While we were in the Uffington ‘hood, we decided to seek out a wee cache. We found it pretty quickly (it was an easy one), and we dropped off a travel coin that we’d been holding for a while.

Sadly for said travel coin, the dude who had dropped it prior to us picking it up never actually recorded his drop. I e-mailed the guy when I picked it up and asked him to log the coin into the cache, but after a month there was still no sign of this happening. And since I knew we’d be dropping off the coin on Saturday, I was forced to “grab” it from his hands (instead of logging it out of its cache), which means its travel history will now be slightly skewed. So etiquette lesson number one: log your trackable items as quickly as possible.

Lesson numbers two and three concern the things you put in a geocache. Firstly – food is a big no-no. Animals have a keen sense of smell, and will often attack the cache to try and get to the contents inside. Worse still, don’t put half eaten food in there, like this “delicious” looking orange chuppa-chup that we found on the weekend. That’s just disgusting.

Finally, a word on advertising. If you’re really looking to search out a new audience, perhaps placing ads inside a cache container seems like a great idea to you; I, however, think it’s about as classy as the dudes that hand out those “collector cards” (*ahem*) in Las Vegas. Cheap, and nasty!

I didn’t even bother trying to work out the nature of the business that this guy was advertising; though on reflection, I can only assume it was something to do with the hire and sales of one-eyed penguins. And now that I think of it, perhaps Kristy should have paid the ad some more attention – after all, she’s always wanted a penguin…

England has quite the collection of murals of horses on hillsides, and the oldest of these is the Uffington White Horse. No-one seems to know precisely how old it is, but Wikipedia puts it at over 3,000 years! We ventured out on Saturday with Julian and Shelley to have a close-up look at it for ourselves.

As it turns out, the close-up look isn’t quite as impressive as the Google maps top-down approach, but it does give you an idea of just how big it is. Pretty big.

Right next to the white horse is Uffington Castle, however this one is a bit of a conundrum. See, all that actually remains of the castle is the site upon which it was built – a huge circular landmass surrounded by a ditch (most likely an old moat). But, there’s really no signs of anything actually having ever been constructed there. What’s more, apparently it wasn’t even a castle, but instead just a hill fort!

Still, a huge ex-moat-like-ditch can be rather entertaining, as Julian proved to us. See, he has this great trick which you can use to traverse from one side of a ditch to the other, by simply running down one side as fast as you can, and then expending your built up momentum to effortlessly ascend to the other side. Sadly for him, the uphill journey proved slightly steeper than he had anticipated, which threw all of his calculations off, and saw him running face-first into the grass. Oh, if only I’d been videoing…

While we were in the area, we also took a short wander down to Wayland’s Smithy – two words which when combined somehow mean, “old tomb”. Apparently there were 14 people buried in there, but they’ve long since departed (heh heh) and now it feels more like a man-made cave.

Truth be told, it wasn’t all that exciting, but the walk in the sunshine and fresh country air was delightful! The company wasn’t too bad either, though we had suspected that would be the case when we started out.

Blockbuster have a deal – four movies, four nights, for £10 – so when we watch one move, we end up watching four. Here’s a short review of the other three from our latest batch:

9: Very interesting! This is a computer animated film, which follows the journey of a little hessian sack doll who wakes up in a world where humans have been wiped out by machines. It’s a bit dark and mysterious at times – its one of those films where discovering the past leads to an understanding of the future. It was also very short, so even if you do end up watching it and hating it, you’re not going to be there for long. Sensational on bluray. gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

Seven Pounds: I had never heard of this film before, but was trying to pick out something in the RomCom genre for Kristy’s viewing pleasure. The photo of Will Smith on the case looked like it was straight out of Hitch, so I figured it was a probably winner. I also didn’t bother to read the box too closely – something about changing the lives of seven people – so we watched it in ignorant bliss.

Turns out that the film is very gripping; it definitely has a bit of romance in it, but it’s by far more of a drama. The less you know about it, the better – but it’s good. Very good. There were tears by the end. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.

The Invention of Lying: Fail! This movie turned out to be the RomCom, yet I had thought it was purely a comedy. It’s a Ricky Gervais film, so I had expected it to be of the calibre of Ghost Town. Sadly though, it wasn’t – it was slow, and it didn’t hold my interest. I think it held Kristy’s interset even less! Sure, there’s a few laughs to be had, but overall, its definitely missable. gerrod.com rating: 5/10.

I’ll admit that the croutons aren’t exactly a pillar of good health, but this easy Caesar salad is otherwise a total winner on the calorie front. Plus, romaine (or “cos”) lettuce is the best type of lettuce you can eat! And yes, you don’t really need a recipe in order to make a salad, but this one is really more about the dressing.

(Takes 15 minutes, Serves 2-3)

Ingredients

• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
• 1-2 anchoives, chopped (for the dressing)
• Freshly cracked black pepper
• 3 tbsp of plain greek yoghurt
• 2 hearts of romaine lettuce, chopped lengthways
• 2-3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and diced
• Anchoives (for the salad, optional)
• 1 chicken breast, fried and chopped (optional)
• 2 rashers bacon, fried and diced (optional)
• Croutons (optional)

Where did the week go? Not a lot happened, and yet I feel like we haven’t really been home at all!

On Tuesday night, we met up with cousin Louise, and her sister (hence also cousin) Kylie. Kylie is fresh off the boat from Queensland, having only landed in London on Thursday the week before. It’s way cool having more family over here now!

On Wednesday night, both Kristy and I had “after work drinks” to go to, and in both cases, catching up with old colleagues. It’s been ages since I had a night on the turps, and boy did I feel it the next day! It was nice seeing my old workmates again however, so all worth it in the end.

Thursday was a total write off. I feel like I spent the whole day in the wrong place, at the wrong times. I was glad to be home on Thursday night; but more on this later.

Nick and Giovanni arranged a Friday night get together at one of my favourite bars in London – Bar Kick. Unfortunately, since the French were playing the Welsh in the rugby, and since it’s a French bar, the place was absolutely packed out. I left around 10:30 PM, feeling very hot and exhausted. It was too crowded to take any photos inside, but this is the tube that I caught home:

Julian and Shelley stayed over on Saturday night, and amongst a boatload of food, and a game of hearts, we also watched the movie Surrogates. It was ok; perhaps one for the Bruce Willis fans out there, and fairly harmless entertainment for said fans’ wives. gerrod.com rating: 6.5/10.

And that brings us to Sunday, in which our highlights have been gym, salmon fishcakes, and a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. See? Not a lot happening at the moment, but I guess that’s how things roll in winter in London. Oh, blue skies and sunshine, where for art thou?