As I scoffed toast I peered into the Internet. It was much the same as it ever was, but I did chuckle at something I read that a friend had posted on Facebook. It advocated that we should never apologize for anything, and had immediately had an “I never do” comment from someone whose nastiness is only exceeded by his arrogance. I considered commenting that it is better to apologize for your own failings yourself than to have others do it for you, but decided against it.
Glossing over all the twee memes about dead dogs crossing the rainbow bridge which fill my Facebook feed these days (which I find particularly upsetting) I had a look at my emails. I had a flurry of “Found It” logs on some of the geocaches I’d hidden. There was mention about these having being found on the way home from the recent geo-Mega-meet. These reports were from someone of whom I’d not previously heard but had found over seventeen thousand geocaches. “Travelling home” in Kent from someone of whom I’d never heard with that many finds had me intrigued. It didn’t take long to find that these people lived in Manchester… So they were travelling home from Lincoln to Manchester via Kent? It also didn’t take me long to find that despite having found over seventeen thousand geocaches, they’d only ever hidden one. One !
I also had an email from the power company to say that our energy bill was ready to view. Despite our having underpaid by fifty quid in the last quarter (and that included a fifty quid bung from the power company because the ombudsman said they had to pay us!) our monthly payments are to remain unchanged. And the smart meter which was installed on 12 July has announced that in the last twelve months we used the most power in January 1970. I can’t say I’m impressed.
Having been successfully wound up I took the dogs to the woods for a walk. We walked our usual route round Orlestone Woods and didn’t see anyone. Mind you we didn’t have a quiet walk. I’ve never heard quite so many buzzing insects, and the squirrels were shaking the tree-tops about as they were scrambling all over. There were also some very noisy things crashing about in the undergrowth. Deer? Boar?
To make up for not seeing anyone as we walked, we met an idiot as we parked when we came home. As I got out of the car so this chap started apologising because he hadn’t seen me. I have no idea why he was so upset by not seeing me, but he wouldn’t shut up about how sorry he was; he certainly seemed distraught about it.
I popped to the corner shop for a sandwich for later and a bun for coffee time, and came home and made that coffee. I registered another negative COVID test, and suddenly the morning had gone, and it was time to set off to work.
As I drove the drivel on the radio was mind-numbing in the extreme, so I sang along to the (so I'm told) odd choice of music I have on my memory stick. I drove straight to work and sat in the car park and enjoyed the peace and quiet as I scoffed the sandwich I had bought earlier.
The excitement of a late shift in the blood bank was something of a contrast to the peace and quiet of lunch time.
At twenty-five past four I took a couple of minutes out, and activated one half of my latest geo-project. And as I did my bit so the geo-feds did theirs in activating the other half. After a few days' work, Church Micro 665 - Lenham was up and running. A five-part little walk along the public footpath going through the churchyard in Lenham answering questions as you go; each correct answer rewarding you with one fifth of the co-ordinates of a nearby geocache. In the past few weeks I mentioned that I'd been awarded another set of Adventure Labs by geo-HQ; let's hope the punters like what I've done with them. I'm told that I'm not the first person to set an Adventure Lab as a Church Micro, but no one can seem to find any other examples of this.
(In my world setting an Adventure Lab as a Church Micro is a big deal; in reality it is probably rather trivial. But reality is a dull place, isn't it? Who wants to live there?)
I then got on with my work; periodically looking at my phone in the hope that someone would go and do the Adventure Labs (and associated cache), and after a little while I had a message to say that someone had got First to Find, and that all was well with what I had set up. I was glad about that; no matter how much you plan and test, there is usually some problem which is overlooked.
I had intended to put the finishing touches to my next geo-project over the next few days with a series of six Wherigo geocaches going live next weekend, but that plan has hit a snag. The location I had in mind was on SSSI land, and despite having got all the requisite permissions from the land manager it turns out I also need to get them from the land owner too. Having filled in no end of silly forms for the Forestry Commission I've now got to fill in exactly the same forms for Natural England... Well... I haven't *got to* at all. Quite frankly I can't be arsed. I shall just find somewhere else. Doing so will be a lot less trouble...
I just need to find somewhere else.
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