I slept well. I was rather miffed to see rain when I got up
though. I made toast and scoffed it whilst perusing the Internet. There was
talk on one of the local Facebook pages about
Elwick Place. Apparently millions of pounds have been spent
on building a cinema and shops and community areas just up the road, but now
most of the businesses involved have shut up shop. As always those posting
opinions on social media were showing their complete ignorance of what is done
by local council, county council, central government and private businesses. So
many people were ranting about what they should be doing; “they” being
generic unspecified individuals, officials and public bodies.
But sadly many of these people’s ignorance actually
illustrated a point. Many of the issues facing Elwick Place could only be
solved by a coming together of local council, county council, central
government and private business. A coming together which is never going to
happen.
And in the meantime much of Elwick Place is closed and will
remain so.
And then my lap-top beeped. A new geocache in Longbeech Woods.
Well, we were going there for our dog walk anyway, so that would be a bonus.
In order to find where the thing was hidden I needed to
solve an on-line jigsaw puzzle. And with that solved I got the leads on to the
dogs. That took some doing. For all that they clearly love their walks, they
can sometimes be incredibly reluctant to get their collars and leads on.
Eventually we got going. As I stopped and started as we
drove through the slow-moving traffic there was a rather interesting interview
on the radio with Bill Gates. The chap is only nine years older than me, and as
I listened to him I got the distinct impression that he’d not done anything
that countless others haven’t done, but he was just very lucky.
He was talking about his charitable foundation and how he’s
spending a fortune on delivering vaccinations to poor children in Africa. I
wish I could remember his exact words, but he made some comment in which he
said that it came as a surprise that market forces only benefit a vanishingly
small proportion of humanity.
We got to the woods. We parked up in an empty car park. We
could have parked closer to the geocache but bearing in mind how long we’d
taken to get there I’d all but given up on being first to find. We walked down
the lane to the location of our prize, and I was amazed to see no one had
parked in the single parking space I might have used. I let the dogs of the
leads and we walked into the woods all the time expecting to see familiar faces
walking back with a smug air. But we saw no one, we got to where we were
supposed to be, and after a very short search I had the cache in hand. And we
were first.
At this point I looked at my watch. It had only been three
quarters of an hour between getting the notification and finding the thing. It
seemed a lot longer.
We then carried on with our walk. We explored the tracks
and footpaths. We met a nice lady with three dogs and played chase (and
shared treats). We found a Letterbox Hybrid. Pogo rolled in fox
poo.
We came home where Pogo had a bath. And with Pogo scrubbed
I popped up the road to the corner shop to get pastries. I scoffed mine whilst
doing the geo-admin, then wrote up some CPD. I do that.
And I ordered up cash for next month’s holiday. Where we’re going they want
American dollars… which is odd.
And I ordered a money belt in which to stash the money.
I went into the garden where I topped up the water in the
little pond, pulled out the blanket weed… and poggered my back. So I spent the
afternoon having a rest whilst watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” in
which a rather grim little B&B in Blackpool beat some rather good places
where you would go for a country break. Why did this grotty place win? For the
simple reason that it is far easier to underpay someone charging two hundred
quid a night than it is someone charging forty.
“er indoors TM” boiled up lamb
chops which we washed down with a decent bottle of plonk whilst watching more episodes
of “Below Decks”. Those of the crew that weren’t busy porking each other
had the hump with a colleague who would be best described as a rather obnoxious
bone idle shirker. Personally I’m of the opinion that every place of work needs
one rather obnoxious bone idle shirker. It gives everyone else someone to hate
and stops them squabbling amongst themselves.
And I’ve had yet another dubious
friend request on Facebook.
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