and he eventually looked up, gave a wag of his tail, and went back to sleep.

I had a quick bit of brekkie and, leaving my beloved in her pit, put the lead on Fudge and took him round the block. The plans for the rest of the day didn't feature him, so he needed an outing. We were out for half an hour; part of it involving a run for a few hundred yards. He seemed to like the run.

Home again, and with my beloved out of her pit we got ready for the day. The Bat soon arrived, we collected the Hurks, and set off to Sandgate. Some might call it excessive, but there was a second meeting of the Kent geocaching community today; this one at mid day. We arrived at the Brittannia in Shornecliffe to find quite a few other people already there. Some had been to the midnight event; some had not. It was good to put faces to names, it was good to meet friends; old and new. The pub did a wonderful meal, and with that scoffed we then set off to see how many of the new caches we could find. As we'd eaten, a dozen new geocaches had gone live locally in honour of this event. People soon sped off in their different directions to get searching.

We soon found our first cache thanks to judicious use of my tool (Ooer!), and were the first to find it. We gave up searching for the second one after half an hour. The third cache featured something I've never encountered before - a run-in with an irate landowner. An obnoxious little turd appeared from nowhere and claimed some unfenced rough land was his personal property. Apparently he lets his dogs loose on it and if they had seen me, then... At that point he shook his head. Quite frankly if his dog had done anything vicious then I would have had no hesitation in killing the dangerous animal as a public service. But I thought it best not to aggravate the fool. Perhaps I should have done.

The little prat was like a stuck record. He didn't want apologies, he just wanted to repeat that we were on his land. After profusely apologising for ten minute (to no avail) I told him to get knotted and we drove off.

We then managed first to find on the next five caches, eventually meeting up with other cachers who had managed to be first to find at the ones we were still to do. We exchanged insults, and then finished off the series. We went back to the cache we couldn't find, and managed two FTFs on our second attempts, even finding the cache which turned out not to be on Mr Angry's land after all.

And then back to the pub to find a cache had gone live there whilst we had been out, and having got that one we had a crafty half of "Late Red" and I checked my geocaching app. That last cache had been my 899th find. So we went back into Folkestone to find the only one we missed out on during the night to put my number to the 900 mark.

And so home for a quick fried egg sandwich before setting off to collect Chippy and then making our way into town. On the way we met Steve and Sarah, and were all soon in "Oranges" where it was open-mic night. Jason and his band were performing, and we had gone along as part of rent-a-mob.

It has been said that I don't like live music. That's not entirely true. I like good live music. But for every band that is good, there are a hundred which are not. Jason's band were excellent; if let down somewhat by the sound system. Whilst the band played the Rear Admiral arrived, seemingly suitably lubricated by copious amounts of ale. For some inexplicable reason he'd come dressed as "Posh Smurf". The next act, "Ken", was also good. It was a shame the same couldn't have been said about the ale, but such is life. It was a shame that the open-mic night had so many waiting to have a go - it would have been good to have had an encore from the band we'd gone to hear. But that was not to be.

Some days in my life are dull. I put up with those for the promise of days like today...