Lost & phoned (part III)

I was on about how good my eyesight was and how not-so-good it is. Also how hard it can be to find 2 sq.m. of beige cow in 2,000,000 sq,m. [200 ha. = 480 acres] of brown dry heath. Of course it's a bit easier because a) there are 15 cows that hang out together b) they move about in a way quite distinctive from dry heather blowing in the wind.

Way way ago at the birth of The Blob, I lost me phone - it fell from my shirt pocket while changing a flat tire on the way to work. It took two days and 5 people to pass that parcel until it came back to me. The blessing (and curse) of living in a connected rural community! Five years ago, my all black smart-phone fell out of the same pocket when I stumbled into a gryke up on our 200 ha. of red hill. I knew it had happened within a couple of minutes but it still took 20 minutes for me and my neighbour M (of the cows) to find t'bugger down among the heather roots. Since then, I attached a bright yellow lanyard to the phone to make it more visible. 

Because things happen in threes [3s] if you have 12 years to play with, I lost my  yellow Nokia  at the end of September. I was up and out before breakfast, like the Good Shepherd, to count [N: 13 + 4 =17] the sheep. Unlike M's cows, our sheep disdain to herd together. The four new Charolais, for example, lambs are toooo refined to mix with our rag-tag flock of mongrels and will often be in a different field. And who thought it was a good idea to buy a black lamb which disappears in the shadows of any hedge, ditch, wall, dyke or copse ? I am requested&required to take my  Nokia   with me when out and about - lest I have an I R Old seizure. I did the outdoor man shepherd tasks and came home for tea and medals toast. Then I thought it would grand entirely to go for bracing yomp up t'hill and patted my pockets for the  Nokia . 

It wasn't there, so I cast about in the kitchen, on my desk, down the woodshed and behind my sofa cushions. The phone was ri♬gi♬g but not within earshot. Only 30 minutes had elapsed, so I had a pretty good idea of where I had been bo-peeping the sheep. Accordingly I re-traced my steps with my eyes sweeping arcs on the ground as I progressed. I paid particular attention to the boundary wall [L] where I had crossed from one field to another for a shortcut. For good measure I counted the sheep once more for luck.

When I got back to the house, the Beloved emerged from her own busy life and offered to call the phone while I checked the polytunnel and the woodshed agane! In my head I was making contingency plans for writing the phone off and changing my whole identity [the shame!] for an 083 number. But it was Sunday, so I could hardly implement any such protocol. Of all the people I know, I am the least attached to my phone, on which I get through about €30 of credit in a year and I did live for 30 years as a grown arsed adult managing without one entirely. But I'm not a luddite and do recognise there is a reason Germans call their cellphone a handy.  But, it was Sunday, I R retire, I canned the idea of going for a recreational yomp uphill and re-re-traced my morning sheepwalk.

When I scanned the boundary wall the first time, it was under the hypothesis that the phone had popped from a pocket when I scrabbled through the bushes and/or jumped down off the wall. The second time, (possibly because I had tested and rejected that hypothesis and approached the task with a clear hheart and open mind) I saw ◎◎ the  Nokia  in plain sight on the wall. Can you? it is two pixels wide [L].

And the scale of that problem? Compared to cows? The four fields where the sheep currently graze are 11 acres in total. That's 4½ hectares or 45,000 sq.m. The phone otoh is ~10cm x ~5cm or 1/200th of a sq.m. ratio 9,000,000 : 1. Finding a phone is only 9x harder than finding a single cow. Answer to Where's Wally Nokky below the fold.