24 August 2012 (Friday) - At Bat-Camp

I woke for a tiddle at 3am; it was surprisingly cold. I had a vague idea to be up with the lark for a spot of early morning fishing today. By the time I'd overslept then had my morning ablution I eventually got to the pond shortly after 8am. I caught a few tiddlers and was contemplating making my way back to camp when Lisa and Earle wandered up with a cuppa for me. There was apparently little life back at camp so we carried on fishing until summoned for brekkie at 11am. Brekkie was rather good, and after washing up we all slobbed about for an hour or so. You can't beat slobbing about in a field.

After a rather protracted slob we got up. Some had works socials to attend, others had beloveds to collect. Lisa, Earle and I had seen Egerton on a map and had planned a ramble round the area doing a spot of geocaching on the way. We had a really good afternoon in the sunshine; marreed only by the total loss of phone and internet and GPS signal (which did make geocaching a tad problematical). On the way we met up with the Bat and the Hose-Beast, and only failing to find one of the geocaches we moved into Pluckley. Finding the cache at the church was relatively easy. We were then planning to walk on to another cache a way away, but it started raining. The Hose-Beast had some choice words to say on the matter, and we went into the Black Horse to shelter from the torrent. By some amazing co-incidence the Black Horse was staging a beer festival; so we felt it would be rude not to have a couple of their offerings (including half a pint of the aptly-named "Thunderer").

Back to camp where Steve had arrived. We pitched his tent and then did some Hosey-caching. Hosey-caching is basically home-made geocaching, and the principle worked vary well. An entertaining time was had by all until the light began to fail, So we had tea - chicken casserole - and took the mickey out of "Worzel" until beer was abandoned in favour of port.

We staggered to our beds at 2am. Hic!

23 August 2012 (Thursday) - Off to Bat-Camp

I was woken at 5am by the sensation of having my face gently licked. I was hoping that "er indoors ^TM" wasn't getting any funny ideas, but it was Fudge being excitable. He does that. Having been woken at 5am I should have stayed up, but I thought I'd have a few more minutes kip, and that was fatal. I was then running late for the rest of the morning.

Martin arrived, and we set off to camp via Tesco for some supplies. No one told me that a small bit of halloumi goes a long way; I bought about four times too much. Notwithstanding surplus cheese we were soon at camp and it didn't take long to load up trailers. We took a little while to plan where to put our tents; there's no denying that there was an abundance of dung. But once tents were up the halloumi was put to good use and a rather enjoyable lunch was had by all.

The afternoon was used for a spot of fishing, and mince and pasta washed down with an abundance of beer made for a rather enjoyable tea. I put my cooking hammer to good use and chopped some firewood with it, and as it got dark so we sat round the camp fire. People slowly went to bed, and port and cheese were opened. Oh yes (!)

Eventually we staggered off to bed shortly after midnight; pausing only briefly for the Rear Admiral to lose the impromptu farting contest.

22 August 2012 (Wednesday) - Woodchurch

Up with the lark, and after a very swift brekkie I was loading gear into the car for the up-coming camping extravaganza. Loading the car for kite festivals is easy. For some reason doing exactly the same for Bat-Camp is a nightmare. I never remember half the stuff we need. It didn't help having Fudge dancing underneath where I was trying to put down heavy tents either.

Eventually I got the car loaded; and then I mowed the lawn. I had been told that Fudge didn't like lawnmowers. He didn't seem bothered by our one. But one the lawn was mowed and lunch was scoffed he did seem bothered when I went out and left him for a few hours. Oh well. He'll have to get used to that. I met up with Lisa and Earle and we spent a pleasant few hours in the countryside near Woodchurch finding another fourteen geocaches and completing three more geocaching challenges.

I would love to have taken Fudge along, but he is currently lacking in the requisite social graces, being seemingly unable to grasp the concept of celibacy. Mind you the appointment for his knackersectomy has been made. I'm not impressed though. As well as charging far too much for the operation, the vet also wants sixty quid for two "health boosting" injections during the month before the operation.

Talking of which, Fudge's entourage came to visit. Specifically they came to visit Fudge. And then we all walked round to Asda where we got requisites for the weekend. I'm looking forward to going off on my hols. As always, in my absence "My Boy ^TM" takes command of the homestead. Any housebreakers who fancy their chances with him are welcome to have a go...

