The sound of heavy rain against the window woke me at four
o’clock. Judging by the snoring it didn’t seem to wake anyone else though.
I nodded off again and slept through for another four hours
until backache forced me to stop laying there. I got up, took those dogs who
wanted to go out outside, then made brekkie. There was a minor disaster as the
milk had gone off. Milk seems to be going off quite a lot at the moment.
Fortunately we found some powdered stuff in the cupboard. Unfortunately it was
best before over two years ago. That went the way of the liquid stuff.
As I scoffed brekkie I peered into the Internet as I do. As
it has been doing for the last few days my Facebook feed was filled with
articles about the late Freddie Mercury. I don’t dislike the chap. I quite like
some of his music. But what has possessed Facebook to bombard me with his stuff
just lately?
There was a rant on one of the Facebook pages I follow. The
tired old argument about how cash is king. Except it isn’t. I found myself
thinking back over forty years to the Harbour restaurant before credit cards
were quite such a thing. The boss would take thousands of pounds of cash to the
bank twice a week. Two of us would go as bodyguards as he wasn't happy carrying
such large amounts. And then all the banks in Hastings Old Town closed and what
was a twenty minute job suddenly took an hour... at the time of day when
restaurant staff should be doing restaurant things.
And because no one accepted cards back in those days boss
always carried a wad of notes in his pocket to pay staff wages and suppliers’
bills. His wad was about half an inch thick. He lived in permanent fear of
being mugged.
Despite the rain I took Morgan and Bailey for a walk.
Treacle stayed behind; she was still limping this morning. We drove up to Kings
Wood and as we arrived so the rain slackened off a little. I’d had reports that
three of my geocaches were missing. One was and two weren’t. Sadly one that
wasn’t missing was broken. Earlier in the year Gordon gave me a rather good
geocache container – a little owl. It is tied to a tree about a mile from the
car park in Kings Wood - you can find it by solving a little puzzle. But someone has got
rather heavy handed with it and broken the lid. It is OK for the time being
though.
We walked back to the car. As we walked Morgan and Bailey
were as good as gold. It winds me up the no one ever sees them behaving
themselves. Everyone sees them being pains in the glass though (to coin a
phrase).
As we drove home we found ourselves in the middle of a
queue of seemingly endless cyclists all the way from the woods back to Ashford.
I was once told that cyclists aren’t allowed to have races along the roads, so
instead they organize time trials in which they set off at thirty second
intervals and the fastest one to complete whatever route they have chosen wins.
Was that what was happening today?
I did my best to overtake the cyclists safely. Other
drivers didn’t. The whole thing seemed rather dangerous.
We got home where the pups had a bath. They’d not rolled in
anything but being low down they’d got wet and muddy. A hot shower sorted them
out. I popped up the road for pastries and milk, and made a cuppa for me and “er
indoors TM”.
With the rain not letting up I spent a little while
uploading photos that “er indoors TM” had found the
other day. Piccies from our old school trip to Hindleap Warren in 1975 and
Boys Brigade camp some time
in the late 1970s. I’m still in touch with some of the people from the good old
days. I say “in touch”; I see photos and updates from them periodically
on Facebook, and occasionally we comment on what the other has been up to. But
so many other people have fallen by the wayside. Take for example the old Open
University gang. One of the albums of photos that has come to light was from my
OU days. I didn’t put those piccies on-line. Clearly from the pictures I was
having a whale of a time, but who were those people? As I perused the photos I
had vague recollections. One might have been a policeman from Dartford, I think
one did the same job as me somewhere in the London area, I think two were from
Brighton, but as for the rest? Thirty years ago we were such a part of each
others’ lives; now total strangers about whom I’d not given a thought in years.
I wrote up some CPD, then with the rain
getting heavier and heavier turned on the telly and watched episodes of “Four
in a Bed” in which (as is always the case) those with a massively
over-inflated opinion of themselves were shocked to find some of their contestants
doing a far better job than they were and for half the price.
“er indoors TM” boiled up a very
good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching more of “The Traitors US”.
In theory the contestants use wit and deduction to work out which of their
number can’t be trusted. In practice the whole thing is little more than a popularity
contest, and it is the bitching and jostling for position that makes it so
entertaining.
And then I had a message from work. Could I go in for a few
hours tomorrow? Go on then… what with the current and forecast rain it isn’t as
though I could do much tomorrow anyway. And one should always bear in mind the thirty-third
Rule of Acquistion.
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