20 February 2024 (Tuesday) - Pub Dinner

I had a reasonable night even though the covers kept disappearing One of the dogs kept making themselves a nest. And when I did sleep I was plagued with nightmares about being forced to go on a church camp (to make up the numbers) and constantly hiding from some righteous crackpot who was using a guitar to beat sinners.

 

I made toast and had a look at the Internet as I do. A few weeks ago I mentioned about the TV angling celebrity Matt Hayes who had the arse that he wasn’t famous any more. It was suggested that he crowdfund another TV series, and he’s trying to do so…  You can see the details of the crowdfunding campaign here. Personally I’m not going to hand over any money. I had been planning to, but the crowdunder is set up in the name of someone of whom I have never heard. And according to what I can make out, most of the money will be spent on a custom-built van to drive around in. Am I really being that cynical in thinking they could make the TV show using the cameras on their mobile phones on their days off from a proper job. Like I did?

 

I took the dogs up to the woods. We had a good walk; the mud had dried out a bit since yesterday. We met several other groups and all the encounters passed off without incident. I do like our walks round the woods.

We came home where the dogs had a little wash to get the mud off their paws and bellies. They were nowhere near as grubby as yesterday.

I made a cuppa and sparked up the lap-top. I’d had an idea about one of the geo-puzzles I’d failed to solve yesterday. As I puzzled I had a message. “Daborah Mary” had sent me a friend request on Facebook, and had also given a list of her hobbies and favourite activities; some were rather mucky, some quite unhygienic and some anatomically not possible what with my back.

However she is into “findom”. Apparently this is a relationship in which one gives the other all their money.

I’ll quite happily accept any dosh she cares to give me.

After a couple of hours herculean brain straining I solved the geo-puzzle… It will now join the ever growing list of puzzles I’ve solved but haven’t got to getting the associated cache.

I then took Treacle to the vet for her annual once-over and jabs. The vet (who looked young enough to be one of Lacey’s mates) agreed with me that she is a tad overweight. We are going to run some of our walks in Kings Wood from now on.

 

I spent an hour or so pooting in the garden pulling the ivy off of the fence, then dozed in front of the telly until it was time to go out. A dozen of us met up in Singleton Barn for a joint 110^th birthday bash as Matt is almost but not quite ten years younger than me…

I remember our joint 74^th…

19 February 2024 (Monday) - Week Off Day One

I slept well last night, which was a result. Having no alarms set makes all the difference. I made toast and peered into the Internet. Three more people had asked to join Dog Club… or that is to join the Facebook group that goes with Dog Club. With over a thousand members in the Facebook group maybe thirty or forty of them ever turn up in person. But that is today’s society, isn’t it? Everything virtual; nothing in reality. I see this on some of the Munzee and geocaching pages. Sadly the more vocal people on-line would pay money rather than have to actually meet anyone else in person.

 

I took the dogs up to the woods and we had an excellent walk. We met other dogs. We played nicely with those that wanted to play, and we came back when called (instantly) when it became clear the other dogs weren’t interested. So much better than the episodes we had in the pub yesterday. Mind you the pub dog was the size of a cart horse and simply wouldn’t piss off.

As we walked a buzzard swooped low over the dogs. But for all they have a huge wingspan, the bird’s body was about the size of Bailey. Hopefully this means they don’t see her as food?

We also saw a rather nice coat hanging in a tree. Someone had dropped it over the last few days. Perhaps I should have picked it up; as we reached the furthest point form the car park so the rain started. It didn’t last long and we didn’t get *that* wet really.

 

We came home and once mud was washed from paws and bellies I did Dog Brekkie then got pastries from the corner shop for “er indoors ^TM” and me. As I had a little look at the Internet over coffee and pastries I saw a cousin was posting family news to Facebook. Apparently my great grandfather had a secret second family. Born in 1888 he would have been doing that nonsense between the wars. Was it easier to get away with that sort of thing back then?  Some friend of “er indoors ^TM” had a husband who had a secret second family. From a purely objective point of view this sort of thing fascinates me.

