Second Helpings

Tax Evasion

Busy, busy, busy. The hours of daylight may be lengthening, but I swear the days get shorter and someone is stealing hours. There seem to be appointments, classes, childminding duties, shopping trips and increasing duties on the home front every day and a bit of free time is difficult to find.

But I'm still trying to take every opportunity to get out and about, travelling to different places, walking my ten thousand steps and searching out a few geocaches along the way. Last week I spent a day in lovely sunshine walking by the canal in Nottingham with a friend. She's quite used to my habit of scuttling off to find geocaches and is quite happy to help out or hang about while I do the rummaging around.

We found two caches quite easily, then came across one entitled 'Beware the Taxman.' Turns out it was located close to the tax offices just off the canal path. The trouble is with sunshine it brings out all the joggers and cyclists who look at two elderly ladies strolling along as if we have no right to be allowed out.

My GPS indicated the cache was hidden somewhere on a small bridge leading to the tax offices, but as there were a couple of joggers doing their leg stretching exercises attached to the rails we decided to search nearer to the building. We did find a plastic toy penguin behind a tree, but it turned out to be a false alarm, so we decided to feel around under window ledges and railings close to the offices.

Nothing found, but determined to continue the quest we were quite immersed in our task until suddenly a window of the tax office snapped open and a straight faced woman leaned out.

'Have you lost something?' She enquired frostily, obviously thinking we were about to plant a bomb or hold the building to ransom. We attempted to explain our mission, but she obviously didn't understand the joys of geocaching and made it obvious we weren't welcome outside her window. I suspect she was just jealous that we were out in the sunshine while she was stuck behind a desk sorting out tax forms, but we took the hint, gave up and headed for the pub. Beware the tax (wo)man indeed.

It's fifteen years this week since the start of the geocaching phobia. It's also a year since I became hooked. I've now found a total of seventy five caches which isn't bad and works out to more than one a week. Only one million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty five left to find.