13 November 2013 (Wednesday) - Movies, Lurgy, Beer

I had a worse night than usual; and that is saying something. I woke at silly o’clock feeling ill, and didn’t get any better as the night wore on. I finally gave up trying to sleep and was watching telly at 5am.

I was walking my dog by 7.30am; I was so bored. It was a very cold morning. We went through the town centre as I had a parcel to collect. I took “Furry Face ^TM “ into the collection office with me; there were no signs saying I couldn’t. And with dog walked we came home again where I spent an hour or so doing laundry and homework.

The plan had been to do something of a road trip today, but I wasn’t feeling one hundred per cent, and as I was debating whether or not to stick with the road trip plan the phone beeped. Cheryl had a driving lesson planned and Lacey was off school with the same lurgy I seem to have. Would I sit with her during the driving lesson? Of course! Fudge and I wnet round, and whilst driving lessons got driven, Lacey and I watched movies. “Thumbelina” and “The Cat in the Hat”. And after two movies we had bacon sarnies. Very tasty.

I then came home and spent an hour or so attacking the ironing whilst watching a documentary about John Le Mesurier. I’m basically a nosey person, and I do like biographies. And with the ironing done the Rear Admiral arrived and we set off to Folkestone where we met Steve at the Firkin for a pint of ale. It was a very nice pint, so we were cheeky and had another. And another.

Things got very vague…

12 November 2013 (Tuesday) - Fleas, FTF...

I was woken at 4.30am by the snoring of a small dog. "Furry Face ^TM" had crept upstairs during the night and made myself comfortable with his chin on my shoulder and his beak pushed into in my left ear. I didn't bother trying to get back to sleep and got up. I came"Merlin" downstairs to find the lights on our router were flashing like things possessed. I glanced out of the window and saw the lights were on next door. I have a sneaking suspicion that "nutty noodle next door" has worked out our wireless router's password; hence the frantically flashing lights at the most obscure times. I pulled the plug on the router for ten minutes just in case.

Over a bit of toast I watched a rather dire episode of "Earth 2". Why do all series start so good and end up so lame? "Furry Face ^TM" came downstairs ten minutes too late for toast. I was glad he was up though. Being the twelfth of the month it was time to apply his anti-flea treatment. The stuff seems to work as I've not found a flea on him for months. I de-scaled the washing machine as well;

Fudge's de-fleaing and the washing machine's de-scaling is something of a double act in our household.

And so to work. Last night I rather gave up trying to find a new geocache. As it was on the way to work I tried again this morning. It's amazing what a little bit of daylight and the lack of torrential rain can do; you find entire footpaths that you can't see in the dark. Pausing only briefly to fall over in the mud twice I soon had the cache in hand. First to find. Happy dance.

I carried on to work; listening to the radio. The talk was of the disaster in the Philippines, and of the aid being sent by various countries. I have grumbled about the bad weather we've had recently. Listening to the horror stories on the radio made me feel somewhat more grateful for my lot in life.

Once at work I did my bit, and then came home again. Last night I had exhausted my stash of curly-wurlies so I stopped off at the sweetie shop for some white Maltesers. And the I joined the throng at Arden Drive where we watched "Merlin". Or that is everyone else watched "Merlin". I fell asleep...

11 November 2013 (Monday) - Dull

I think my little dog was rather worn out by yesterday's walk; he slept right through the morning's toast time. As I left for work this morning my heart sank. The house next door is up for sale. I suppose that having new neighbours could be a good thing; it need not necessarily be bad.

It's just a shame we are losing the decent ones; it's just my luck that we are keeping "nutty noodle and the pianist".

I set off to work facing a very bright morning; a great improvement on last week. The sky was gloriously red, and there was even a rainbow. As I'd gone to bed last night I'd seen frost on the cars; there had been a thaw overnight. I was pleased about that.

