3 April 2022 (Sunday) - Surprisingly Busy

I woke to a bright morning which was either four degrees below freezing or two above, depending on which weather forecast you chose.

With toast and coffee at my side I had a look at the Internet in the forlorn hope that something radical or revolutionary had happened overnight. I do this every morning, and (as usual) I was again disappointed. There was a minor row kicking off on one of the local Facebook pages caused by someone wanting to apply for a council grant toward their gas and electricity bill. The row was between those who feel that their every expenditure should be funded by some grant or benefit, and those who resent that they personally are being expected to fund everyone else’s reluctance to pay their way in life. As always the truth of the matter was somewhere between the two viewpoints but the squabble looked set to run and run.

I had a look at my emails; I had a notification of a new virtual geocache. They are rather rare and being first to find one of those takes some doing. I saw it was south-east of me… there’s not that many hunters of Tupperware to the south-east. And then I read the description properly. It was south east of me… in France.

There were (surprisingly) also two new geocaches relatively locally. One in Charing and one in Dover. But having been first yesterday, that’s me done for the month.

 

Seeing the washing I did last night was dry I got dressed (bypassing the ironing board) and went out for a little adventure, hermetically sealed from the masses inside my car.

The first thing I did was to unseal myself. I needed to scan some physical Munzees to get a Qrate or two (as you do), so I went to an industrial estate on the outskirts of town where I could be confident on not meeting anyone. I struggled with those Munzees… The trouble is that in order to capture a physical Munzee you have to find the 2-D barcode sticker. Your phone will take you to where the sticker is… or to be precise, to where the phone used to put out the Munzee thinks it was put out. And there’s the problem. When you activate your phone it can take a few seconds (sometimes up to a minute) for your phone’s GPS to sort itself out. Not everyone realises this. There are those who stick bar codes to lamp posts, pull their phones out, do the scan and move on all in less than five seconds. And when someone like me then comes along to find the bar code I am dependent on any hints or clues since the actual given GPS location can be up to fifty (or more) yards out.

I couldn’t find the first two I looked for, and then managed (with varying degrees of difficulty) to scan six Munzees in a deserted industrial estate (to get two Qrates) before sealing myself back into my car.

 

I then drove through town and through Wye remotely capturing (rather dull) Points of Interest. These are all virtual Munzees, and (like all virtual Munzees) can be Munz-ed remotely by just being in the general vicinity. From Wye I drove up to an open field in Chartham. Seeing no one was about I slipped out of the car and Munzed like a thing possessed capping weapons, mysteries and Flat Friends. As I Munz-ed I became conscious of one of the normal people watching me. This chap followed me across the field, across the level crossing (and back again), and as I went back to my car so he got into a car and drove round and round the car park making no secret of his watching me until I eventually drove off.

 

I drove up to another empty playing field near Canterbury for gaming Munzees, and from there up to Boughton. I needed to scan twenty Munzees which hadn’t been Munz-ed for over a year, and I needed to do it away from everyone else.  According to the Munzee map there were a load along the footpaths bordering the golf course. I did what I wanted to do, both in terms of Munz-ing and in avoiding contact,

But…

Have you ever been to Boughton golf course? Membership certainly ain’t cheap; six hours golf costs more than a year’s premium membership of geocaching or Munzee. Consequently you’d think they would attract a certain sort of client. I was frankly amazed to find they attracted the sort who swear very loudly and very frequently. As I walked around the paths I could hear pretty much every swear word known to science (except “fitbin”) being screamed from all directions.

 

Having achieved pretty much all the Munz-ing I wanted to do today I headed home. As I’d driven through Canterbury I’d seen queues at the petrol stations of people panic-buying petrol. There wasn’t any of that nonsense in Ashford so I panic-bought some from Sainsbury’s before it again became fashionable closer to home.

 

Once home I made lunch (toast) and had a look at the smart meter. The thing was laying an egg as we were suddenly massively over budget for use of gas and leccie. The nice people at the power company had told it that they’d increased their charges last week, but had left it to me to tell it that how much I was paying had changed as well (even though the nice people at the power company had changed that without asking me!). I had a little fiddle with the smart meter and had a look at my on-line account. Last Thursday the price of a unit of electricity was only fifty-seven per cent of what it is now. Similarly last Thursday a unit of gas cost me only forty-three per cent of what it costs me today.

 

Over an early tea I watched a film. “Brighton” was the story of two old couples coming on a day trip to Brighton to re-live and remember the visits of their youth. It could have been a good film *if* the film makers had done their homework.

  • The film was called “Brighton” but I recognised many of the locations as being in Hastings and Eastbourne.
  • The scenes set in the 1950s features modern road signage.
  • The vintage bus (supposedly in Brighton) had a six-digit Hastings phone number; Hastings didn’t get six-digit phone numbers until twenty years later (I was there!)
  • Rock a Nore is *not* in Brighton.

I suppose for anyone who hasn’t lives on the East Sussex coast (i.e. pretty much everyone) these trivial details would go completely unnoticed. But I noticed them…

 

And now it is beginning to get dark outside. I thought today was going to drag with me doing little but sulk about what I was missing. What with Munz-ing and sorting the power bill and telly today has been rather busy, which was probably for the best.

I shall play “Worms” for a bit, then see what’s happing on that telly…

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