Sunday 11th October 2020

It is a year since we said goodbye to Mum.

I only realised this afternoon, over 24 hours too late.

It happens.

What can I say, it has been one fucked up year, and time has dragged and whizzed by.

We are planning on going up this weekend to see Mum and Dad's new stone, see a few friends, and that's it, really, with Lowestoft. Not much to return for.

I have friends there of course, but despite them promising over and over again they would come down to visit, none ever did. I had a friend come from New Zealand come to stay, but no one from my hometown. It hurts when they don't treasure my friendship as much as I do theirs.

Still wat can you do?

Move on, man up and pour another beer.

Anyway, to Sunday. And something quite exciting, in that we were going to leave Kent for the first time together since, I have no idea, maybe December, and only the second time I have since March 13th. Jools has become a member of the RHS, and she found out that came with free entry to all their gardens, so she said how nice it would go to Wisley, so we picked what looked like it would be a good day, booked tickets as numbers are very limited, and Sunday was the day.

The alarm went off at six, it was just getting light in the east, cats and kittens fed, made coffee and breakfast, so all ready to leave the house at half seven to the gardens, planning on arriving just after nine when it opened.

It was an uneventful trip, up the M20, through the Operation Brock work between Ashford and Maidstone, which I guess will come as a permanent thing after Christmas.

Along the M25, quite quiet and the weather was glorious. Was going to be perfect for snapping, he said with a boot-full of cameras and lenses.

We turned off onto the A3, then half a mile down there, turned into the lane leading to Wisely, a few dozen cars were already there, it was five past nine.

We wait in line, me wrapped in cameras. We are allowed in after Jools flashed her membership card, and the morning was ours!

I wanted to get round as much as possible, get shots before too many people arrived and got in the way. So, it was supposed to be a trip for Jools to look at borders and plants for ideas, and of course it turned into a photographic trip.

No realy surprise, there.

We walk past the large ornamental lake, where the refelctions were perfect, but a week or three to early for really nice autumn colours. Don't stop me snapping, mind.

From there we walk to the glass house, which did not open until ten, so we walk round the beds surround the reflection pool, no lake, which surrouned the building.

Most of the plants were in seed or had withered, but there was enough to keep us interested, and give us ideas for our little slice of botanical heaven.

The glass house opened, so we go round in our winter coat in tropical heat and humidity. My Nana would have said we'd catch our death of cold. As expected, I fnd the orchid display, and snap them.

We walk back outside and the coolness of the autumn morning hit like a pan galactic gargle-blaster.

We go for a coffee, but there was no food on, so we make do with sesame seeded honey covered peanuts. They were good, but at £2.50 for a small bag, they should have been.

We go to the rock garden, which went on for quite a while, really well done with a couple of fake streams tinkling down.

We sit on a bench at the bottom of the rock garden, and look at the familes complete with screaming and hyper kids running about. We look at each other and say, "have you had enough?" We agreed.

So we walked back to the shop, looked round and bought nothing. Jools went into the plant shop to look round and again bought nothing.

We went back to the car and drove off, 90 minutes from home, if the traffic would be kind.

The wind had got up and it was clouding up, but I had dozens of shots in the can, or on the memory card.

We stop off at services to get a snack, Cornish Pasty and a Twix to munch on the trip home. Travel was easy, we were back in Kent in half an hour, then back home an hour later, arriving home in time to pop the kettle on.

Dinner was to be warmed up beef and fresh steamed veg, roast taters and Yorkshire puddings with the rest of the onion gravy. And fizz.

It was glorious, nearly as good as it was the night before.

That was followed by the latest England game, v Belgium at Wembley with zero fans watching in the stadium. Was a good game, a penalty each in the first half before England nick a winner late on.

Cheers, easy.

The evening finishes with an hour spent on #wildflowerhour, posting and looking at shots.

And that was that, the weekend gone. Just like that.