29 June 2025 (Sunday) - Late Shift

I slept well until six o’clock, but it was too hot. Although the fan helped it was a tad noisy. I don’t like this heatwave. I lay in bed dozing and eventually got up rather later than I might have done.
I made toast and peered into the Internet. There were quite a few photos and videos from last night’s Iron Maiden gig in London; several people had taken a photo of the big notice asking people not to take photos. I suppose back in the day the band would sell photos and videos to a public who would pay good money to see what they had missed; nowadays they can find out for free by looking at Facebook.
I then spent a little while looking at dog-friendly cottages in the Cheltenham area. We might just go visit Irene in the autumn. Mind you “dog-friendly” accommodation is strange stuff. People get iffy when we say we’ve got three dogs, but our three together don’t make up one average dog.
 
I munzed and wordled then went into the garden for a bit. I pruned those pond plants I was hoping to salvage. The stems have had it, but something new might grow from the roots. I emptied the green rubbish from the dustbin into the garden into the green waste bin out front, then scrubbed out the dustbin in the garden that I put the green stuff into. It was rather smelly.
The new strimmer arrived, and by the time I’d put it together an hour had passed and it was getting rather warm. I came inside. I thought about chasing the First to Find on a geocache in Gillingham, but it was a long way out of my way, so I did some chess puzzles and played one of the bots on chess.com. Those bots are rather good at chess.
 
I soon got fed up with losing to the chess bots, and seeing I had a few moments spare I changed my mind and decided to chase that First to Find in Gillingham. With the month ending tomorrow my ongoing streak of getting at least one FTF a month was about to come to a crashing end. 
I set the sat-nav which immediately directed me away from a road closure near Matalan about which I knew nothing. But having gone up in my estimation it then pissed on its chips by taking me along every country lane it could find in the vicinity of Farthing Corner before insisting that I went up a closed road in the arse-end of nowhere. You'd think that whoever it is that gives permission for roads to be officially closed would tell Google, wouldn't you?
The diversion only added ten minutes to my trip, and it wasn't long before I was standing on the side of a no-stopping road in Gillingham looking with dismay at a rather grim little grassed area. I had a little look about and saw nothing. The thing I was looking for was supposed to be a "small" which would be about the size of an apple, and had a terrain rating of one which meant that it could be got at by someone in a wheelchair... Then I had a stroke of genius. I re-read the description of that for which I was hunting. The person who'd hid it had only ever found one geocache... so realising that I could be looking absolutely anywhere for absolutely anything I broadened my search and soon found a fake leaf half-way up a tree.  Though it was a fake leaf that no one else had yet found. I was first, which was all that mattered. Go me.
Whilst I'm pleased that someone had taken the time to give me a little fun this morning it's a shame that the reviewers don't insist that people get a little more experience (so they understand the silly geocaching game) before they allow them to hide things.  
I drove on to work feeling rather pleased with myself. Having been beaten to yesterday's FTF and facing the prospect of a broken FTF streak had rather boiled my piss. Mind you it is only (so far) a streak of six months. I once got to one month off of two years before blowing the streak.
 
I got to work and went to the works M&S to get a sandwich... and then walked straight out. Their sandwiches aren't that good compared to anyone else's.  Their water bottles are half the size of what you can get in Tesco or Sainsburys or the co-op. And their meal deal is over one pound fifty more.
I went to the League of Friends shop and got a coronation chicken sandwich instead. 
The late shift was a tad too much like hard work for my liking, and the coronation chicken sandwich was a disappointment.
 
As I drove home an old Frankie Howerd radio show was being broadcast… it hadn’t stood the test of time. Bearing in mind how good some of the output of Radio Four can be you have to wonder why they put out such drivel on Radio Four Extra…
 
And now I’m going to check on Bailey. She’s developed a habit of going up the garden bothering frogs late every evening. I wish she wouldn’t

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