Down In The Forest III – Recovering the Cache

On Sunday, I was mostly wading in a stream, fully clothed (or thereabouts), but more of that later. There is other information to be imparted first. Background: On Saturday, there was a barbecue at the pub for *ahem* a few geocaching friends (you have to be careful what you say in public, you may be accused of belonging to a seekrit society and ostracised as a result). Omally was the in absentia evil mastermind behind the three-part multi-cache and, following reconnaissance missions by him, me and Lorry, his evil helpers, we (with admirable help from KronA) set the cache on Friday evening, cunningly using two bikes between three of us – which involved KronA doing a lot of running! During the journey, and on her turn with a bike, Lorry approached a large patch of mud with the remark "Ooh! Look! Mud!" which you would expect would result in a tactical avoidance of same – noooo! She ended up sunk in the middle of it with tyres and trainers liberally covered! Omally was otherwise engaged at Donnie Osmond Park to watch people on motor bicycles going brrm! brrm! and mrowwwwww!. And he got one set of co-ordinates wrong! Ner! Swedish monarchs aren’t necessarily perfect! He will deny it, of course. But, apparently, Corals are offering 12-1 on it being true! Ooh! *bets £20 million* As the evening wore on, it got quite dark (especially amongst the trees) because the second stage took quite a long time to execute by virtue of its extreme cunningness, with wires and canisters and things, but the deed eventually was done and the helpers repaired to the Best Pub In The Universe to: (a) drink and (b) practise their evil gloating. Anyway, as I said earlier, I was wading on Sunday. This is because a number of clues had been magnetically attached to the metal supports on the underside of a bridge and which needed to be retrieved. Well, when we placed them, the bridge spanned an arid expanse of pebbles. What happened on Saturday night and Sunday morning? Extensive precipitation, that’s what. So I decided to wait until much later in the day to venture into the forest. The weather duly cleared up and I embarked upon my mission. When I arrived at the bridge, the stream had returned, courtesy of the aforementioned precipitation! Realising that I had been entrusted with a task the importance of which was akin to a quest for the Holy Grail, I gritted my teeth and feet and threw off my slip on/slip off trainers and began to wade. Because of the aged and decrepit nature of my body (and the irritating varifocal spectacles I have to wear), I was unable to contort to an extent sufficient to identify all of the magneticlues and I could only find six of the eight originally placed. And I girded the legs of my shorts so that I could kneel in the water as well! Is this above and beyond the call of duty, or what? On top of that, I had to explain to three sets of muggles why I was wading in the stream in the first place! The rest of the geocaching impedimenta was easily recovered and I returned home, whereupon, following an unusual burst of enthusiasm, I cleaned both bikes! It was all worthwhile.

Passports and IDs

Left: 1973 (wasn’t I luffly?), Middle: 1996 (errmm…), Right: 2005 (eeek!)

Down In The Forest II - Mud In July?

Yesterday, we carried out some proper reconnaissance, not like the rubbish variety found in Devon! There is a geocaching gathering at the pub for a barbecue next Saturday and a cache is being set for the day: Omally is the evil mastermind behind it and I and Loretta are his evil helpers, although, I hasten to add, much of the evilness is attributable to the Swedish element of the team. Unfortunately, Lorry could not be with us on this mission as she was *ahem* busy. We met at the Best Pub In The Universe for sustenance as usual, and then repaired to my garage to transfer two bikes from it to the rack on the back of the car. I reckoned that, if I was going to sweat around the forest again, I might as well get to where we were going and back as quickly as possible. Plus, in some places, the wind on the downhill bits might cool me down. There’s nothing like coasting down a forest track with the wind in your hair. And, of course, as most of you will realise, nothing could make that happen! Near the end of the journey, I spotted a chunk of rutted, uneven ground on the path and braced myself as I rode over it. I sank! Well, the bike did, but I just about managed to keep the machine moving. We arrived at the road and as I set off for the car, I felt two dirty great chunks of mud hit me in the back and heard a horrid, evil chortling behind me. Trust Omally to manoeuvre me into the only patch of mud currently in the New Forest.