How does anyone cover up the time required to be off with the other family?

Especially at family holiday time, Christmas and birthdays?

And the cost – how do you hide that level of expense from the other half?

Personally I’d rather have a bit of peace and quiet than double trouble…

 

I spent a little while preparing for the geo-meet I’m staging in March, then completely failed to solve a geo-puzzle about bell ringing. And then I had a message. “Lunay Camilla” wanted to be my friend on Facebook. Hailing from La Paz in Bolivia today she (I think) started working in the “pleasure management” department of one of the major hotels in Sofia. This one advocates “Less talk, more seduction 💋” I suspect that this major hotel in Sofia is completely oblivious to the antics of its latest employee. Let’s hope so…

 

I had planned to start tidying up the garden this week; I pruned some of the dead stuff flowing over the hedge from not-so-nice-next-door, then slobbed in front of the telly watching episodes of “Four in a Bed” in which everyone started off very chummy but progressively got nastier with each other culminating with one of the contestants turning up to payment day obviously drunk.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went bowling (as she does) and I sparked up Netflix and watched the first episode of “Decline and Fall”. So far it doesn’t seem too lame… 

18 February 2024 (Sunday) - Edenbridge

I slept like at night for nearly ten hours. I wonder if the blue-stained duvet covers had anything to do with it? I woke to the sound of Treacle sucking the duvet. She does that. I hope the blue stain doesn’t do her any harm.

I made toast and had my usual look at the Internet. It was still there. There was some NHS-bashing going on in one of the Hastings Facebook groups I follow. Everyone is so quick to find fault with the NHS. It ain’t perfect but the public attitude to the NHS winds me up. One minute the masses are standing on the doorstep clapping like demented sealions, the next minute saying what a load of crap it is. I delivered my standard rant and checked my emails.

A ”tag” had been hidden in Benenden… and found eight minutes before I saw the email. A “tag” is part of the Snag The Tag game… Someone buys a tag, hides it and publishes the location on the website. People then charge out to get it and the first one to find it keeps it. And then that’s it. Game over until the next “tag” goes out. I’ve been told many times that I don’t need to hide a tag myself; just going out and finding them is perfectly acceptable. But I would feel the need to contribute to the game, and bearing in mind these tags were close on twenty quid each the last time I looked, I think I shall just carry on watching.

 

“er indoors ^TM” sorted bacon rolls, then I programmed “Hannah” for the day and we set off to Edenbridge. Pausing only briefly for a letterbox hybrid just off the M26 we followed “er indoors ^TM”’s car’s sat nav to some obscure country land near Chiddngstone where it decided to lead us in circles. At this point we used my phone to take us on to Edenbridge.

We parked up and had a little walk up and down the village looking for specific geocaches for a little challenge we set ourselves today. Geocaches come in various types and we’d thought we might see how many different types we might find today. Having got a letterbox hybrid on the way we found an Earthcache, Adventure Lab and a puzzle at the nearby church. We then took a little walk down the road where (once we escaped from the normal people) we found a traditional and a multi, then went on to the pub where the monthly geo-meet was taking place. Back in the day there would be thirty or forty people at the monthly meet-ups. But since COVID the meet-ups are a shadow of what they once were. But today was like it used to be with dozens of people along. It was good to catch up with old friends and meet new friends.

I took a few photos – but only a few today.

As the afternoon drew to an end our phones all beeped with the same message – a new virtual geocache not two hundred yards away. We all hurried off together and all claimed joint First to Find. That, together with the meet put our icon type count to eight. It is rare that we get over three on one of our outings.

 

We used a proper Google sat-nav to get home. Once home “er indoors ^TM” sorted a rather good bit of dinner, and I then slept for much of the rest of the evening. Three pints of porter will do that these days…

Today was rather good… must do it again.

