We had something of a terrible
night. I went to bed earlier than usual leaving Fudge guarding the front door
waiting for "er indoors TM" to come home. Treacle and Pogo
came upstairs with me and settled on the bed. I was woken ten minutes later by
their barking. I came downstairs and found them at the window barking at
passers-by (Fudge was still guarding the front door). I marched the twins upstairs,
settled them, and was woken by their barking again ten minutes later. This went
on until midnight when I struck on the idea that if I shut the bedroom door
then they couldn’t go looking out of the window for "er indoors TM".
They then stomped round the bedroom whining to be allowed
to go look for her. Eventually everyone settled about three o’clock.
I got up to see posts on Facebook from Lanzarote. "er
indoors TM" had slept very well. I saw another friend has
started a new hobby – “medieval combat”
(sounds interesting) and another
friend was having a birthday.
I then saw something which made me rather sad. A friend was
asking for hints about a puzzle geocache in Berlin. Apparently there is a
seriously major meet-up of hunters of Tupperware there next weekend. There was
a similar one in Hamburg a couple of weeks ago. A few years ago the local
hunters of Tupperware would have organised a minibus trip out to one or other (or both) of these events. Nowadays
people just do their own thing and post up the photos afterwards.
Such a shame. I’m busy in the weekend of the Berlin one but
presumably this was planned some time ago. Had I known the thing was taking
place (or had I known about the Hamburg
one) I could have sorted something.
I got the dogs onto their leads
and we drove to Sandhurst. I fancied walking somewhere different today and I’d
looked at the geo-map. There was a geocache by the clock tower near where we
might park, and there was another one a mile into the countryside. This one
hadn’t been found for over a year so I thought I might go for a resuscitation.
We found the footpath we needed,
and after traversing fields of sheep and cattle and horses I let the dogs run.
It was at this point that the heavens opened. But my geo-app said we were
closer to the geocache than the car, so we carried on. We got to within ten
yards of the thing only to find we were on the wrong side of a barbed wire
fence… but this didn’t stop us. After a short detour I soon had the cache in
hand. Not been found since April ’18. Another resuscitation (that’s forty-three)
– happy dance.
The last chap
to find it wrote in his on-line “found it” log “Amazed and pleased to
find a cache in such good condition, log book bone dry, container in good nick
too. Noted the log book is the original too. Why only 30 finders in the 7 years
this has been out ??” A good question – I think I know why. This geocache
is somewhat “old skool”. Back in the day you’d go out looking for *one*
cache. These days people want the numbers. There was room for half a dozen (or
more) geocaches along the route I walked today. Most people won’t walk a
round trip of nearly two miles just for one cache. But for me this was ideal. I
could park the car, and with a little judicious map-reading I had a walk for
the dogs. And a good walk too.
The dogs
behaved themselves with the cattle and sheep and horses… but then had a
complete fit about a pheasant. I wish they wouldn’t.
I took a few photos as we walked.
We came home. I managed to park
near the house, so I dragged out the hoover and gave the car a bit of a scrub (I’m
expecting passengers this weekend!) then gave the gas barbecue a scrubbing
too. I had planned to clean out the fish-pond filter, but time ran out.
I went up the road to the corner
shop to get a sandwich, and on the way back I stopped at "er indoors TM" car. She told me
that there wasn’t enough dog food in the house to last till she came home and
that there was a big box of it in her car.
There wasn’t.
I gave up after fifteen minutes of ransacking the car, only
to find she’d brought it into the house before she left.
I went to bed for the afternoon, and in a novel break with
tradition my dogs were quiet. In fact they only barked when next door’s dogs
kicked off for no reason that I could see.
I got up and cooked up some
burgers that had been left over from Monday. They had been in an unopened packet
in the fridge, and the best before date was only yesterday so they couldn’t
have been *that* bad.
And then my phone beeped. A
message. A friend had just walked the geo-series I’d put out in Kings Wood. One
of the caches was missing. Because I’d hidden it, it was up to me to replace it.
And (as is always the way) this missing cache is about a mile and a
quarter from the nearest place that I can park my car. Oh well… I chose Kings
Wood as it is somewhere nice to walk the dogs when doing geo-maintenance. That’s
tomorrow morning’s walk sorted then.
Once the washing machine stops I
shall hang out my smalls (!) *If* the rain stops I shall walk the
hounds round the park. The first fruit of my loin is looking after them this
evening. I had hoped to tire them a little before taking them round to him. But
I think he’d rather have un-walked dogs than wet dogs.
And then I’m off to the night
shift. Must remember to pack stuff for tomorrow morning’s dog walk and to put
the dustbins out. This being left “home alone” is hard work…
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