I slept well; eventually getting out of my pit at half
past eight. I put a load of washing in to scrub, made toast and had a look at
the internet as I do. It hadn’t changed much.
I looked out the window and saw the glorious morning
and found myself thinking. Many years ago I used to be a general dogsbody at
the Harbour restaurant in Hastings. Over the summer we used to make an average of
two hundred and fifty dinners a day. Four hundred dinners was super-busy, and
when we did four hundred we knew about it.
August
Bank Holiday was always good for over six hundred.
Relatively more recently my August Bank Holiday Monday
would regularly be spent taking down tents and clearing away camping gear. Many
August Bank Holidays used to be spent camping at a friend’s farm. A great time
was had by all, but the August Bank Holiday ones were different to many of the
kite festivals we used to visit. At many of our long camping weekends everyone
was free for the fun parts, but so many people had burning reasons to go home
promptly on the Monday morning. People used to stay to clear up at the August
camps.
Camping was fun but it was hard work.
Eleven years ago today we had thunderstorms.
In a break in that day’s rain we went to a garden centre where we got my monkey puzzle tree. It’s grown rather
impressively.
More recently August Bank Holidays have been a tad
dull… no matter where you go is heaving with the normal people so we generally
don’t go anywhere.
The dogs came down and wanted to go out. I went with
them and followed them round with a bucket and trowel. When we first got her,
Bailey had a habit of eating the other dogs’ turds. We hoped she’d grow out of
it, but four years have passed and she is as coprophagic as she ever was (yuk!)
so collecting the dung before she does is always a good idea.
I Munzed,
Wordled from “clear” to “mound” in five goes, and got
ready for the day. Some new geocaches had gone live down the road, but the
local FTF-hound had been out and had logged the First to Find on one of them
within twenty minutes, and then had gone on to do all the others. I must admit
these days if I’d got there first I’d do the same. Back in the day I would find
one and leave the rest for others. But I’m in the minority with this attitude…
So instead I hung out the washing, and “er
indoors TM” sorted out some pots to
replace her missing geocaches. I then thought I’d prove a point. I cleaned out
the filters of both ponds and tided away in less than twenty minutes. The
filters I use are *so* much easier and quicker to clean out.
We then drove down to the Hamstreet area. It took a
few minutes to get out of Ashford; the roads near the outlet centre were
heaving. For all the talk of credit crunches and costs of living, there’s never
any shortage of people (quite literally) queueing up at the outlet
centre to pay way over the odds for massively overpriced tat.
We relocated a geocache with which the geo-feds had
found fault, and had a look at two which had been reported as missing. We
replaced the missing one, and found the other one exactly where it was supposed
to be. We went on intending to replace a third one, but the area was swarming
with normal people so we gave that a miss.
We then went on to Snargate church where we wandered
round the graveyard getting information for the geo-puzzle based there. We
found that puzzle’s geocache just outside the church then went for a little
walk. It was a shame that the bridge forming the public footpath was not only
impassable with brambles but also blocked with an electric fence. I reported it
to the council – let’s see what they do.
The plan was then a pint in the nearby Red Lion but it was closed.
Apparently they are closed every Monday. You’d think they’d open for a Bank
Holiday, wouldn’t you? Oh well… their loss.
We came home. We’d been out for four hours and the
queues at the outlet centre were still just as bad.
I popped over the road to the shop and got a couple of
bottles of rather good ale (for less than the price of one rather average
ale in a pub), and we sat in the garden for a bit scoffing a late lunch of
nachos and dip until I nodded off.
We had a lazy rest-of-afternoon. “er indoors TM” boiled
up a very good pasta bake for dinner.
It’s been a rather good (if rather lazy) bank
holiday.
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