I’ve had a really good weekend away, but you can’t
beat your own bed. I slept through till half hast eight this morning. I slipped
straight back into old habits and did my usual thing of making peanut butter
with marmalade on toast (and a cup of coffee) and had my usual look at
the internet. Nothing had changed whilst I was away. Yet again religious
nutjobs were offering absolutely anything they didn’t understand as conclusive
proof of their particular brand of superstition. Yet again people were
quarrelling about Lego, fish tanks, dogs, garden ponds, bands from the
seventies…
I Munzed, Wordled from “habit” to “dimly”
in five goes… and then the dogs came down. Dog tiddling is much easier when I
can just open the back door and let them see to themselves rather than having
to lead them up and take them to a park up the road.
And then I had a flashback. Gold Radio was playing “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”
and I remembered my old mucker Dougal back from the seventies who really was a
dedicated follower of fashion. He always had to have the right clothes and the
right haircut, and would run and hide if he thought anyone he knew would see
him looking anything less than his utter best.
I sent an email to the vicar of the church in
Tredington. On Sunday we saw an ichthyosaur in the porch of the church there.
That would make a good subject for an EarthCache but having wasted a *lot*
of time on this sort of thing at Camber Castle in the past, I thought I’d try
to get permission before I did anything else. If I’m going to fall at the first
hurdle I’d rather not waste too much effort.
We took the dogs out. We each only needed one more
Treasure to complete the latest set of Geocaching Treasures, and the closest
place to do that was the geocache at the church at Charing Heath, so off we
went. Finding it involved going round the church to find different bits of
information. This would give us numbers with which we would do some sums and
get the co-ordinated of where we needed to rummage to find the cache.
We went round the church getting all the numbers. Then
we tried again until we both had numbers which agreed. I did the sums and got a
location about a mile or so away which seemed to be randomly in the middle of
some obscure field. So we scratched our heads, agreed there could be some
ambiguity in one of the numbers and came up with a location which was only a
short walk away.
We walked that short walk and came to a telegraph
post. Geocaches are often at the bottom of telegraph posts, but we spent about
twenty minutes rummaging round before finally giving up, sulking and getting on
with our day.
We then went up to Longbeech Woods to walk the dogs.
Again we found an empty car park. Very few people go to Longbeech Woods. We had
a good walk, but a short one. “er indoors TM” had
a new set of boots to break in. It was a shame that Treacle rolled in muck, but
usually one of them rolls in something.
As we walked I thought about the geocache we didn’t
find, and I had a stroke of absolute genius. Why didn’t I re-check my
calculations? It was at this point that I realized that the number over which
we felt there might be some ambiguity actually appeared more than once in the
formula.
Whoops…
I did the sums again and with our walk walked we went
back… I say “back”, “we tried another location that wasn’t at the
base of a telegraph pole” would be a more precise description. Would you
believe it – the geocache was there. It was a rather cute model church.
We came home via the co-op where we got celebratory
Belgian buns. And once we’d scoffed them I cracked on in the garden. The lawn
needed mowing and the pond filters needed de-gunging. I then got the ladder out
and trimmed back some of the trees overhanging from not-so-nice-next-door.
Back in the day before the husband completely vanished I once asked them how
far across out garden they thought it was acceptable for their trees and roses
to hang. He seriously felt there was nothing wrong with them reaching half- way
across our garden, and told me (several times) that one day I would be
grateful for that.
Today I got their trees stuff cut back up to level
with the boundary about twelve feet up. I can’t get much higher than that. If
any of my loyal readers have a hedge trimmer on an extendable pole…
And then suddenly it was half past four. Where had the
day gone?
I Meowdoku-ed for a bit, and “er
indoors TM” boiled up a very good
bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching last Friday’s “The Traitors”.
It was rather good.
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