11 March 2018 (Sunday) - Mother's Day

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…