Sunday 17th February 2019

How is the weekend half over already?

At least there is no football to watch, as it is a cup weekend, so no Prem games, and that means sitting on the sofa with no bacon butties, will not be an issue.

I have coffee and some fruit while Jools goes out on another litter pick.

At half eight, we go out to hunt for some snowdrop action. Not only snowdrops, but wild garlic and see what else was showing in Waldershare.

I am a bit of a piss poor amateur botanist now, so was hoping to see some other stuff, but oddly with was devoid of much else in flower other than snowdrops.

The churchyard at All Saints is wildly overgrown, but there are lots of snowdrops, huge drifts of them, but I was looking for some rare doubles. And beside one neglected grave, I find two clumps of fine doubles, the blooms so swollen with additional petals they looked almost pregnant.

I get down to take shots, while at the same time am hidden from view from Jools who walks past.

Sown the path from the back of the church, through the to the woods where one of the houses has cleared part of the woods maybe for an extension, but there are hundreds of yards more of wood, and down the slope, bright green shhots and new leaves of Ramsons are showing, the first sign of this year's crop of wild garlic that will turn the leaf covered woodland floor green, then white once the flowers open.

I try one of the leaves, and my mouth so recently brushed clean and minty fresh is soon overwhelmed by garlic, garlic which I will taste the rest of the morning.

From there we drive to Folkestone, arriving bang on ten, when the Armenian hairdresser opens. I go there now as they cut my hair as short as I want, meaning I can go an extra week or two between visits.

The guy asks what I want and just does it. Lovely. The back of my head is so short though, it feels bald, but that will be better within a day.

We go to a place for a coffee and I have a toasted sandwich, which was glorious. Carbtastic.

By then our friends from London's train had arrived, so we walk up to meet them at the Central Station, which as it turned out, not so central.

But Graham was there with his family, and after greetings, we walk back when them to Sandgate Road and the new centre of town. But this is not what they had come to see, instead we walk down to the top of The Old High Street, all twisty and cobbled.

They are thrilled by the mix of art and craft shops, but then the old street opens down to the harbour and the remains of the harbour branch climbing away to the left.

So we take them round to the old Harbour Station, where we bid them farewell, as our parking ticket was about to expire, so we leave them to explore, and we walk back up the old trackbed then up the old High Street back to the car, and then drive home via the tip to drop the litter off Jools had collected.

Back home we have a brew and we listen to some more music before I start to watch the Doncaster v Palace cup tie. But it is poor fare, so switch off at half time with Palace 2-0 to cook dinner.

An in the evening, Jools beat me at Uckers for the first time this year. Which was nice.