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19 October 2020 (Monday) - Another Early Shift

This morning I woke at twenty past one. I lay awake for a while, and was just nodding off when "er indoors TM" went to the loo. She went as quiet as a mouse, but the dogs had to follow her and they thundered down the stairs. Dogs don’t do “stealth mode”.

Over a very early brekkie I watched another episode of “The Job Lot” then had a quick look-see at the Internet as I do.

I was pleasantly amazed at the response I’d had to something I posted onto one of the Munzee Facebook pages. Yesterday I replaced a few missing Munzees and wanted to be sure that this was the done thing. There was one hundred per cent universal agreement that this was not only the done thing, but was to be applauded. I couldn’t help but compare this to geocaching where the majority opinion is never to do anything to help anyone else for fear of condemnation and vituperation from the self-appointed geo-police.

More and more I’m finding that Munzeeing is fun whereas geocaching isn’t what it once was.

And on the geocaching front I saw that over the weekend I’d had more than two hundred “Found It” logs on geocaches that I’d hidden. I didn’t read all of them, but I skimmed through, and one made me roll my eyes. Four and a half years ago I wrote a Wherigo cartridge which (after a *lot* of testing) formed part of a series of geocaches I put out near Challock. The cartridge was played seventy-six times then, and it received twenty-six favourite points. I then adjusted the locations in the cartridge (and nothing else) and have incorporated it into one of the new series of geocaches I’ve put out this year. In its second incarnation it has been played thirty-four more times (and got ten more favourite points). But yesterday I got told that the cartridge has a bug in it. No details were forthcoming; just “a bug”. A bug which hasn’t come to light despite a *lot* of testing and a hundred and ten successful completions? Is there a bug? If so, I’d like to know what it is, but somehow I doubt it. I suspect it is easier to claim the thing isn’t working than to admit that you might have pressed the wrong button?

 

This morning’s Facebook squabble was about an advert that appeared on my Facebook feed. Ostensibly selling crisps, there was a feeling that the young lady in the advert was brandishing far too much chest. Personally I’m a fan of chests. I was tempted to make a comment about nibbling on her tasties, but the sexists and the feminists were already getting quite aggressive enough. I didn’t need to wind anyone or anything up.

 

I got myself ready for work and said goodbye to everyone. Some grunted at me, some wagged their tails. Fudge turned away and ignored me. He seems to have a little sulk when I go out without him. Perhaps he wants to come to work?

There were quite a few people walking dogs up the road at six o'clock in pitch darkness as I walked to my car. I then nearly flattened a cyclist and a teenager on a scooter; both dressed all in black with no lights at all. I've said before that the utterly inadequate street lighting in Ashford certainly isn't what was promised when it was installed. And now that it is installed, no one in authority seems to want to take responsibility for it.

 

As I drove to work there was a lot of talk on the radio about how central government is giving tens of millions of pounds to the councils in Liverpool and Manchester. Not because they need the money, but as some sort of bribe to get them to accept the lock-down conditions.

I must admit to a degree of confusion here. I always thought that local councils took orders from central government. The Prime Minister is the boss, not some tin-pot mayor of some tin-pot council? So what on Earth is going on? If some local council is refusing to toe the line, this is tantamount to secession, isn't it? If I was Mr Johnson, I'd declare the council disbanded, have direct rule from Westminster for the area, send in the army and have the so-called mayor stuck in prison. After all, that's what the Spanish did when the Catalans got arsey, wasn't it?

 

I go to work and did my bit. And with my bit done I took a little detour on my way home to go find a geocache. This was one the puzzle of which I’d solved a while ago, but I never seemed to be in the right place with time to go hunt for it. Today I had a spare few minutes. I parked up somewhere between Ashford and Tunbridge Wells, and after a few minutes the cache was in my hand. Happy dance. The cache was…

I won’t give spoilers, but I will say that a lot of time, thought and effort had gone into making what I found. But as is so often the case with these special ones, they are fragile. Whilst the thing doesn’t actually need maintenance just yet, part of it is already broken and I am only the eighth person to have fiddled with the thing. Which is why I stick to putting film pots under rocks and do my clever bits in the programming (and creating bug in!) wherigoes.

 

Pausing only briefly to deploy a Munzee I was soon home. Fudge had got over his sulk, and we all charged down the garden to feed the pond fish. The pond is rather clear at the moment. The clarity of my pond is something that I’ve (quite frankly) given up worrying about. I will clean the filter, bung in all sorts of flocculants, replace the UV bulb and the pond will have the texture of mud. I’ve done nothing with it for a month and it is crystal clear. Go figure!

 

Much as I like the early finish of the early shift (it gives me time after work to do something), two early starts have taken their toll… I’m worn out.

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