21 August 2012 (Tuesday) - Wye

I had a minor panic this morning. My computer failed to load Windows. It then went into a self-repair mode which it wouldn't exit. After half an hour I got a message saying it had no idea what was wrong with itself, thank you and goodnight. It then suggested unplugging any cameras and trying a reboot. It turned out that if you're going to plug a phone into a USB port to charge it, you should do so *after* the computer has booted up. It doesn't like it if you plug the phone in before turning the computer on.

I then walked Fudge round the block. He was fine. Training is working slowly. I then left him "home alone" for a bit whilst I went out on a mission with Lisa and Earle. We got the gas for the weekend, and then to Wye for a walk in the sunshine. Up and down the Downs - my poor heart. It nearly did for me. Whilst we were at it we followed a few geocaching trails. It's now three weeks since I found my first geocache, and today I found my hundredth. Whilst we were out I got a text from another geocaching mission; I'd completely forgotten I had an invite to Sumner's Ponds this weekend.

Home, and I took Fudge for another walk. He's getting better on the lead; a shame he seems to need to pee every ten yards. I suspect it's a dog thing.

And then (being Tuesday) the clans gathered at our place. Fudge found himself locked in the kitchen, having attempted to express his affection in the physical way that boy dogs do once too often.

His knacks can't get cut off too soon...(!)

20 August 2012 (Monday) - Goudhurst

I was hoping to take Fudge for a walk today, but he just can't do polite company. When it's just "er indoors ^TM" and/or me, he's fine. Perfect behaviour; no problems. If anyone else is about he become a sexually aroused whirlwind. Training is ongoing as is the campaign to have his knacks removed, but it the meantime he can't be trusted when others are about.

Fortunately "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" was about today. She took charge of him to continue "Dog School". I left them to it as Fudge tried to hump Sid for the umpteenth time.

I met up with Steve and Maria and we set off to Goudhurst. there is a six mile walk round the countryside which covers fifteen geocaches (and a bonus cache for anyone who finds all fifteen). We had a really good walk in the country. There was a dodgy five minutes when we found that (apparently) Goudhurst is home to werewolves. And there was a frankly disappointing episode when we stopped at the Globe and Rainbow in Kilndown for a lunch stop. The beer was surprisingly good. Surprisingly in that I would have though that the bar staff's attitude was enough to sour anything. It's quite plain they don't want the custom; their attitude was somewhere between rude and arrogant. I would not go back again, and would not advise anyone else to do so.

But trivial problems were soon overcome, and we had our picnic a little way further along the track. There was a rope swing nearby, so we played silly beggars on it for a little while and achieved a geocaching challenge into the bargain. As the day went on so it got hotter and we did begin to wilt. The Goudhurst Millennium Walk is rather rubbish in that it starts off clearly signposted, and as it goes on it becomes more and more vague; eventually becoming just random unmarked footpaths. But notwithstanding landowners who don't mark rights of way we found all fifteen geocaches and even went on to find the bonus sixteenth as well. We did feel rather pleased with ourselves.

Home, and then on to astro club committee meeting (via two more geocaches). A good meeting, a good chat with friends, and we all went outside shortly after 9pm to watch the I.S.S. pass overhead. I took the opportunity to test out my new Google Sky app. I was rather disappointed to find that Google Sky didn't have the I.S.S. on it...

19 August 2012 (Sunday) - Stuff

Another restless night. I don't mind the hot days; it's the hot nights I don't like. It's rather frustrating to have spent much of yesterday looking forward to watching a film with friends only to sleep through the film, and then to go home and lay awake restless for much of the night

And so to work again. I didn't have the Sunday service on the radio this morning. Instead there was a discussion about a party which had been held to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the Pendle Witches Trial. I felt sorry for the organisers of the event who had clearly done their best to put on a family fun day, and to raise money for a good cause. On the one hand they were under attack for making light of the deaths of ten innocent people, and on the other hand they were accused of child abuse for making kiddies think that dressing as a witch is harmless fun.

