19 October 2013 (Saturday) - Hastings Bonfire

I don’t know why after having a spell of sleeping well I was wide awake at 3am. I got up, shaved, did the washing up, and thought that I might then get back to sleep. I didn’t; and was solving on-line puzzles before 6am. Amazingly I solved it right.
Brekkie, and then I took "Furry Face TM" for a quick walk round the park. The Normal People were the in force unfortunately. There was one prize plum with a dog no larger than a small rat on (about) fifty yards of lead which said rat had wrapped around most of the objects in the park. Trying to negotiate my way past tangled leads, trees and benches took some doing.
I then got into a conversation with a bunch of passing Gurkhas. Normally they are all terrified of dogs in the park, but apparently they recognised Fudge because they had seen me doing whistle training with him, and they thought he was incredibly well trained. I smiled politely and hurried off before my dog disgraced himself. After all, whistle training isn’t anything really clever; I blow the whistle and when he comes at the sound of the whistle I give him a treat. He’s learned that whistle equals treat, and so when he hears the whistle he comes for a treat (about seventy per cent of the time). But it seems to have impressed some onlookers.
We continued via the co-op field where in a slight altercation with a wolf Fudge nearly had his head bitten off (quite literally). I have tried to tell him not to fight with bigger dogs but he never listens. And when he does, he doesn’t speak English anyway.

We came home where for no explained reason the silly dog went into his auntie Kat’s room and spent half an hour barking at a poster. I did wonder if he was disturbing our delightful neighbour in the bedroom the other side of the wall. But then it was probably no more of a disturbance than their clanging their infernal piano so I left him to it.

Lisa came round and we set off. Firstly to find that puzzle cache I'd solved earlier, and then we did another cache as we were passing on our way to the monthly Kent cachers meet-up. It was a good meet - probably over fifty people there. All good people with a common interest in hunting tupperware. I'm helping organise a meet next year - I would be pleased if we have half the turn-out that today's meet attracted.
We had lunch, chatted, swapped insults, swapped trackables and even did the secret geo-ritual. My Wherigos received favourable comment; no one mentioned Earthcaches.
For all that we met in a pub I didn't have beer. Instead for the price of half a pint of beer I had a "bottomless coke"; a glass of pop which when empty I just re-filled. And because it was freee I had far too much. I think I had between ten to twelve pints of the stuff. I won a caravan TV arial in the raffle, and we even had cake with the birthday boy.

Home, and then we rallied the troops and set off to Hastings for the bonfire parade. We did find one cheeky cache on the way, but soon we were at my old stomping ground (the FILO) where we met up with more of our number. HSL, the competition, uncle Kev; we chatted all night whilst flaming torches, chips, huge bonfires and spectacular fireworks went off all around us. Hastings bonfire is one of the year's high points. When we moved away from the town in 1984 it was run down and going downhill. Now it's on the up-and-up. Much as I like Ashford, there's not a lot that goes on for the public compared with Jack in the Green, the carnivals and bonfires that happen in Hastings...
Five pints of ale meant that I would probably sleep well...


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