13 June 2021 (Sunday) - A Bimble Round Bobbing

Yesterday had been rather stressful, but I was still awake far too early. Towards their ends both Sid and Fudge had given up with the scrum of the bedroom, preferring a little more space and sleeping downstairs. I came downstairs to a very empty living room this morning.

I made toast, opened my third COVID-testing kit and did my fifty-first (negative) COVID test. The website on which I register the test results told me I had an eighty-eight per cent reporting performance even though I’ve done a test every four days (without fail) ever since I was first required to do one. How does that work?

As I scoffed the toast I watched the last episode of “Love, Death and Robots”. Have you watched any of these shows? They are worth the Netflix subscription themselves.

I then peered into the Internet. Over a hundred people had reacted to the photos of Sid I’d posted to Facebook last night. Once I’d stopped blubbing I had a look at the rest of Facebook. I sent out birthday wishes to a family friend, and then rolled my eyes when I saw that the LGBTQ community were making their presence felt on the Facebook “Upstairs Downstairs” page. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not bashing the LGBTQ community; just utterly amazed that they felt any need to say anything when nothing needed to be said.

And then I had a flurry of emails. The Wherigo series that I put out on Friday had been published. Or (to be precise) they’d been published on geocaching dot com. In order for that to happen they’d actually been published on Wherigo dot com late on Friday afternoon, and a couple of people had realised that.

 

Despite a hot day forecast we got ourselves and the dogs organised and set off to Sittingbourne. Karl and Tracey had planned to do a little geo-maintenance on one of their series of caches today. Since they knew were all of the geocaches were on their series (or knew where they were supposed to be!), the idea was that this shouldn’t take as long as usual and make for a shorter walk on a hot day.

We soon got to Sittingboune, parked on their driveway, and six of us (and two dogs) set off. Today was rather hot, but we’d put the dog’s cooling bandannas into the freezer before we left home, and (together with two litres of iced water) they kept the pups cool. Mind you the hounds did find some cooling mud on the way.

 We met a busybody landowner who was insistent that he told us where the footpath went (even though we could clearly see the way). Like many landowners, this chap didn’t want us using a public right of way.

We walked through a solar farm where a remote-controlled drone seemed rather interested in watching what we were doing.

We saw a buzzard and a heron and some oak-apples, and I got to climb a tree.

 

The iced water (for the dogs) just about held out, and we were soon in the back garden having refreshing bottles of beer and cider. My first bottle got me five badges on the Untappd app, but none of the others got me anything. After a while the sun had moved round and we spent an entertaining few minutes arranging a sunshade. I say “we”; the ladies did all the work; I sat and offered sage advice (that was very helpful of me, wasn’t it?)

We had rather good pizza followed by rather good gateau, and as the afternoon wore on and the heat subsided so the birds and the squirrels were all over the feeders. We saw sparrows and coal tits. I *think* there were greenfinches, and the bees were all over the foxgloves, but it all became rather vague when the port came out.... 

I took a few photos as we walked, and as we sat. Today was a rather good day. Must do it again…

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