17 February 2024 (Saturday) - Asleep In Front of the Telly

With an alarm set for seven o’clock I woke at quarter to three. I lay awake trying to get back to sleep, but only intermittently dozed for a few minutes.

I gave up and got up at six o’clock, made toast and had a little look at the Internet. Three Facebook friends were having a birthday today. I sent out birthday wishes, then saw I’d been defriended on Facebook. The drag queen who entertained us at Matt and Glenn’s stag party a couple of years ago doesn’t want to be my chum anymore. I suppose he (she?) was a vague acquaintance at best and now that he (she?) has moved to Blackpool the connection is that much more vague. But being a very nosey person, I used to like following his (her?) adventures.

I had a little rummage through my emails. The power company sent me a very misleading email claiming that I was two hundred quid in credit with them. They’ve done this before. They take my monthly payments and stick them into a separate account, and then every so often use that money to actually pay the bill. In the past when they’ve told me I’m in credit, what they mean is that the separate account is in credit. So when I asked for a refund they happily gave me the refund… then asked for it all back to actually pay the bill.

I then geo-puzzled until I decided that “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs had been in their pits long enough at which point I had the duvets off of them and stuck the covers in the washing machine.

 

Being Saturday we loaded the dogs into the car and drove off through the drizzle to Repton. As we drove Steve was doing the Guess the Lyrics competition. “Nothing last forever, of that I'm sure”. No?  “Same Old Scene” by Roxy Music. I knew the year and the album too…

We got to the Dog Club field where I opened up and it wasn’t long before mayhem ensued. Dogs charged about and we caught up with friends old and new. It was good to catch up with Sue and Chris – I’ve not seen them for some months. They had the latest addition to their dog collection. They found little Lilly running on the A28. She was all skin and bone, and for all that she has got a chip, there is not data on it. The law about chipping dogs is stupid; dogs have to have a chip, but the chip doesn’t have to be registered.

 

Just as our time was up at Dog Club so the drizzle got worse. We drove home listening to the Mystery Year competition – I got it right; 1977.

We came home and as “er indoors ^TM” scrubbed mud from the dogs I hung out the first load of washing, but the second load in, and popped to the corner shop to get pastries. I geo-puzzled unsuccessfully for a bit until the washing machine stopped.

 

“er indoors ^TM” went off out with her mates crafting and I ironed shirts whilst watching telly. First of all the “On the Buses” film which was rather fun, and then “Dune” which I described on Facebook as “a load of tripe” and I stand by that. The film was an hour too long and was the sort of film you have to look up on Wikipedia afterwards to find out what it was all about. As the tripe film played, every half-hour I moved the bedding about on the radiators so it would dry out.

 

“er indoors ^TM” came home and we put the bedding back. She then laid an egg (big time!) because the bedding now has a blue tinge it never had before. Bearing in mind you don’t see it as it goes under a bedspread I can’t see the problem, but she wasn’t happy. I suggested that it matched the blue paint on the bedroom walls, but that was akin to a red rag to a bull. Or a once-white duvet cover to “er indoors ^TM”.

 

“er indoors ^TM” boiled up a rather good curry which we devoured whilst watching more “Taskmaster: New Zealand”, and I then fell asleep in front of the telly. I’ve spent quite a bit of time sleeping in front of the telly today.

Perhaps if I slept when I am supposed to be asleep?

16 February 2024 (Friday) - There Was Cake

I had a rather decent night's sleep... up until four o'clock when one of the dogs made a concerted effort to shove me out of the bed. I shoved back as best I could, but didn't really get back to sleep after that.

I made toast and watched the last episode of "Peep Show". It was a good episode; a good show really, but like so many TV shows went on for two or three more series than it needed to. There was definitely vibes of flogging a dead horse toward the end.

 

I had a quick look at the Internet; nothing of note had happened so taking care not to disturb “er indoors ^TM” and the dogs I got ready for work. I walked out the front door just as the bin man was bringing our recycling bin back from the bin lorry. On seeing me he made a point of putting the bin back tidily... unlike the dozens of others he'd just strewn down the street. As I smiled at him and went off to find my car he grabbed two more bins and nearly (but not quite) bounced them off of parked cars as he took them to be emptied.