I wasn't pleased about my fellow motorisits though. there was some twit who came up behind me just as I left Beaver Road and this chap was directly behind me all the way to Windcheap. He seemed to try to drive at a steady forty five miles per hour. At the strectches of the A28 when you can speed up he lagged a long way back; at the parts where the speed limit is 40mph he would be inches from my rear bumper.

Fortunately I lost him when I stopped off for the makings of some lunch at Morrisons. Mossisons was the same as ever; I had a plan to buy armpit-squirt there. It has doubled in price since my last visit. I shall eke out my remaining tin until their next buy-one-get-one-free offer, and hope my pits don't whiff too much in the meantime.

I went to work, did my bit, and came home again. As I left for home I got the news that a new geocache had gone live on my way home. I went for a First to FInd but it was very dark and the rain was very heavy. There is only so much messing about one can do in a country lane in the dark in a monsoon. So I gave up and came home where I watched episodes of "South Park" until bed time.

Some days are *so* dull...

10 November 2013 (Sunday) - Essex

For many years I would go down to the Rye Bonfire Parade at about 2pm for a pre-parade drinkie; and be utterly wazzled by 4pm. Consequently the day after Rye Bonfire Parade was usually spent with a headache. Despite only having had four beers yesterday I continued the tradition of starting the day with a headache.

We had an early start today. Since the evenings are drawing in we thought that it might be a sensible idea to start our weekend expeditions earlier to make the most of the daylight; especially if we are going any major distance. And today we went quite some way. Three of us (and two small dogs) drove for over an hour and a half to the Wat Tyler Country Park where we were joined by an Essex Boy. Six of us then did a Wherigo.

Wherigos are a rather obscure kind of geocache which involves a lot of playing with a specialist app on your phone. There aren't many about locally; and most (all) of those which are to be found within twenty miles have been created by me. I really wanted to do a Wherigo, so we went to Essex to do one.

"The Devil's Porridge" was a very interesting insight into the explosives factories that used to exist along the south Essex coast. The style of the narrative in the Wherigo cartridge certainly brought the ghosts of the past to life. I especially liked the building with differing brickwork at either end because one half of it had been blown up. I was rather expecting to have seen more of the explosive works; it was amazing how much of it had gone and had returned to nature over the intervening years. In several places we had to force our way through brambles. My nose still bears the scars.

And as a Wherigo builder myself (!) it was an experience to actually do a Wherigo adventure. It would have been nice to have seen more of the Wherigo functionality used; but it was an excellent Wherigo; one I can thoroughly recommend.

We then completely failed to find a supposedly easy roadside geocache, and there was an embarrassing five minutes spent with my arm stuck in a hole in a tree. We then moved on to a Church micro where, as well as finding a geocache, I got a First to Find. Or "First to Munzee". I don't know if being first has as much kudos with Munzees as it does with geocaches, but I still felt rather smug.

Stopping only briefly to find a disabled geocache and to look at some chalk, we made our way round to Hadleigh castle where we had a rather good picnic. And, suitably refreshed, we wandered down and along a circular route of a couple of miles where we found several more geocaches. And also found we'd walked straight past one or two others.

Our early start paid dividends; we got back to the cars just as it was getting dark. We didn't find as many caches as we sonetimes do. In fact we only found fourteen today. (And three munzees) But those fourteen were rather special for anyone who hunts tupperware. A Wherigo; three Earthcaches, a difficulty level five cache. And a "First to Find" Munzee as well. As "My Boy ^TM" would say... "not too shabby".

As is often the case I took a few photos of the day.

I slept much of the way home; as did my dog. Once home I took that little dog into the shower where I hosed the mud from him. He then went straight to his basket where he snored soundly for the rest of the evening.

We watched the last episode in the current series of "Downton Abbey". Today they were gearing up for the village fete. I do like that show. It's a shame it's now finished for another year.