I must admit that I got a bit cross with the do-gooder who accused the organisers of child abuse. When I was younger I would have stood side by side with that do-gooder waving my bible in the air. As I grew older (but not wiser) I had a complete change of heart, and I would have (verbally) attacked the do-gooder and asked if he had magical pixies in his garden as well as his imaginary friends and the voices in his head. And now... I really don't know what I believe. But I do believe that do-gooders who force their religious views on to children do far more harm that anyone who invites them to dress up in a silly costume for fun.

As a child I was in the Boys Brigade. I *loved* it; lapped up all of what I was told, and had no idea that I was being slowly and quietly brainwashed by religion until some years after I'd taken the confirmation they'd led me to.

The radio article ended just as I drove into Chilham. I went to work via a slight detour this morning. With (seemingly) the rest of the world at liberty to go geocaching today I didn't want to be left out, so I did a quick "cache and grab".

I can't believe how popular the entire geocaching thing has become just recently. A very good friend of mine has been telling me about it for months and I wasn't interested. After all, going looking for little plastic boxes sounds rather lame. But when you find your first little plastic box hidden on the pavement that you walk along every day, you start to wonder how many others there might be. And you start looking. There's about one hundred and six (as of this afternoon) of the things within three miles of my house. I think it's fair to say that over the last couple of weeks I've converted over a dozen people to the cause.

I didn't sulk as much as I might have done today. Others had gone to the beach today because I was working and I'm not keen on the beach anyway, and because the weather had been forecast to be even hotter than yesterday and I don't really like the heat. Hoever it didn't turn out to be as hot as predicted.

Weather forecasting is a joke really. The forecasters look at what happened the day before and just predict a bit more of the same; throwing in a wet or a dry spell for a bit of variety. And when they get it wrong, no one does anything because they are expected to get it wrong anyway.

I did my bit at work and then made my way home again. And I had the shock of my life.

Whilst driving along a rather dark part of the A28 I suddenly spotted a cyclist who came seemingly out of nowhere. It was after dark and this twit was dressed in black and had no lights and no reflectors. With a lot of oncoming traffic I could not swerve, but had to do an emergency stop. Fortunately there was no one behind me or things would have been messy. Why do people cycle so dangerously? Couldn't he have at least worn something light so he could have been seen, rather than wearing something dark to act as camouflage?

18 August 2012 (Saturday) - I.G.D.

I had a terrible night's sleep. Fudge woke me with his crying at 2am. He sounds so heartbroken when he cries in the night. He wouldn't settle, so we broke all the rules and allowed him upstairs where he was as good as gold. I nodded back off (despite the heat) only to be woken a couple of hours later by some feeble-minded simpleton outside shouting to the world about his passionate love for some football team based over two hundred and fifty miles away.

I can’t help but wonder how people choose their favourite football teams. I can understand supporting the local team, or the team of their birthplace, or a team from somewhere with which someone has a special connection. But how can so many people who are Kentish born-and-bred be so devoted to teams from Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds? What’s the attraction? I really cannot fathom it.

I got up perhaps a little earlier than I might have done today. Having booked leave for camping weekends and with the vagaries of my shifts I seem to be off work for most of August but was rota-ed to be working this weekend. Bearing in mind what Ive been doing for the last week it seems somewhat ironic that today is National Geocaching Day and I was due to be working. So I left home a little early with a view to doing a cache on the way to work. I found it right away, and then went to spend a little while looking for the geocache near work that I’d failed to find half a dozen times. I knew it was in a hedge beneath some power lines. Fortunately for me someone had trimmed the hedge a few days ago. The cache was immediately obvious and it even contained a trackable. This trackable was a little dragonfly which had been originally been put into a cache a year ago by a six year old in Colorado with instructions for the thing to find its way to France. From Colorado it had gone to Tennessee then on to New York, Germany and Tunbridge Wells before ending up in a hedge in Canterbury. I need to send it France-wards. I might put it within walking distance of the Eurostar terminal and see what happens.

I hadn’t realised how out of touch with the world I have become lately. My drive to and from work is when I listen to the news, and I hadn’t listened to the news for some time. I’m not sure whether I’m glad or sorry to say that I haven’t actually missed much. Science has found some new spiders in a cave in California, And NASA’s curiosity rover continues its extra-terrestrial odyssey whilst being ignored by the world at large. In fact the most riveting development was an admission from the top brass at the Ministry of Defence that UFOs are more likely to be Russian than Martian…