When I went to bed at 1am
last night the rain was torrential; I would not wanted to have been
out camping in that downpour. I got up shortly after 5am to find that
although the rain had finally stopped, everywhere outside was
completely soaked.
I did a few household
chores, shared brekkie with "Furry Face TM",
watched "Family Guy" and had intended to go back to
bed for a bit. But by the time I'd then unloaded the dishwasher, put
some laundry in, printed off a few bits for today's geo-meet, loaded
up the car, taken my dog for a walk, prepared a picnic, hung the
washing on the line, farted about and heaven only knows what else I
did... it was suddenly half past nine. Four hours had just vanished.
I made myself a cuppa,
loaded up the car, and me and Fudge set off to Orlestone Woods. Every
month there is an official meet of the county's geocachers; this time
I had volunteered to organise the event. Usually it is in a pub or a
cafe or a place of interest or something like that. But for this meet
I thought we'd go minimalist. We had a picnic; and at Orlestone Woods
there are absolutely no facilities whatsoever. We were going to have
an old-school picnic - bring your own tables, blankets, chairs,
whatever. I realised that this wouldn't be to everyone's taste, and I
was expecting a dozen or so people might turn up. I think we had over
sixty. People came down from the Medway towns, and came up from
Hastings. People came from as far west as Margate and as far east as
Battle and Paddock Wood. There was a lot of people who had come from
Sussex too.
I was really pleased with
the turn-out. Apart from a minor incident with a frog Fudge was as
good as gold. I met loads of people I only knew by name, and I was
really pleased to learn that for a lot of people this had been their
first geo-meet; having been rather nervous about coming, they all
left feeling really happy and looking forward to the next meet.
I took
a few photos of the picnic whilst I was there...
From the geo-meet I drove
down to Camber where "My Boy TM"
was on holiday at Pontins with his tribe. The plan had been for me to
spend some time with them, but the spotty toothless YTS trainee (in
security costume) on the gate wouldn't let "Furry Face
TM" (or any dogs) in.
Instead everyone came out
to see me and we went for a little walk round Camber before coming
home again. "My Boy TM" had a
minor cob - they'd been to the beach earlier and he'd been stung by a
jellyfish. On the tit. I was reminded of my episode with being
attacked by a swarm of wasps a few weeks ago; all very entertaining
all the time it is somebody else who is in pain.
I felt a tad peckish so
thought I'd nip down to the take-away for curry and chips. The
man-mountain behind the counter recognised me; fifteen years ago he'd
been one of my cubs. When he told me his name I immediately
remembered him; he once (at cub camp) went building bivouacs
in the woods in his pyjamas because I'd told the cubs to wear their
oldest clothes and his pyjamas were his oldest clothes.
With curry and chips
scoffed I settled down for an evening spent doing more washing and
ironing. Eventually I got fed up with ironing and gave up; there is
loads of that left but the laundry basket is now empty.
It has been a rather busy
day today...
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