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29 May 2020 (Friday) - Help the Goats


Yesterday some chap bought seven of those beer festival pint glasses I’ve been wanting rid of. This morning as I peered into the Internet I had a message asking about the rest. It would be good to send them to someone who wants them rather than send to the bin.
There was also quite a bit of talk on social media about the end of the Thursday clapping for the key workers. As a key worker myself (NHS) I really never wanted anyone to feel under any obligation to go out and clap me. I've yet to find any other NHS staff who weren't embarrassed and just a little insulted by the whole thing. The general feeling was that it was like clapping a bus driver for not crashing...
I also saw that this year’s Rye Bonfire Parade has already been cancelled. Such a shame – I’ve not got along for a while, but it was always fun.

Pausing only briefly to retrieve the bins from where the bin-men had flung them I set off to work on another bright morning but today I didn't have to brave the motorway. Instead I went cross-country to Tunbridge Wells. The roads weren't *that* busy and it wasn't a bad drive at all. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how the government's furlough scheme is slowly being phased out, and they were interviewing some young half-wit about how she is being affected by this. Her job as a delivery driver is entirely self-employed, and she claimed she stood to lose all her income from that. She told quite a heartfelt tale about how her and her mother were desperate for income and struggling to maintain their previous lifestyle without that money.
However she then (somewhat idiotically) went on to say that her money earned from working in a petrol station was still secure, and that the money her mother gets for being her carer is unaffected (!)
I couldn't help but wonder if this woman knew she was telling the world (via national radio) about all her little moonlighting schemes?

There was also talk about how Donald Trump has again shown his unsuitability for high office. Having got the hump that Twitter have labelled one of his outbursts as being of dubious veracity he is threatening to make social media beholden to the same rules as newspapers. He is suggesting that their content must be fact-checked or they will be liable for any inaccuracies or outright lies.
However it was pointed out (with several examples) that if this is actually brought into law then his Twitter account has fallen at the first hurdle.

As I drove to Tunbridge Wells I again drove past the little independent petrol station. Again I felt a pang of guilt that I don't support them. But again I'm not going to support them when I can get petrol fourteen pence a litre cheaper elsewhere.
I got to work. I did my bit. There was cake. Happy days.

I took a little detour on the way home. This morning at tea break I saw a new geocache had gone live. As I left work seven hours later there was still no find logged on it. I set off hoping for a First to Find and I arrived at the point where my sat-nav said I should be at exactly the same time as a mother and daughter. When they realised what I was doing they became quite chatty. The daughter told me that her older sister had hidden the geocache as a Guide activity…
I tried to be encouraging but…
The thing hadn’t so much been hidden as drop-kicked in the general direction of a hedge. And rather than using a half-way decent cache container, the hider had used the sort of thing you’d expect to find filled with sweet-and-sour sauce at a Chinese take-away. None of which is the fault of the hider… Again a Guide leader has seen there is a geocaching badge and has thought they’d have a go with absolutely no knowledge or experience of the hobby. All their caches will be up for archiving by Christmas… Such a shame…

And in closing today the local goat sanctuary is in financial difficulties. You can help them by clicking here.

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