 

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about the two by-elections that had happened overnight. Both were relatively safe Conservative seats, but many ex-Conservative voters had voted for other parties this time. More of these ex-tory voters voted for Labour than for any other party and so Labour didn't so much win the elections as the Conservatives lost them. Rather worryingly the Reform (right wing and nasty) party came in third place in both elections.

And that idiot Donald Trump was mentioned... He's suggested that the Russians might like to invade NATO countries who aren't paying their dues to NATO. Did you know that only about half the members of NATO pay up what they should?

Perhaps he's being a tad harsh, but Mr Trump might have put the wind up the cheapskates.

 

I went to work via Sainsburys where I got a load of cakes for tea time what with me having a birthday next week. I'm always quick to scoff a cake when there's some going so I don't mind getting one or two myself when it's my turn.

 

As I scoffed some of the cake at tea time so my phone beeped. The EarthCache I'd spent most of yesterday preparing had gone live.   Late last night I'd had the thumbs-down on it. I'd made a mistake with one of the waypoints (the one showing where the chalk was), it had been pointed out that I could be a bit more descriptive of what chalk and flint looked like, and my spelling of "Earthcache" was wrong. It should be "EarthCache".

There are those who think this might be a tad picky; personally I think this is a good thing. So often any old rubbish is accepted in geocache descriptions; raising the standard isn't necessarily a bad thing. My edits did the trick and it had gone live... and just under an hour and a half later I had a message to say it had been found for the first time.

 

In theory today was my last day of full time working and I worked all day long… Mind you over ten years ago I blogged about my last ever night shift and that turned out to be wishful thinking.

15 February 2024 (Thursday) - Rostered Day Off

I slept rather well last night, which was something of a result. I got up when “er indoors ^TM”’s alarm went off hoping to get into the kitchen first. I did, I made toast and then had my usual look at the Internet wondering if I’d missed much.

I hadn’t really.

Much of my Facebook feed this morning was adverts for members of parliament in the Milton Keynes area. They seem to be flooding my Facebook feed at the moment; I see these same adverts all the time. They all follow the same format promising to reduce the taxes that their government has put up over the years, and advocating voting Conservative because they are supposedly less crap than Labour. I would have thought that when the Conservative party paid good money to advertise their candidates from the Milton Keynes area they would have had Facebook only send these adverts to people in the Milton Keynes area. And not to me over a hundred miles away. I would also have thought that they would have turned off the commenting on these posts so that endless disgruntled locals couldn’t raise very valid examples of these MPs’ failings. In trying to advertise their MPs, the Conservative party has given a platform to their most ardent critics, and shown they are rather profligate with money.

Not that the opposition is any better…

I was then asked to take part in a survey for people living in Welsh Communities…

And this morning’s petty squabble was whether the movie or video game of “Tron” came first. Thirty seconds on Google would have given the answer, but who wants an answer when you can have an argument?

 

I got the leads on to the dogs… eventually. Morgan has taken to running away whenever we try to put his lead on. I have no idea why; he seems to have a good time when we are out.

We went up to Kings Wood where we met a load of forestry workers having elevensies. The dogs looked hungry and all got given some of one of the worker’s steak slice. And having been given steak slice they went and made nuisances of themselves with the next load of forestry workers we met.

We did a rather longer walk than usual; we went right across the woods to the North Downs Way where I managed to find a couple of geological features that I thought might make a good Earthcache. An Earthcache is a rather simple geology exercise for Hunters of Tupperware with both a little lesson and an example. I pointed out that flint and chalk form together, and that you see the two together off of the paths, but you only see flint on the paths as the chalk is soft and gets stomped underfoot.

As I hunted for examples of geological process Treacle waded in a swamp, Bailey rolled in fox poo, and Morgan climbed through the tiniest of holes in a fence to get where he wasn’t supposed to be.

