Saturday 5th March 2011

Another week over, and the weekend arrives and all you want to do is head to bed at eight o'clock with a cup of Horlicks. Yes, I am middle age, and our rock and roll years are behind us. It's not that i have a physically demanding job, I drive a desk five days a week, write mails and new procedures and other such tasks. And yet at the end of the week I am pooped.



But, as the weeks go by, dawn gets earlier and sunset gets later, and I am now home when it is still light and our evenings will soon begin with a walk round the countryside which begins at the end of our street.

The big news was that a sperm whale was washed up on Pegwell Bay, just a mile from my office. A sperm whale! Turns out it was starving and very weak, and sadly died before it could be helped out to sea. And so soon crowds of people began to arrive to look at the carcass. Even after the police warned people that it posed a health risk, still they came, bringing their children. It is now being removed, before it really begins to hum.



So, the evening it washed up, I stopped to snap it and the crowd gathering, before heading back home.

Other than that, work seems to be going well, and the weeks pass. There is talk of travel to foreign lands in the near future, but there has been talk of that before only for it to fall through for various reasons; we shall see.

And so, the weekend began at four, and after the usual whizz around Tesco, it was back home, unpack the car and let the relaxing begin! I did stop off at the nursery to look for a quince tree. We tried growing one from a juvenile cutting last year, which was not a success; and so I thought, think bigger, so somehow I got this tive foot tree in our little Polo and back home.



And this evening we planted it in the garden, digging a deep hole and filling it with compost and tree. So, now we hope it takes and we will have a fine crop of quince so we can make jelly come October.

Before that, I had arranged a flickreet at Dover castle, and many of my online friends from the local area said they were going to come along. And indeed they did.

Dover Castle is a fine place, high on the cliffs above the town with splendid vews along the coast and over the Channel to France (on a clear day), as well as 2,000 years of history on the site; it does have a Roman Lighthouse, Pharos, still standing three stories high, with two more stories of Tudor re-build on top of that. And it still stands!



So, we met up on a cold and breezy day, we walked around the site, snapping away and talking amongst ourselves. It is wonderful to share these places with other keen photographers, and see their delight at what gives me pleasure in snapping. And then it was time for us all to part, I came home and had a bite for lunch and settled down to review the shots i had taken and listen to the football on the radio.

A god day, well, apart from the Norwich result. can't have every thing, can we?