6 July 2020 (Monday) - This n That

I slept for over eight hours last night. That rarely happens. I made myself a bowl of granola and watched an episode of “Pure”. I watched the first episode a week or so ago and wasn’t impressed – the second episode was much better.

I then sparked up my lap-top… and rebooted it again. Eventually it started working properly. I had my usual rummage on Facebook including having a look at the identical postings on both of the local geocaching groups. Since the demise of the original local geo-group two new groups have sprung up. They aren’t in competition at all, but rather than using one group in preference to the other, most people seem to be posting the same stuff to both. It would be nice if we only had one, but better two than none, I suppose.

“Unknown” was still sending me obscene emails, so I’ve tweaked the blog settings. Hopefully I’ve put a stop to that nonsense.

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about how the government have allocated one billion and a half billion quid for "the arts". A life-line has been thrown to the arty-farty theatres which looked set to go bankrupt because they are struggling to keep afloat what with the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions which forbid them from opening.

Meanwhile the government has published a list of acceptable holiday destinations.

It seems odd that people can sit next to each other on an aeroplane but can't sit next to each other in a theatre.

"Thought For The Day" was equally odd. Some leading light in the world of Catholic studies had been wheeled on to blather platitudes. Apparently the churches had all re-opened yesterday. This woman who was blathering was saying how it was nice to have someone else leading the God-bothering because it gave all the women a rest. It was claimed that over the last few months women had been taking on the role of "priest" (in various support bubbles) what with churches being closed. You would have thought that a leading light in the world of Catholic studies would have known that women are specifically forbidden from being priests in the Catholic church, wouldn't you?

Meanwhile with over a hundred earthquakes in the area recently the super-volcano in Yellowstone Park would seem to be about to go Ka-Boom... or is it.

The headline has you believe that an Earth-shattering (literally) event is about to take place but when you read the article one of the experts says "So in fact, we're sort of on the low side of average this month."

This is exactly the scaremongering that had no one take the COVID-19 crisis seriously, isn't it?

I got to work, and once i'd deployed (as one does) I spent much of the day peering down a microscope where I seemed to be using the word "anisopoikilocytosis" a lot. I suspect that I was in a minority by doing so. I wonder whether that had anything to do with the headache that lasted all morning.

As I worked I had an email. The bosses had thought that the entire workforce might benefit from reading "Living with worry and anxiety amidst global uncertainty".

At first it sounds rather hippy-tree-hugging nonsense, but there's one or two useful snippets in there. And reading it made a nice change from doing work.

With work done I set off to Aldi where the staff there were far more welcoming than they were the last time I visited. I got some vital supplies (wine, port and amaretto) then came home.

"er indoors ^TM" boiled up a rather good bit of dinner, and we spent far too long sniggering at poor Treacle who was snapping at a particularly annoying fly…

I’m glad my headache has finally gone.

5 July 2020 (Sunday) - Shoreham

I woke at half past four feeling like death warmed up. I popped to the loo, and went back to bed thinking that I would have to cry off from today’s planned walk.

I went back to sleep and woke two hours later feeling fine. What was that all about?

Over brekkie I had a look at Facebook. A friend of mine was asking about why people were lighting candles in a cathedral. Supposedly for victims of COVID-19 it begged the question of why God wasn’t being seen to be doing very much. I’ve been asking this question since the mid-1980s. Back then I was a Steward in the Methodist church (I was one of four who hired and fired the vicar). After quite a few years I came to the realisation that I didn’t believe a word of the religion. Rather than believing, I was actually desperately hoping that it was true because the thought of a world in which the creator of it wasn’t my best friend was rather frightening. What finally made me see sense was that I was constantly making excuses for a God that was (at best) utterly disinterested in the world. I read posts from the religious to see if they have the answers I’m looking for. So far none of them have anything other than misguided desperation to offer, but hope springs eternal.

I then took umbrage with something that someone had written on a “found it” log on a relatively local geocache (not one of mine), so I posted a pointed comment on the local geocaching Facebook page. It never fails to amaze me (in all walks of life) that those who have very little experience of whether it is think they know better than those who’ve been doing it for years.

I checked my emails – another two comments had been posted to the blog from “Unknown” who is desperate for me do “do the dirty deed” with him/her/it. I can’t find any option to report “Unknown” to the feds for porn-mongering, which is a shame. However I did have another fifty “found it” logs gushing praise on my geocaches, so that was a result.

And there was another update from “Neighbourhood Watch”. Again my area remained crime-free whilst the supposedly posher parts of town seem to be as lawless as the wild west.

We got the dogs organised and into the car, and Munzee-ed all the way to Shoreham where we met Karl, Tracey and Charlotte. We sparked up out sat-navs and set off on a rather good walk around the Shoreham area. We followed a well-marked route along the river and then back to the car park along some rather pretty footpaths. There was one stretch of lane which was rather busy, but I suspect that was a feature of the loosening of lock-down.

