I had something of a restless night last night. Better than
many recently but restless, nonetheless. I got up to find a rather good
Valentine’s card from "er indoors TM"; she’s been
making cards recently. This one featured a dog not unlike Fudge.
As I scoffed my toast I peered into the
Internet. It hadn’t changed much since last night. I had an email from Amazon
saying they could not publish the review I gave of the Lego boards I bought
from them at the weekend. They didn’t say why though. Oh well. They bothered me
for the review. Their loss.
I then phoned the power company. The
nice people there sent their bill via email last night. They were planning to
increase my monthly payments by about forty quid a month based on estimated
charges. I thought the whole idea of a smart meter was that they knew exactly
what we were using without having to estimate anything. I got through to them
and couldn’t hear a word that they were saying. I phoned back and had a rather
bizarre conversation in which they wanted to know why I was having an estimated
bill when I had a smart meter. They then hit upon a frankly amazing idea
involving their logging in to my smart meter and getting a reading from it. I
suggested that I was in full agreement and that they had my permission to do so
(if they needed it).
They are going to send me another bill.
I took the dogs for our usual walk.
There was an interesting development; the Jehovah’s Witnesses stall is under
new management. There used to be two little old ladies standing at the entrance
to the park by the fountain. They had a little stand and were polite and civil
and not at all pushy. They’ve gone. There is now a miserable-looking bloke at
the stand, and the rest of the Jo-Bos are pulling a rather dirty trick. The two
little old ladies have been replaced with two young women about eighty years
younger with epic chests and legs that go all the way up to their bums. These
two made a terrific fuss of the dogs whilst giving me the eye and making all
sorts of suggestive looks, and after a few minutes of the “come-and-get-it-big-boy” stuff they pulled out the God-bothering
pamphlets. I made polite excuses (having
Pogo rummaging in a hedge was a reasonable excuse) and I left them to hunt
down their next victim. If everyone else is Viccie Park is as shallow as I am,
they will have an easy time.
We came home through the co-op field
where the allotments stank of “funny fags”
as they so often do.
I settled the dogs and set off to work.
Due to a minor hiccup I’d been asked to do the late shift today. When we went
out this morning my car had been covered in ice. In the meantime it had melted.
I headed to Challock. There was (and still is) a puzzle geocache there
based on the village sign. Seeing how it was the only cache within seven
miles of home that I hadn't yet found I thought I might hunt it down today. It
would be the first stage of a little adventure that I'd planned to do on
my way to work. I'd solved the puzzle that was used to give the co-ordinates of
this cache and I'd plotted (on the map)
where the thing was. It seemed to be near a corner along a rather
obscure country lane. I did think it was rather far from the village sign on
which it was based, but sometimes these things are a little way away from where
you might expect them to be. I'd used Google Street View to find somewhere
to park. I was surprised that the nearest lay-by was a couple of hundred yards
from where I wanted to be, but I'd checked my calculations, and they were right
(!)
I was soon parked up, and with my
wellies on it wasn't long before I was stomping about in the undergrowth.
I found a likely-looking holly bush, and with the clue "hanging about" I was looking for
something tied to a branch of that holly bush. I couldn't find anything. I
widened my search, re-checked my sums, went back to that holly bush,
rummaged... all to no avail. Perhaps the thing had fallen off? I rummaged in
the leaf litter. I checked my sums again. I carried on rummaging.
After about half an hour I re-checked my
sums (for what must have been the
twentieth time) and found I'd made a slight error. I had a "2" where a "1" should have been. A small error,
but in the fourth place of a set of longitudes, that's the best part of a
kilometre. Allowing for driving round twisty country lanes, I was over a mile
away from where I should have been.
I went for a drive of about a mile, and
when I was where I was supposed to be I saw the cache from ten yards away.
Oh how I laughed.
I did have all sorts of plans for the
morning, but having wasted so long round the wrong holly bush I went straight
to work. I had a rather good bit of broccoli cheese, then got on with the late
shift. It was surprisingly busy…
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