Saturday 8th February 2025

And again, once the weekend rolls round, the rain clouds gather and it does pisseth it down.

If Saturday was cold, grey and damp, the promise is that Sunday will be worse.

Well, that's just peachy.

Being a Saturday, there is hunter-gathering once the first coffee had been drunk. And the news was that the shop was pretty quiet, so I tear round, get stuff off the list, and back home for breakfast and put the rest of the shopping away.

It is now the second week of February, and we have done very little with our weekends this year so far, so I say let's go looking for snowdrops and crocuses.

Closest place for wild snowdrops is Waldershare church, where the churchyard is semi-wild, though a volunteer has taken it on and it is much tidier than in previous years, and she has got DDC coming in once every three months.

There are many clumps of snowdrops, but more yet to flower, so I snap a few of the best, talk more to the lady, and we slide back to the car on the plentiful mud.

I take the cross-county way through Coldred, Lydden, Acrise to Lyminge. Up and down the undulating countryside, along narrow and partly flooded lanes.

Lyminge church sits on a hill from which the Nailbourne springs. The Romans were here, and so were the Saxons. An early Christian princess, St Ethelburga was canonised, and the church is dedicated to her, though she shares it with Mary now.

The remains of her Saxon church were excavated in 2019, and now the path over it has coloured patterns showing the church's footprint.

The churchyard is extensive, and full of snowdrops, crocuses and a few primroses just about opening among and on the graves.

We park up and chat with a guy who is there to clear the paths and I tell him of the history of the church and the wildflowers that can be seen.

Jools and I walk up the path, under the single flying buttress, over the ruins of the Saxon chapel, and into the graveyard; flowers were everywhere, looking splendid even on a dull and dank day.

I take shots and we take the scene in before walking bac down and onto the High Street, down to St Etheburga's Well, and the bubbling waters of the Nailbourne that flowed from the grassy bank.

We walked back to the car alongside the moss covered wall, to the church car park, then back along the Elham Valley Road back to the motorway and then to home.

Once back home I boil some potatoes, then once they had dried, popped them in bubbling hot duck fat to be roasted. Two beef pies were cooked and vegetables steamed.

We ate at two, with cup football on the tellybox/computer. It was a splendid lunch.

I failed totally to keep awake sitting on the sofa with Scully. I lost an hour, in that one moment it was quarter past three, next it was into the second half.

Norwich drew with Derby in a non-Derby game, there were many cup games, and then eyes down for the Rugby with England v France, which was error-strewn with England scoring the winning try in the last minute.

There was yet two more cup games on TV, and I bailed watching Brighton v Chelsea proving that there can be too much football.

Apparently.