I slept rather well; I had plans for the morning and was
rather disappointed to wake to find it was raining. But in (yet another)
triumph of idiot enthusiasm over common sense I carried on regardless. I kicked
"er indoors TM" out of her pit, got the leads on to
the dogs, and we all drove down to Orlestone Woods where we had a very good
little walk and didn’t get anywhere near as wet as I thought we might.
As I was taking a “boot dogs” photo in the car park,
some hairy-scary chap sitting in the car opposite called out that the “boot
dogs” pose was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.
There were quite a few cars in the car park, but apart from
the chap sitting in his car we didn’t meet anyone else at all as we walked (that’s
the attraction of the place for me!)
The hairy-scary chap was still sitting in his car three
quarters of an hour later when we came back from our walk. I wonder what he was
doing.
As we drove home "er indoors TM"
laid an egg. There had been a bouncer in Orlestone Woods (it’s a Munzee
thing) and we’d walked past it twice without realising.
Once home I ran over my head with the trimmer (lock-down
haircut – I’ve been doing my own for twenty years!) then had a later-than-usual
look at the internet. I saw a friend had been made redundant. I sent a message
of consolation; I wish there was more that I could have done. But from a
personal (and very selfish) point of view this will make for interesting
times in the geocaching world. The hours my friend worked gave him time to hide
endless series of geocaches. If he ends up doing something nine to five, will
anyone else pick up the slack?
I also had an email from geocaching HQ. Recently I’ve had a
few people telling me that they’d walked my various series of geocaches but
hadn’t signed any of the paper logs for fear of catching COVID-19. I didn’t
actually laugh out loud, but… seriously?... When you go geocaching you scrubble
(on your hands and knees) in tree roots and under dead shrubs in leaf
litter (up to a foot deep) looking for a mould-and-bacteria-encrusted
pot which has been festering in the mud for several months. But now everyone is
hygiene-crazy and people won’t touch these little pots for fear of a virus with
which they have (very likely) already been in touch. If people want a
hygienic hobby then there is knitting or making a model railway…
(this is a rant I’ve done before…)
But leaving aside all of that, the rules say that to claim
a find you have to sign the paper log. I messaged geocaching HQ last night for
clarification, and they said “Caches may only be logged when the logbook was
signed. This is still in effect”.
This puts me in a quandary. On the one hand I don’t want to
delete the logs on what should be a fun little game. On the other hand there
are half a dozen people who will be messaging me asking why I allowed this to
happen…
I spent half an hour geo-puzzling then
set off. The rain which had stopped just after we finished our walk earlier
started again as I walked out to my car. I drove round to the petrol station at
Sainsburys where there was a *massive* queue for the free air. What was
that all about - had everyone got a puncture today?
Apart from nearly being splatted by a
car delivering shingle to a bungalow in High Halden I had a rather uneventful
journey to work; I even had time to capture the Munzee in the Odeon cinema near
work.
I didn't know there still were Odeon
cinemas. There used to be one in Hastings in the 1970s which specialised in
mucky films (not that I ever went in there...)
I went in to work; I did my bit. As the
afternoon wore on so I had an email. I had the results of my COVID-19 antibody
test that was taken last week. It was negative; I haven't had it.
I was rather disappointed about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment