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29 January 2022 (Saturday) - Weekend Walk

I did chuckle as I peered into Facebook this morning. Someone who rarely posts anything was grumbling about how many people were posting about playing “Wordle”. It’s a harmless enough game; I can’t see the problem with playing it. But this is what is wrong with Facebook, social media and society in general isn’t it. Everyone wants to take from it; not many are prepared to give.

I then had a bit of a rant which I will reproduce here… even though I’ve ranted it before. A friend had asked “why don’t the 99% who aren’t offended by everything stop pandering to the 1% who are?” It is a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree, but the reason is simple and obvious. It is because the one per cent who are offended by everything get off their arses and make their voices heard, whilst the rest of us don’t.
I’ve seen classic examples of this.
From 1984 to 1986 we lived in a flat the landlady of which was an active member of a crackpot-lefty-greenie-tree-hugging-animal-rights-political-activist bunch. Such groups were rife in the early 1980s and at the time everyone laughed at them. I can distinctly remember a conversation with her when she told me that her group would never have any respect from the public, that they were seen as being a bunch of loonies, and that she and others of her group were all going to seek office in various public bodies and use that as a platform from which they would be able to get taken seriously.
And that’s what they did. No one laughs at animal rights or green issues or the gay community any more, do they?. They all stood up for what they believed in. One specific example of what her lot wanted was the banning of sales of puppies and kittens in pet shops. They got their way.
Or look at how much NHS money gets spent per head on haemophiliacs compared to diabetics (LOTS more!). When I was at college in the 1980s I was told that anyone working in the NHS should go into the field of haemophilila as the nation’s haemophiliacs had got themselves organized, and there would be no cutbacks there.If the majority who claim to be sick of pandering to a vocal minority really feel strongly, they need to stand for election in councils and in voluntary organizations and in pressure groups and fight back !!!
They won’t though…

 

As my piss cooled we got organised and set off. As we drove we listened to Steve on Radio Ashford until the reception was so poor that he sounded like an angry dalek, but by then we were almost at Kings Wood (again). I like the place as (just like Orlestone) the dogs can run straight out of the car without their leads. But (unlike Orlestone) the place isn’t a sea of mud. We arrived, and after five minutes so did Karl, Tracey and Charlotte, and we had a rather good walk.

As we walked we found a pair of “Family Guy” slippers. Who loses a pair of slippers in the woods? Treacle climbed a tree (I wish she wouldn’t). The weather was glorious – we sat on dry ground to have our picnic lunch, and as we did, so a butterfly flew past. A butterfly – in January!

I took a few photos as we walked. Kings Wood is a beautiful place.

Rather than working out new walks up there, we walked a route past twenty-one of my geocaches to check that all was well with them. I was very pleased to find that very little maintenance was needed today. Over the last few months passing hunters of Tupperware have been good enough to sort any issues for me, for which I am very grateful. According to the rules it is down to me to sort any issues… according to common sense someone seeing a problem can sort it in less time than it would take them to tell me about the issue.

After six miles we found ourselves back at the car park where Treacle picked something off of the ground and ate it. No one was sure quite what it was she had; my money would be on a dead frog. Dogs are foul creatures, you know.

 

We said our goodbyes and came home where “er indoors TM” and both dogs promptly fell asleep. I had a little look on-line and apologised to the organiser that I’d completely forgotten about today’s geo-meet that had taken place in Deal as we’d been walking round the woods. Woops! 

“er indoors TM” boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching episodes of “Junior Bake Off”. Some of those kids are *so* talented… others not so.

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