8 February 2025 (Saturday) - Dog Club, Community Celebration Event

I slept better than I might have done. The original plan was that I did last night’s night shift, but I’ve been taken off of those for a while.
I made toast and peered into the Internet. There was quite a bit of ranting about the antics of President Trump this morning. He’s now sanctioned the International Criminal Court. The rights and wrongs of the matter are immaterial really. It’s just his latest move; there will be more. People ranting on social media this morning were bemoaning about how he might be stopped. No one seems to think that it isn’t President Trump who is at fault but the system. If people are to choose their leader by having them be the winner of a popularity contest you are going to get flashy showmen elected. This is precisely what happened in the UK with Boris Johnson. Caught out in his own lies time and again, but no one cared. “Good old Boris” was the cry of so many people. If we are going to persist in this frankly ridiculous way of electing leaders by using a process in which the considered opinion of an educated person is of no more worth than the whim of a half-wit, this is going to happen time and again.
 
I Munzed and Wordled, and activated my latest geocaching Adventure Lab project. A little walk down New Street. There used to be six pubs along a road you can walk in a couple of minutes.
And with that live we got the dogs onto their leads and took them to Dog Club. There were about sixteen dogs along today. Everyone seemed to have a good time, but it was very muddy, and everyone got filthy. There were baths for everyone when they got home. The bath was black by the time our three had been scrubbed.
As we drove home Steve was doing the Mystery Year competition on the radio. When did the two-pound coin come out? 1998. I thought it was much earlier than that.
 
With dogs scrubbed I settled on the sofa and wrote up more cache pages for my Kings Wood project. I got over half of the second major series written up; that would be about as much as I could really hope for in one morning.
 
And then we got ready for the afternoon. Geocaching dot com had given me the opportunity to host a Community Celebration Event. This is a bit like a regular meet-up of geocachers, but a usual meet just involves getting together for at least quarter of an hour, saying hello, and that’s it. Anything else is extra. A Community Celebration Event lasts for at least two hours and is supposed to be a bit more than a standard meet-up. I ran one three years ago on New Year’s Day when we all played Wherigos. Today I borrowed the scout hut and we had an afternoon playing board games.
I must admit to a degree of trepidation beforehand. Would there be much interest? Would people turn up? Would it be a flop? And then as people posted their “Will Attend” logs I saw that so many people were coming form London and Essex and far away. Who were these people – would they understand what I was trying to do?
But (as I always do) I was worrying unduly. We had a really good afternoon. I laid out four trestle tables and all of them were used. Magnetic chess, open the box, Jenga, Yahtzee… people had brought games and were playing them. I met up with old friends and made some new friends and played Jenga and a wonderful card game about pirates.
And I took a few photos. I do that.
 
“er indoors TM boiled up a rather good bit of dinner which we washed down with a very good bottle of plonk whilst watching the New Year episode of “Bake Off”.
It’s been a rather good day today…

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