2 November 2018 (Friday) - Late Shift

I slept well, but did have a night plagued with rather vivid dreams in which the departmental health and safety officer was walking round work clouting everyone over the head (rather vigorously) with a clipboard and shouting “HAZARD!!” at the most ridiculous things.

Waking came as something of a blessed relief.

Over brekkie Facebook reminded my that two years ago I went for a job interview. Reading my diary from two years ago it didn’t look like that interview went that well but looking back I’d say that was something of a turning point in my life. I quite like working in an environment where I’m *not* under pressure to look for my colleagues’ mistakes so that either they get in trouble for making them, or I get in trouble for not finding them. Mind you, looking back at where I used to work you have to admire the genius of the administration. Having implemented a “no bullying” policy the management can bully to their heart’s content secure in the knowledge that no allegations of bullying will be investigated as the place has a policy of not having bullying in the first place.

Realising I was getting rather bitter and twisted again I took a deep breath and pausing only briefly to get jam into my phone’s charging socket I took the dogs round the park.

Yesterday it rained hard all day. Today was a beautiful morning. We had a really good walk right up to the point where we met OrangeHead and her gang of cronies. Fudge decided to have a transfer of allegiance and walked off with her bunch. He does this *every* time; the only way to get him to come away is to put his lead on and drag him. He knows this and runs away whenever I get close. I very nearly walked off and left him there. I actually did walk off with Treacle on the lead. After a few minutes he followed rather sheepishly.

He knew he was in trouble…

We got home; I settled the pups and set off to work. As I drove there was some utter drivel on the radio in which someone was being interviewed about their skill in writing graphic novels. Have you ever read a graphic novel? They boil my piss. They aren't novels at all. They are comic books. I like a comic book (I subscribe to Viz magazine) but a comic is a comic. Calling it a "novel" is just wrong. A "novel" has words; a comic book has pictures. In my more unkind moments I describe graphic novels as being for those who can't be bothered to read the words so look at the pictures instead. Something of a subtle difference perhaps?... I turned the radio off.

I'd planned myself a little geo-mission for this morning. There were two geocaches along the A249 neither of which had been found in over a year. I thought I might try for a resuscitation or two, but (to be honest) I wasn't particularly hopeful about resuscitating either.

I knew my first target was going to be problematical. Previous finders had mentioned (in their written logs) the lack of footpaths from the roadside to the cache. The chap who'd hidden it claimed that according to the ordnance survey maps it was smack-bang on a footpath. I'm no expert but from the maps I could find, it looked as though the specified location was smack-bang on some sort of parish boundary. Still, climbing a broken fence and marching through a planted field soon had me at the World War II pill box in which the cache was supposedly hidden.

I couldn't find it.

To be honest the cache was part of a series very few of which have been found in the last couple of years.  That could be because they are clever hides, or because they aren't there any more....

I marched back through the planted field and across the broken fence back to my car.

My second target was also not going to be easy. It was originally hidden by someone at Kent County Council who wanted to attract tourists to their country parks. The cache's name was "Ouch" and the description suggested "going in backwards" and not going in from the main road. Clearly it was going to be in the jungle of undergrowth.

Approaching from the country park my GPS led me to a thicket and said the cache was some eighty yards inside it. Like the idiot that I am, I followed the arrow through hawthorn and bramble. After twenty minutes I found my quarry. I was the first finder in over a year. Another resuscitation to my name. Happy dance.

Mind you I think it quite fair to say that the person who'd first hidden it had drop-kicked the thing into a rather thick hedge a few years ago and had left it to rot. Perhaps I should put "Needs Archiving" on it?

Pausing only briefly for a church micro (as one does) I drove on to work.

I'd planned to get to work early because there was a flu jab clinic today. Normally I'm not keen on injections, but after the fun I'd just had in the thickets and brambles, the flu jab was plain sailing. And I got a sweetie too.

The works canteen was offering cauliflower cheese for lunch. Not too shabby at all.

And so into work. I did my bit and came home to mayhem. "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM"  has come to stay for the weekend. We watched “Paw Patrol” until far too late.