9 November 2013 (Saturday) - Rye Bonfire Parade

More often than not I am up before 7am on a Saturday morning; I watch Martin going to the cafe for his brekkie. Today I wasn't up till gone 8am. I shared my toast with "Furry Face ^TM" and checked out social media. Not much was going on. And so with my toast scoffed I took my dog for a walk. Bearing in mind the shambles that we've made of recent walks round the park (and the fact that the runners would be out in force) we didn't go to the park. We went round Frog's Island instead. "Furry Face ^TM" barked at every single vehicle on every single road as we went; he seemed rather excited. Through no fault of his own he seemed to have put the fear of God up a passing Eastern European lady who screamed when she saw him from twenty yards away and then used her boyfriend as a human shield to protect herself from the dog. "Furry Face ^TM" ignored this silly lady entirely; but that didn't abate her terror.

Whilst we were out I did an informal maintenance check on my "Badger's Caches" series of geocaches. One of them was missing. On yesterday's walk I found that one of my "Fudge's Follies" caches had also gone missing. I've ordered replacements from eBay and will have a serious cache maintenance session sometime over the next week or so.

We came home fully expecting to crack on with the day. When we left for our walk er indoors ^TM" had been given instructions to be raring to go by the time we returned. We returned to find she'd gone back to bed. WHich was probably for the best. Within minutes of coming home the rain started. Really heavy rain which put paid to any plans involving being out and about. Which was a shame. Instead we did some dull shopping. To Matalan for some new trousers. Matalan had pretty much the same stuff we saw the other day at the MacArthur Glen outlet centre at a fraction of the price. And on to Tesco for various bits and bobs including cream cakes for dinner.

We scoofed the cream cackes whilst catching up with all sorts of stuff we'd recorded onto the Sky Plus box. We are now up to date with"Trollied" and "Downton Abbey".

Some of the clans gathered and three cars full of us set off to Rye. After a little mucking about en route we all eventually found Rye. Some went to the chip shop. Ably assisted by the Rear Admiral i found so many of my favourite pubs in Rye had shut down, but we eventually got a pint of rather grim Harveys and a second pint of not especially good Doombar from the Old Bell. Suitably refreshed we met up with those who'd taken the coach down, and we made sufficient noise to scare the normal people until the bonfire procession came past. An excellent procession; and following that we (eventuallly) reconvened by the bonfire site where we watched the conflagration and the pyrotechnics.

Rye bonfire parade has always been one of the highlights of my year, and was again this year. It's only a shame that the bonfire season is now over again for another year.

8 November 2013 (Friday) - Tears, Videos

I slept through until 7.30am this morning. I was very pleased about that. I checked out the news over brekkie. As always the day’s news boiled my piss. Apparently the NHS spends £700 on negligence cover for every birth that takes place. This is a sad indictment of our society. Heath care professionals do their best every day only to be hounded by ambulance-chasing scum who pounce on every trivial mistake in the hope of extorting compensation.

And these news agencies wonder why hospitals the length of the country face staff shortages. Who would want to work in a place where the most insignificant honest mistake is blown out of all proportion and emblazoned over the national press? Not that I’m in any way bitter…

I put “Furry Face ^TM “ ‘s lead on him and we went for a walk. Sometimes our walks are dull. Today’s was anything but dull.

At one point it was just a tad emotional. As we walked round by the lake I saw he was kicking up the grass. He does that after pooping; he’d peeled one out whilst I wasn’t looking. I went to clear up his mess, and there was loads of fresh blood in the recently-laid dog poo. I looked at my dog, looked at the blood and felt sick at the thought of him being ill. Up came brekkie. And then the thought that he was pooing blood really struck home. I started blubbing like a small girl. After five minutes of tears, snot and being frankly pathetic I thought I’d better clear up the offending poo. And then I realised there was no blood at all. The bright red colour was an autumnal leaf that the silly dog had kicked onto the poo.

I felt a little bit daft.

We carried on into the park where we met Orangehead and her chunky little friend. The last time we met Fudge expressed his love for chunky little friend’s dog in the way that only a saucy small dog can. He couldn’t do that today; there were several other dogs on that dog’s back already; all getting rather jiggy. Both Orangehead and her chunky little friend seemed rather alarmed at this; as did the owners of the jiggy dogs who were desperately trying to pull them off.

