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1 March 2024 (Friday) - Battle Abbey, Pressure Washing

Yesterday I wrote “I had an email about a new virtual geocache at Battle Abbey. I thought about chasing to be First to Find but thought better of it. It would involve an hour’s drive along country lanes, and I’ve done enough of that already this week”. What I didn’t write was that being the first one to find a virtual geocache takes some doing as they are very rare, and getting one gives you serious bragging rights amongst Hunters of Tupperware. I spent much of yesterday wondering if I’d made the right decision. I checked the on-line listing probably every half-hour with a view to going down early this morning even though the weather forecast wasn’t good.
“er indoors TM was off out with her mates yesterday evening. When she came home the FTF was still unclaimed. Did she fancy a little road trip? We pondered and thought about it,,, and at half past eleven last night we decided we might as well… it wasn’t as though we had anything better to do.
It has to be said that I don’t think the dogs were impressed…
 
There was a minor hiccup on the thirty-mile drive down in that the sat-nav wanted to do as much of it as possible on single tracked country lanes, and when we finally persuaded it to take wider roads it wanted to take closed roads. Avoiding the badgers, rabbits and foxes we drove through the rain and got to Battle Abbey shortly before one o’clock where we had another minor hiccup. To claim a find we needed a photo with the gatehouse in the background. Well… the gatehouse was most definitely in the background but you couldn’t see it because it was too dark. So since no one was watching we moved the car so that the headlights lit up the gatehouse (a bit) and photographed like things possessed in the desperate hope that we’d get a decent photo before the rain started again.
We got one or two… Bearing in mind that were taken in pitch darkness they aren’t a good as they might be,
There was fog on the way home… And all the traffic lights that I’ve whinged about before. By the time we’d got home and I’d done the on-line geo-things in was half past three before I found myself fighting the dogs for bed space.
 
I woke at half past eight this morning; I might have slept longer if not for the sound of the rain. Over brekkie I had a little look at the Internet. It was still there. I sent out birthday wishes to two Facebook friends.
My piss boiled somewhat at an advert I saw on one of the fishing Facebook groups I follow. I’ve mentioned in the past that fishing tackle manufacturers get tents, re-brand them as a “bivvy” (because most people can’t spell “bivouac”) and quadruple the price. But the latest racket is to knock out a sleeping bag and camp bed as a “sleep system” and watch the punters hand over their money as fast as they can.
There wasn’t much else on-line really, which was probably for the best.
 
Usually I would take the dogs out first thing, but the dogs were fast asleep after last night’s adventure and the rain was torrential. I had a vague idea to get the pressure washer out because it makes loads of mess which the rain would wash away, but it was too cold and too wet for that idea, so I spent an hour doing CPD then got the pressure washer out anyway. The ground of the front garden is supposed to be a light brown/tan sort of colour, but it was black. It needed a scrub. In the past, passers-by have whinged about the mess the pressure washer makes (it makes a serious mess) but today’s heavy rain would keep passers-by to a minimum, and would wash away most of the mess.
As is always the case, the pressure washer took quite a bit of setting up, and once set up I scrubbed away. Two minutes scrubbing, thirty seconds brushing the water away. What the pressure washer does is to blast the dirt off of the ground, and it leaves you with a flood of foul-coloured water which needs to be swept away. Swept across the pavement into the gutter. It’s the brushing of filthy water across the pavement that winds up the passers-by. I had one once threaten to report me for getting muck up the side of the car parked outside my own house. The fact that it was my car was neither here nor there. I make a point of having my car outside when I’m pressure-washer-ing so’s none of the normal people can complain that I’ve made a mess of their car. Not that I ever have.
 
With pressure-washing done the rain cleared up I took the dogs to the park. We got half-way there before getting caught in a downpour which turned into a hailstorm, so we came home.
I had a little doze in front of the telly, then watched some episodes of “Four In A Bed”. The first B&B was run by a pair of old biddies who prided themselves on running something that my gran’s gran would have appreciated, and when asked why the wi-fi didn’t work, they said that having crap wi-fi was a feature, and that decent customers don’t want wi-fi..
The second place was a rather average B&B run by some odd chap who hated criticism; odd really when he had so much in his place to criticize. The third so-call B&B was an eighty-one room hotel run by someone with a passionate hatred of the chap who ran the second B&B. And in one of those strange quirks of fate the fourth B&B was not a hundred yards from where we’d been taking photos of Battle Abbey last night. Strangely this was the only place to which all the contestants said they would return, but the place still came second to last. Perhaps if the young lady running the place had kept her chest under wraps?
 
“er indoors TM boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we washed down with a bottle of plonk whilst watching Johnny Vegas’sCarry on Glamping”.
For some reason I’m feeling rather tired
I hope the torrential rain eases up for Dog Club tomorrow morning..

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