A few days ago I mentioned I’d finally got
round to doing something about my broken GPS unit. The power button was
poggered. Garmin don’t do repairs any more and had offered me a discount on a
new one. After a couple of minutes I found that I could actually get one from
the Ordnance Survey website cheaper than Garmin’s discounted price. But either
option would cost hundreds of pounds. I found replacement power buttons on
eBay, and one arrived yesterday. Yesterday evening I glued it into place and
left it to set overnight. It don’t look pretty, and the button is rather stiff,
but it has saved me quite a bit of money.
I made toast and had a
look at the internet. I had a message from Facebook. A few days ago my Facebook
feed gave me four adverts. Clicking once on any of them gave a full-screen
picture of a lady's lady-bits. I reported them as sexually inappropriate and
here's the response: “… We've taken a look and found that this ad doesn't go
against our Advertising Standards”.
Funny old world.
I sent out birthday
wishes to five people having birthdays today, and rolled my eyes at some of the
nonsense being peddled on some of the crackpot conspiracy theory pages I
follow. So many people want t believe rubbish which has long since been proved
wrong. So many others are so quick to show their ignorance. So many are just
plain stupid. And all are allowed to vote and do jury service.
Yesterday a new
geocache had gone live a couple of miles from home. This morning it was still
unfound, so I got the leads onto the dogs and we chased off for a First to
Find… We didn’t get it. With a description of “The cache is within easy
reach attached to something metal” I searched the obvious targets with no
luck.
Having admitted defeat,
looking at the map I saw we could either go straight back to the car, or take a
circular route through the countryside following footpaths back to the car. So
we followed the footpaths. Or that is we followed the clearly marked paths that
people had obviously been walking. But using the maps on my phone I could see
that those weren’t the actual footpaths – those were parish boundaries.
The first field we
crossed was rather squishy swampy grassland. From there the track went up into
a field of mud, then through a wood where the mud was ankle deep. We then went
across a ploughed field, and as we walked along a fence by the side of a school
so suddenly the dogs were on the other side of the fence and heading off in
totally the wrong direction. I eventually found the hole that they’d gone
through, whistled, and they came back immediately.
We came home for a
serious scrub, then after a cuppa and a Belgian bun I went down the road to the
dentist. There was an idiot in the waiting room grimacing at everyone who came
out from seeing the dentist and asking why they weren’t smiling. And then
grimacing at me as though I should agree with him. Ironically he came out from
seeing the dentist with a face like a smacked arse.
The dentist seemed
happy with my gob. I came home and spent an hour pootling in the gardens (front
and back) before setting off on the afternoon’s mission.
I went to the co-op for
a sandwich where I met another idiot. As I queued so the chap in front of me
asked for forty fags. Getting no change out of thirty quid he then announced to
the world in general how he and his wife get through a packed of fags a day
each because of the stress of having the leccie company threatening to take
them to court for their unpaid leccie bill. It clearly never occurred to him to
knock the fags on the head.
I then went round to
the Repton centre for a little meeting. The people there are happy with how
things are going with the Dog Club – they’ve not had any complaints about us,
and say they’ve rarely (if ever) found any errant dog turds…
I didn’t realise that
we are only one of three dog groups that use the field.
They did say though
that the Repton Centre has ongoing costs and whilst they are far from skint, he
is trying to encourage those who use the facilities to pay more if they can.
We agreed that putting
our price up to £1.50 per dog wasn’t unreasonable, and encouraging people to
pop a bit more in the pot if they can.
Personally I think
that’s a bargain and will be bunging a fiver in the pot for my three each time
from now on.
We also talked about
the possibility of a working party later in the year (when it has all dried
out) to give the field a deep clean and tidy up. And to bung up some of the
holes through which Bailey escapes.
I came home via
Shadoxhurst for geocachical reasons, and once home mended a broken dining chair
(I didn’t break it…) then settled myself in front of the telly and
watched episodes of “Four In A Bed”. The first episode featured a trip
to a B&B run by a chap who was wearing the world’s worst wig. This was
followed by a visit to a couple of lads who were half the age of all the other contestants
and for all that I felt they were streets ahead of everyone else, their age was
held against them. The third episode was hosted by a boss-eyed bloke who got
incredibly defensive and aggressive about the same failings that he was
accusing others of. And the chap running the fourth B&B went off sick half-way
through his episode and everyone else all pissed off down the road to a café.
I put a load more
washing in to scrub. “er indoors TM” boiled up dinner, and
Treacle is currently sucking on my pyjama top.
I named yesterday’s
blog entry wrongly… It should really have been “start of part time working”.
Today was the start of semi-retirement. Walking the dogs, pootling in the
garden, watching telly… I can do that.
Having said that, over the next few weeks I
plan to paint the garden fences, start up the pond again, plant rockery plants
round the bog filter, tidy, paint and re-roof the shed… I’ve plenty to keep me
occupied.
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