I
slept like a log. I woke to the sound of heavy rain on the window. Depressing.
Over brekkie I did my usual sweep of the Internet. There wasn’t much of note
going on in cyber-space really; the most exciting thing I could find was a
discussion on Facebook about how certain universities might be sued for a pro
rata refund of university tuition fees on grounds of non-provision of academic
services due to strike action. The subject itself was rather dull; the
interesting part was that it was started by a chap who was a member of the Boys
Brigade company of which I was a leader forty years ago. I follow this chap’s
Facebook postings with interest. He’s done very well for himself; regularly
posting from business trips to America and the far east, and from holidays in
rather pretty ski resorts.
Looking
back to my time in secondary school, he and several others (who weren’t as clever as me!) spent most
of their spare time on schoolwork. Boys Brigade was only one night a week for
them. Had I done more schoolwork and wasted less time on organizing and
committee-ing and being a leader with the Boys Brigade back then, maybe I too
could now be having business trips to America and the far east, and holidays in
rather pretty ski resorts.
I often think “what if”...
We got the leads on to
the dogs and set off to Hastings to do the Mother’s Day thing. But before we
could Mother, we needed to walk the pups. There is a multi-geocache on the way to Hastings which I had had my eye on for some time. Billed
as being a walk of a mile and a half along Winchelsea beach it looked just
right for today. We parked up and made our way to the first place where we
might solve a puzzle. We got some clues and made our way to the second point
where neither of us were able to count to seven. The third point was near a
disused lifeboat station. Who would have known it was there? From the lifeboat
station it was but a short stroll to the final location where we spotted the
Tupperware box from some distance away. The last time it had been “officially” found was in September last
year, but in the meantime passing normal people had signed the log inside
saying they’d found it by accident. I stashed it under a rock and camouflaged
it somewhat better than how we’d found it.
It was at this point
that I realized that the described walk of a mile and a half was actually from
the car park to the final location. There was a walk of a mile and a half back
again. Still, the dogs like a walk.
We lost Fudge on the
way back. We found him on the beach rolling in something disgusting.
We went back to the
car, and drove on to see my mummy and daddy. They were looking well. We hadn’t
been sure about taking the dogs, but they fussed the pups. And after a while we
moved on to visit mother-in-law.
It was at this point
that I fell asleep for an hour.
We came home for a
cuppa. I messed about buying my fishing licence on-line. Here’s hoping they
don’t take the money for it. They didn’t last year. We did the dog’s flea
treatment, gave them their dinner, then went on for Mother’s Day phase two.
"My Boy TM" and Cheryl had
invited us round for dinner. I say “us”;
it was "er indoors TM" they really wanted for
Mother’s Day; I was just the driver. We arrived and made our choices of curry
and phoned our order through to the take-away. They said there would be a three-hour
delay. Bearing in mind it was Mother’s Day we supposed that this was to be
expected. Cheryl and I took Rolo round Singleton Lake for a walk, and we
watched a film. After a couple of hours we phoned the take-away to see how the
food was coming along. They said it would be ready for us to collect in fifteen
minutes. So "My Boy TM" and I went round to Dipa Tandoori where a
near-riot was kicking off. It would seem that due to extreme staff shortages
they had put the village idiot on the telephone. I watched her for a while. She
was taking orders and writing them down. She was then putting the written
orders into a basket which she was regularly shuffling so no one knew which
were the recent orders and which were from ages ago. When people were phoning
to ask about their food she would dig through the basket of orders, throw the
order at the kitchen staff and shout “fifteen
minutes” into the phone. Half a dozen other people had (like us) turned up to collect food that
wasn’t ready. I felt sorry for the staff who were apologising for the village
idiot.
After
an hour’s wait we got (mostly) what
we’d ordered.
We
hurried back with the food. It was rather good, and put world to rights as we
scoffed ourselves silly with it. So much for diet today; I’ve got quite the
stomach ache. Lamb Madras – oh yes !
I
took a few photos of what we did today… it has been a rather busy one…
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