I’ve been sleeping a lot better recently; no
idea why. But last night wasn’t a good night. However I blame my dog for that.
"Furry Face TM" isn’t that big but he’d spread out
over most of the surface of the bed and I didn’t have the heart to disturb him.
I eventually got up and as I boiled up my toast
I watched "er indoors TM" refereeing the dogs’
breakfast. It needed refereeing. For all that "Furry Face TM"
is a porky little barrel he’s not a greedy dog. He’s just opportunistic.
However "Furry Shark TM" is greedy; she would eat
all of both dogs breakfasts if she could, and then scream at me for my toast.
Her scrounging at meal times is rather loud.
I then had a look on Facebook over brekkie. A *lot* of people were getting rather upset
about a local landlord whose letter to his letting
agent
has been leaked. Basically this chap owns loads of houses and he’s being rather
choosy about to whom he will and won’t let a house. He won’t accept any
families with children, no one on low income, no plumbers, no one with pets…
I’ll admit the chap is rather extreme, but after all is said and done it is his
houses he is letting out and his business he is running. Let’s be clear here –
this fellow isn’t providing social housing – he is making money by running a
business. And the country has voted (several
times) to have a government with a proven track record of bending over
backwards to appease businesses. Over the last thirty years the electorate has
decided that housing should be a financial commodity rather than a social
necessity.
What *really*
boils my piss about this is that no one realises this. Quite a lot of the
people complaining about this landlord are the same people who loudly and
vocally voted for capitalism at the expense of common decency at the last
election(s).
Democracy is *such* a good idea, isn’t it?
We got our stuff together and set off to
somewhere in the back of beyond. About a year or so ago I solved a whole load
of puzzle geocaches. The “Flashbacks Smile”
were puzzles all based about TV and music and stuff from way back when. I *really* enjoyed solving them, and today
we thought we’d go find them. As we drove we met Karl and Tracey (going the wrong way!) but we were all
very soon with Aleta at the car park from where the walk was to start. With
boots on we set off on our walk.
It was a foggy day but we made the most of it.
As we walked we saw alpacas and a friendly horse. And (to our dismay) we saw a closed pub. We saw some rather beautiful
houses; how can anyone afford these places? And the smallest member of our
party even ate some poo.
Perhaps in retrospect the walk might have been
a tad long. Billed as a walk of six miles “Hannah”
(and "er indoors TM"’s GPS) both recorded
the mileage as a shade over eight miles. Whilst my dog seemed to love it,
"Furry Shark TM" was soon flagging, and after six
miles she threw in the sponge and I carried her for the last quarter of the
walk.
And (as
always) I took a few photos as we went.
Geocache-wise we’d heard that this
series of caches wasn’t really intended as a walk in the countryside. We’d
heard it was really aimed at those who like drive-by caching and in all
fairness that was one of the main reasons for choosing this series. As a walk
it was probably right for today. Apart from a few stretches of main road (which was probably unavoidable) the vast
majority of the walk was on country lanes and so we didn’t get that muddy
really. I must admit that as a pedestrian hunter of Tupperware I felt the
caches were a tad too spaced out; there were twenty along a route which could
have had thirty-five. But the route was really intended for drive-bys - a
different way of hunting Tupperware than that to which I am accustomed. And on
reflection probably not a bad way to play this game in the winter
We had planned to pop into the nearby
pub after the walk, but we’d heard they weren’t really dog friendly. And for
all that the humans in the party didn’t get that grubby, it is a different
matter when you are less than a foot tall. The puppy was exhausted and Fudge
was filthy. So we said our goodbyes and took the dogs to the bath. It was
probably as well we went straight home; after a good hosing down we probably
had about as much mud as dog in the bath.
I then started loading up the washing
machine with laundry (it don’t wash
itself) and whilst the puppy’s coat got a good scrubbing I did the
geo-admin. “Hannah” had some issues
with GSAK (it’s a geo-thing). I’m
hoping these issues are now resolved; the last thing I want is duplication (!)
After a rather good bit of dinner "er
indoors TM" went off to film night and with both dogs
asleep I set about several weeks’ worth of ironing. I got it about half-done
before the dogs woke. Mayhem ensued as I tried to iron and sort out dog
squabbles. And once the ironing was done the dogs both went to sleep again…
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