The flying cat and War of the Worlds

You might not think that there was the remotest connection between War of the Worlds and flying cats, but a link – tenuous though it may be – does exist. I suspect it may be argued that you could make something link to anything else if you put your mind to it; hey! I was bemoaning the lack of bloggage on here the other day and now I’m going to write about something I’ve only just remembered while writing about what I was actually going to write about! I remember reading in a book about a game which I cannot remember the name of just at the moment, where one person says a word and the other person has to say a word with absolutely no connection with the first person’s word. Now you may think that sounds quite boring, but the fun part is the challenge! The challenge, that is, of the first person who must maintain that there is a connection and proceeds to describe the thought processes involved in linking the first and second words with, of course, hilarious consequences. No? Oh well. Just bear with me. For example, the first person might say “Camilla”. Now, clearly, the second person could not say “horse’s arse”, for example. But he (or she) could say “Superman”, fondly imagining that the first person would certainly fail in the attempt to establish any kind of link between the two. The first person, however, is probably made of sterner stuff and, although possibly stumped momentarily, would undoubtedly respond in magnificent fashion by revealing the following intricate mental itinerary not envisioned by the second person: Camilla – Parker Bowles – Lady Penelope – over – 6 balls – Superman. Get the idea? Oh, please yourselves. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the flying cat. My eldest son Andrew and his girl-friend have two kittens, Fruit and Nut, and no, I had nothing whatever to do with that. They all live in the flat over the pub, so all the rooms are, as you would expect, on the first floor of the building (or, if you are a Merkin, the second floor). Well, to cut a long story short, Nut jumped out of the lounge window onto the (concrete) forecourt. Without a parachute, the descent did not take too long and I was surprised Andrew got down there before she ran off in a panic (or in a strop because she had not been issued with a parachute in the first place) but he managed to retrieve her and she seemed relatively unharmed although she sported a cut lip. When she seemed to exhibit somewhat sleepy tendencies, they began to worry and took her to the vet straight away. She was given an injection for the cut and, apparently, no bones had been broken. This morning, she was chasing her sister round the flat as usual. The connection? Well, it happened last night and we went to see War of the Worlds last night. It was very good, actually.

Down in the forest...

Hurrah! I am a temporary Grockle. Allow me to elaborate. Omally and Pharisee (two of the real and permanent Grockles) had the good sense to come and visit the Best Pub In The Forest yesterday (Sunday), accompanied by the delightful and effervescent Tammy, the love of Omally’s life! No beer was consumed at all, oh nooo, we just sat in the pub garden for an hour or so, chatting of this and that. The decision was taken to do a spot of geocaching and we set off in the direction of Smuggler’s Road with a view to extending the trek to take in Mr and Mrs Hedgehog’s Ziegler Passage. Although I am still a *ahem* Young Man, I admit I am not as fit as I once was and it was very tiring watching Tammy running up steep pathways and sitting at the top, gloating, whilst others crawled breathlessly onward and upward.

We reached a point where a decision had to be made as to whether to do the half-mile or so to Ziegler Passage, taking in Smuggler’s Road on the way back, or do Smuggler’s Road (which was only a few hundred yards away) first. I began to formulate a cunning plan and suggested that, as it appeared I was slightly *ahem* injured, we should go for Smuggler’s Road and, as I had done Ziegler Passage previously, I would make my way to the car park above it and await collection. This was agreed and I punched the air with a mental fist – the fools had failed to spot the evil cunningness with which my plan had been imbued. The cache was found quite easily eventually – oh all right! Omally – damn his unerring sense of detectiveness (he must have had his caching nose screwed on really tight) – found it! He also saved Tammy’s life by preventing a branch from falling on her, using his head to hold it up while he calmly and coolly made notes on how to prevent it killing him when he moved.

I struggled manfully up the track leading to the car park and sat on a grassy bank nursing my injured erm…thingy, you know, the muscly thingy down by the wotsit bone – it was agony, I can tell you, and I had to spend a good fifteen minutes or so sat sitting in the bally sun while a deliciously cooling breeze swirled about the place – sheer hell! The Omallymobile duly arrived and we made our way back to the Best Pub etc. where it was necessary to imbibe some more cooling nectar to refresh the parts before saying farewell. What fun!

Medication, medication, medication

Hello, Lord Julian, in the lack of direct news to himself, did not know another now. I’ll overlook your discourtesy, so I will. Blood, whose mood seemed to be snappy, done him a monstrous injustice. She remembered words he had used: skirmish, although it wa…… In case you were wondering if I had taken leave of my senses and might possibly be sitting here with peanut butter spread all over my shaved naked body, yodelling the “Drinking Song” from The Student Prince, that introductory load of bollocks appeared as the header (in the preview pane – it doesn’t appear anywhere in the actual message – how do they do that?) to yet another e-mail offering me pharmaceuticals: Cialis, Viagra and Valium this time; oh, and many other (sic). I get them every day. By the way, if Brigita Love is reading this, I am not Sohrab Pierson – perhaps I should forward it to him (her?) – the poor devil’s probably at his (her?) wits’ end if I am getting his (her?) messages by mistake. By and large, the intermanet is a wonderful thing but sometimes it really gets on my wick.