Saturday 22nd March 2015

The first day of retirement.

I will try to reduce mentions of it.

And after a lay in to ten to seven, and once coffee was drunk, we headed to Tesco for some hunting and gathering, made all the more difficult by forgetting the shopping list.

But we got most of what we wanted.

Back home for breakfast and more coffee and faffing, before the task for the day.

Not really a task, but a drive to Faversham to a nursery to see what native perennials they might have.

I am trying to drive less aggressively now I have seven days a week to indulge my hobbies, so we cruised up the A2 past Canterbury to Faversham, missing the jams in the town centre and parking near the shop.

Too early for much, but we had a chant with the owner, and he showed us what was growing in his greenhouses, so that's good, and when back from India will be perfect timing.

Nearby is Doddington, where Plantlife have established a wildflower area in God's Acre, so I thought we could take the extra ten minutes to drive through the woods to get there.

A family was inside The Beheading of St John the Baptist, which was fine, I had hoped to take some shots, but let them be.

Sadly, the tower of The Beheading of St John the Baptist has been found to be riddled with Death Watch Beetles, and so is now being repaired, and so behind scaffolding and corrugated iron sheeting.

A tragedy, as its tower is fantastic> I hope it can be saved, we left some money for the fund.

We had come to see the wild flowers, and were delighted to find carpets of Wood anemones, primroses among others, I snapped them with both cameras, and that done, we bimbled back to the car and drove back to Faversham then back to to the A2.

But instead of going straight home, we took Thanet Way, as I thought we could go via the butcher at Preston.

Again, cruising at 60 meant a pleasant drive before we turned off at Monkton then turned out over the marshes to Preston.

The shop was just closing, but we got what we needed, and had a good chat with Steve.

All very nice indeed.

We went home via the Sandwich Road, the Eastry bypass, and then home, getting back at just about one in the afternoon. And being an International Break, no Premier League or Championship footy to watch, but there was some game or the other.

We had microwaved Chinese for lunch, and then I snoozed through the afternoon.

There was football in the evening, of course. But there was Craig on the wireless too. So we had a brew, listened to some Funk and Soul, and I followed the footy until eight, when we retired to our beds.