In the distance I could see a cyclist. We often see an old mucker cycling through the park in the mornings. It looked like our geo-buddy so I pointed at him and shouted “Attack!” Little “Furry Face ^TM “  set off at the cyclist in attack mode at top speed; woofing like a thing possessed.

Imagine the embarrassment when we realised the cyclist wasn’t who we thought it was; and was just some random passer-by whom we had terrified. Oh we did laugh. Eventually.

Whilst we were out I went for that geocache I didn’t find last night. Daylight is such a help for seeing things, and I found it after a couple of minutes. And I added this cache to a private list of mine.

Whilst this cache is not in a playpark, there is a playpark a little way away. Not especially close, but closer than one was to a cache I had turned down because the playpark was too close. I’ve now found a dozen caches with playparks nearby. Mind you I saw on Facebook last night that ‘er indoors ^TM found a cache on a roundabout last night; and that is supposed to be a “no-no” as well. I realise there are rules about placing geocaches; there have to be.

If only there was consistency in the application of those rules.

We came home and I had a spot of lunch. As I scoffed I watched a film. The film of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” was rubbish; totally unlike the mini-series I watched a while ago. And after that I watched “Kill List”. Billed as a very gory horror film it was strange. It started off with a couple of wannabe gangsters and went all psychedelic. And at the point where the plot was completely lost they ran the end credits.

What with all that’s been going on in my life I’ve rather forgotten to do my annual video compilation of blog pix for a while. So here’s a selection of what’s happened over the last two (or so) years.

And before anyone starts bleating about breaches of copyright all of this content is freely available on line. All of it was either put up by me, or freely obtained with one mouse click…

7 November 2013 (Thursday) - An Anticlimax

I didn't realise just how much staging last night's little geo-shindig had taken out of me. I slept like a log, waking only minutes before my alarm this morning.

I got up and watched a rather lame episode of "Earth 2". The stories are getting rather shabby now. Having flown interstellar distances to a virgin planet, our heroes are finding more and more other intrepid travellers who have got there before. And the stories are getting silly. In today's story the lead character met someone whom she's hitherto nudey-sauce-romped in her dreams.

A rather tawdry premise which was dragged out over forty minutes.

As I watched the telly I shared my toast with my dog. He is rather lazy at toast time; it seems to be as much as he can do to open his mouth for me to put the toast in. I suppose that for him toast time is still at least two hours before breakfast time. In his world it is still the middle of the night.

Bearing in mind the dreadful weather lately I had a good drive to work this morning. As I drove I listened to the radio. There was a lot of unmemorable hot air, but one article made me sit up and take notice. It turns out that the Prime Minister was felt to have been evasive at yesterday's Prime Minister's questions. The deputy chief whip of the Labour party told the world about this via Twitter.

Am I alone in feeling that here is something fundamentally wrong for a leading politician to be communicating to the world in the way that a teenager would tell his cronies an item of the utmost trivia?

Personally I dislike Twitter...

And so to work. I did my bit. Perhaps not as much as I might have done, or as enthusiastically. Today was not so much dull as something of an anticlimax after last night's successful geo-astro-bash.

As I drove home I listened to the radio. There was an interview with the president of the court which considers complaints brought against the intelligence agencies. It could have been riveting. It wasn't. It was rather dull.

I drove home via Park Farm where I dropped off "Dobbie". "Dobbie" is a rather huge Dobsonian telescope which has been in the back of my car since Monday night. The idea was to have done stargazing with it yesterday, but the weather was against telescoping. Much as it is a good piece of kit it takes up space I don't have, and was glad to foist it back on to Denver.

Once home I popped the lead on to "Furry Face ^TM" and took him out. A new geocache had gone live during the day in honour of "National Church Micro Day". We couldn't find it. To be honest we didn't try that hard. I look suspicious enough when hunting out plastic boxes; let alone doing it in the dark on a playing field...