Facebook presented me with a memory today. Six years ago today I sailed
out into the Thames estuary and did a couple of geocaches out at sea. To get to
the geocache on the Red Sands seas fort you need to
sail out with the official tour guide. I chartered the boat which cost me a
small fortune, then sold tickets to recoup my losses. But I didn’t sell tickets
to just anyone; it was to a select group of friends.
One thing which stuck in my mind about the trip was the
amount of bad feeling it caused. On the lead up to the trip word got round
about what was happening, and I lost count of the amount of strangers who
contacted me to tell me they were coming, and who got rather aggressive when I
told them they weren’t. There were also a lot of people I’d never met who told
me how I should advertise future trips so that the likes of them wouldn’t miss
out. I replied to all in the same way. I told them it was a private booking for
a select group, and I sent them the details so that they could book their own
trip. And in the intervening six years not one of them has done that. There was
a group of Germans who booked the boat last year, but other than that, no one
has made a group booking.
I got the leads on to the dogs and we set off for our
morning adventure. Not having that much time today we drove down to Orlestone
where we had our walk.
There wasn’t any other cars in the car park when we
arrived, and we didn’t see anyone at all as we walked. As we posed for a photo
so I could hear a crashing in the bushes behind me. Fortunately the bushes were
higher than the dogs’ heads, but I *think* I saw deer running off.
As all the dogs ran off chasing shadows Treacle suddenly
stopped. I caught up to her to find she was standing holding her front left paw
up. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, but she limped on and off all the
way back to the car. She flatly refused to jump into the boot, and I had to
lift her out when we got home. Has she strained it?
We came home where I washed the fox poo off of Morgan and
Bailey. We had a cuppa and a rock cake, and I set off to the local hospital. I
got there and eventually found a parking space. Sadly everyone else had parked
rather stupidly, but I managed to wedge my car in to the last spot.
I went in, booked in, and I got in to see the surgeon ten
minutes early. I rather like the chap; he is always cheerful and happy and
inspires confidence. He asked how I was, and shoved an endoscope up my nose.
Firstly up the left nostril to show me what that looked like. Then up the right
nostril where we saw a gaping void where he’d carved out the papilloma. At the
moment there is no sign of it, but I’ve had three follow-ups before where it
seemed to be gone.
He’s suggested I go back in a year’s time for another
look-see.
I came home via the petrol station where my idiot magnet
did its trick. There was only one person on the till; the miserable
cantankerous one with whom I’ve had run-ins previously. She was quite obviously
getting more and more wound up by some dopey woman who wanted a packet of
cigarettes for her husband. She didn’t want the cheapest or the most expensive
and kept turning down whatever brand was suggested. She thought it was
hilarious that she’d been sent to get cigarettes but had no idea what ones she
wanted, and when someone else in the queue had a word the woman’s reaction was
amazing. She turned round, saw the epic queue, and flatly refused to believe
that the length of the queue was anything to do with her farting about.
Once home I had a fiddle with my blog archive - it had
lost some of the piccies. And then I had a go at a puzzle geocache I’ve been struggling
with for years. The puzzle is just random strings of numbers which meant
absolutely nothing to me until I read the instructions. The instructions said I
needed a particular ordnance survey map and a roamer. Had I read the
instructions in the first place I might have got a First to Find on this six
years ago.
I then spent much of the afternoon struggling with an
on-line jigsaw puzzle for geo-reasons.
With thunderstorms forecast for tomorrow evening we had our
seaside walk today. Even though the weather looked a tad iffy. We went down to
Folkestone Leas, but didn’t go very far. Treacle was still limping.
She’s not crying or worrying her leg, but she’s not steady
on it. If it doesn’t improve she’s going to the vet.
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