 

With geology geology-ed we went on for a much longer walk than usual; covering over five miles. We came home for a rather serious session in the bath; all three dogs were filthy.

I made a cuppa for “er indoors ^TM” and myself, then wrote up the web page for the Earthcache project. That only took two hours. As I nipped to the loo in between writing up Morgan snaffled my tomato soup. “er indoors ^TM” watched him… and took some photos.

 

No day off work is complete without doing the ironing. As I ironed I watched a film on Netflix. “Europa Report” was an entertaining enough sci-fi film, but covered ground that had been done far better in other films and books decades previously.

I then dozed in front of the telly until “er indoors ^TM” went off out with her work mates. I turned to Netflix again. “30 Minutes or Less” was a comedy… or so it says on Wikipedia. It wasn’t so much “funny ha-ha” as “funny oo-er”.

 

As I watched the film I scoffed a bag of mixed nuts I found in the cupboard. They didn’t taste quite right. I wonder if that is something to do with its having gone past its “best before” date (last November).

14 February 2024 (Wednesday) - Valentine's Day

As I scoffed my toast this morning I sniggered at this morning’s petty squabbling on Facebook. Someone or other had pointed out a discrepancy in the fifty-year-old sci-fi show “Space 1999” in that the scenes filmed inside the cockpit of the eagle spaceships showed that the shape of the inside of the cockpit bore absolutely no relation whatsoever to the shape of the outside. A trivial point – does it matter? Clearly to many it did and there was quite a bit of consternation and a lot of hard feeling being banded about.

And on another page someone was bemoaning how difficult it was to find the original radio broadcasts of “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Others were claiming it was rather easy, but no one was posting any links, preferring to argue instead.

Some people really will quarrel about anything.

 

With rain showing no sign of letting up I thought I might review old haunts. Back in the day I used to take my little Fudge to Viccie Park all the time. But I rather gave up on the place when Pogo came to us for an extended holiday; he could be something of a nightmare round the park, and being a stocky lump all the normal people thought he was a rottweiler or some other dangerous breed (as opposed to the pug/spaniel cross that he is).

Perhaps the rain work in our favour keeping the normal people away, but our walk went well. There was no belly-deep mud or fox poo or (surprisingly) no squirrels. There was quite a few new streams and ponds, but the dogs stayed out of them. We met OrangeHead and chatted for a bit. She sang the praises of the new café in the park, and when we went our separate ways she was incredibly impressed with how the puppies came running to me at the sound of my whistle. To be honest it is rather impressive to watch… when it works.

 

We came home and I made a cuppa for me and “er indoors ^TM” and I then sat on the sofa with dogs snuggled up and sleeping next to me whilst I fiddled on the lap-top. Getting small geocache containers for my March geo-meet, paying dog club money to the paddock’s owner, vaguely thinking about another Earthcache, planning for the weekend, and doing some CPD until it was time to go to work.

Just as I was about to walk out of the door so my phone beeped. our Munzee Clan has achieved our second target of the month and as a reward I got a crossbow, a longsword, a western zodiac and a submarine too. There's never a dull moment in Munzee, you know.

 

The rain had got worse since we went to the park; I drove through a very miserable morning to the petrol station, and then up the motorway singing along to Ivor Biggun songs as I went. Seeing the traffic queued down the slip road onto the motorway at junction five I drove on to junction four and came to work from completely the wrong direction along the M20. Why was the road so busy? I have no idea.

 

Work was work; it usually is. But there was shortbread at tea time. Admittedly not cake, but it went down the same hole, and went down very nicely too.

I had a message from “er indoors ^TM”. Once she'd finished work she took the dogs out. As it was dark they all wore their light-up collars (the dogs that is, not “er indoors ^TM”). The idea of the light-up collars is that you can see the dogs and don't lose them. All three dogs came home, but Bailey's collar didn't. If you see a very small light-up collar on your travels...