We were rather pleased to find a little ice-cream stall randomly along one of the footpaths. And in a sign of our times this little stall in the back of beyond only took card payments, and offered receipts by email. A tub of lavender ice-cream went down very well. The dogs shared a tub of vanilla ice cream – they seemed to enjoy it. In all the excitement of dogs eating ice creams none of the normal people saw me getting the geocache which was not ten yards from the ice cream stall, doing the secret rituals, and then stuffing it back in its hidey-hole.

At the end of the walk we had a look at the pub – it was rather heaving and there were no spaces at all. But we didn’t mind – we’d had a drink with our picnic (whilst the dogs enjoyed their rice) when we sat overlooking one of the most beautiful views you ever did see.

There were a *lot* of people out and about today. We smiled and greeted all the people as we went; perhaps one in four smiled back. The others pointedly ignored us or looked down on us as though I was the sh*t on their shoe. As we rummaged in the undergrowth we met another set of geocachers – they too were stand-off-ish to the point of rudeness. Such a shame – does it cause these people physical harm to be civil?

Geocache-wise this route is excellent. Caches hidden away from the normal people, but quite quickly found by us; all relatively big with many large enough to hold swappable thingies for the kiddies. What I particularly liked about this route was that we’d walked it at least twice before, The chap who’d hidden the caches (like me) thinks that cache routes have a fixed life span, and when they are only being found about once a month or so then it is time to replace them. That way people can have another visit to a rather pretty part of the world. You can see how beautiful it is from the photos I took today.

I slept all the way home.

Once home "er indoors ^TM" boiled up a rather good bit of scran. She wasn’t impressed with what she’d boiled up, but I thought it was rather good. As we scoffed it we watched an episode of “Taskmaster”, then tuned into the Sunday evening Zoom catch-up.

I think I caught the sun today; I’m feeling absolutely all-in. An early night might be in order…

4 July 2020 (Saturday) - Late Shift

I didn’t wake up until quarter to eight – that’s something of a lie-in. I’d just had my shave when I heard my phone beep. A new geocache had gone live five miles away. With a little time on my hands I got dressed, ran down the road, drove out to Wye, and twenty-four minutes later I was doing the happy dance having been the first one to find it. There are those who delight in the FTF – I’m happy to get one a month, and that’s me now done for July. As I drove home I went via the main roads. I’d gone out along the back lanes to avoid getting stuck at the railway crossing, and as I drove home (I could be mistaken) I saw what looked to be the local predominant hunter of FTFs who had been stuck in the queue when the railway crossing had closed.

I came home and had a later-than-usual brekkie. I gloated on Facebook about the FTF. With “Unknown” still bombarding me with requests to “do the dirty deed” I’ve had to tweak the settings of this blog. I’ve gone from hardly any comments to having loads; all of them being rather unmoral.

My in-box had over sixty “found it” logs on geocaches I’d hidden which I saw as a result.

I had hoped to take the dogs to Orlestone Woods this morning, but with time pushing on we just walked the local roads scanning random bar codes on equally random lamp posts as we went. The dogs behaved themselves, and we came home past the corner shop where we got a couple of almond croissants which we scoffed with a cuppa.

The postie had been with the Lego I’d ordered on Monday; I quite like my Lego crocodile. I then ordered what I think I actually wanted when I ordered the wrong thing on Monday

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio really were saying "blah blah dull, blah blah dull". Sometimes Radio Four can be insightful, sometimes it is interesting or amusing, but sometimes it is tedious. So I turned it off and sang along to the strange music in my car.

I got to work and had a plate of macaroni cheese, then tackled writing up a little CPD. Whilst doing this I figured out how to re-set the Blogger editing software back to how it used to be (and back to how I liked it) from how the people at Blogger have changed it (yuk!)

I do wish IT people wouldn't fiddle with things.

With the rest of the country now able to go to the pub and go have a haircut, I got on with the late shift. I wasn't missing much; I suppose I am very lucky in that lock-down hasn't really affected me that much at all. I've been doing my own haircuts for twenty years now, so going to the barber doesn't feature in my life. And as for going to the pub...

We might call in on one tomorrow, but beer is nearly a fiver a pint in the pub, pubs are restricted to what beers the landlord has got in (often a rather basic choice) and you have to put up with the Great Unwashed swarming around.

I'm fast preferring to get a very good pint of a decent ale or lager of my own choice from the shops (for less than a third of the pub's price), and drink it with good company well away from the Swarming Hoardes.

Work was work, but as an added bonus there was cake. This was unusual for a Saturday. Being at work I did miss the Saturday on-line quiz, but that is something which isn't what it was. When I started the quizzes going (a few months ago) I mentioned on Facebook that I wanted to do a quiz, and the first one or two involved only the family and friends who'd responded to my suggestion.

As time has gone on, family and many friends have dropped by the wayside and the thing seems to have become something (exclusively?) for the Kent geo-gang. I can't honestly say that this is any better or any worse. It's different, and I don't do "change" very well...