Tuesday 27th October 2026

As I wrote a couple of days ago, I re-read old blog posts from the last ten years most mornings, and most days I complained about my bad back, or my bad knees or both.

But since going to the gym and keeping at it, my bad back and knees just faded away. Those times when I couldn't walk far, or needed a sit down, just ended.

I can remember a couple of years ago, walking up Tonbridge high street to the church at the top, I needed three or four sit down on benches to make it to the top.

Not any more.

Which is my way of saying it was Tuesday, so up before dawn to be at the gym for six.

My brain had me awake at half four, so was laying waiting for the alarm to go off half an hour later. So I leap out of bed, get dressed, and once down stairs I put the kettle on, test and jab Scully, feed the other cats, then put the mocha pot on to boil.

All done by quarter past five, giving me thirty five minutes to wake up and be ready for the drive to Whitfield.

As I walked to the entrance, the doors were unlocked and we all pile in, us rats go upstairs and begin our sessions.

I had a podcast to listen to, just over fifty minutes, which I listen to all of, so that I did 400 K/cals, and close to 6,500 steps.

Back home, the sun was up, though hidden by cloud, and a light drizzle fell.

Jools made me a brew, then was off to the Riverside for her class, then a coffee morning, giving me four hours to get my shit together, have a shower and do the washing up.

Which I get done.

I have a trick for summoning Jools: I put the kettle on, and usually she appears soon after it boils, which she did this day, shortly after half ten.

The rain had stopped and the bench dried out, so we sat outside to sip our tea.

I read the second of the books on Kent churches that Simon sent last week. I got annoyed by the author's views on churches, but likes his descriptions of the setting, so read each entry about halfway down the page, and skipped to the next church.

The afternoon slipped by.

Tesco now has party food in, so we had party food for supper, though there was no party, as such. But we ate bite-size Indian nibbles, and supped beer or cider.

The sun sank in the west, and now with skies clear and trees turning to red and gold, so the view out the back was glorious. While away to the east, the just gone full moon rose, as darkness fell.

For the evening there was football: I watched Leicester v Wigan instead of Fleetwood v Arsenal, because I though a battle between two out of form teams at the bottom of League 1 would be more interesting than the cup tie between the team 18th in League 2, and Arsenal's reserves.

How wrong I was, although the Leicester game was better than expected, which The Foxes won 3-0, but at the same time, Fleetwood lead Arsenal into the second half, ten Arse levelled.

And that's how it stayed, so went straight to penalties, and Fleetwood won.

Only I decided that I would bail on it after 86 minutes and went to bed, missing the celebrations.

So it goes.

Monday 26th October 2026

Well here we are, Monday again.

Nothing planned for the day, other than to see the end of it.

And another day in which the rain would fall heavily from the sky.

Although first thing the sky was pink then red, with some blue sky visible, but soon the clouds swept in, and day turned to something like disk.

The lawnmeadow is now being dug over by thousands of earthworms, their casts are everywhere, letting the rain and air into the compacted soil, and ensuring good growth for next year.

Which is nice.

I spend the day listening to pods, and editing shots, as I had yet to finish editing the pictures from our trip to France, though I would complete the task on Tuesday, and instead of uploading five at a time, I dumped the last 35 at once to get them out of the way.

Chartres is a fine cathedral and a wonderful city. We have to go back and explore more, but there are so many places to visit as it is, places we have yet to go to.

Between the rain, a Hummingbird hawkmoth does come and feeds from the Hot lips, making it still feel like summer, even if it is now cool, windy and wet. Mostly.

We go to Tesco at eight, to get supplies for the week, then to Lidl as their bakery is better and some of their cheap cider for Jools and cheap tripel for me.

We get back home as the rain starts, and it continues until dusk shortly after four.

Supper was Ruben rolls, which I have a glass of Chimay Bleu, 2024 vintage to wash it down.

Now that's a good beer.

No football in the evening, just a League 2 game which I skip, so to bed at eight, with the rain still falling and the wind blowing hard.

I fall asleep to the sounds of autumn outside.

Sunday 25th October 2026

At two in the morning, the clocks went back, bringing GMT back to the United Kingdom. Meaning lighter mornings, but darker and earlier evenings.

We did lay in bed, and slept through our extra hour. Jools got up at six to feed the cats, and I slept on to half past, woke feeling refreshed.

I do read old blog posts from each of the preceding ten years, and I see from last year that that week was when we switched to going to the gym really early to avoid crowds and to ensure our machines would be free.

This meant on weekdays being at the doors for six, and seven at weekends.

Which we did this weekend.

As usual, the gym was pretty empty at a minute past seven, although the speakers did boom our Europop to no one, as we all pretty much have headphones on, which we have to have turned up the volume so to drown out the Eurodisco.

One of which was a reworking of "You've Got the Love", which was itself a reworking and mash up of two older songs: an instrumental, and a vocal by Candi Staton. That was a hit when I was going through trade training in 1991, and I remember it booming out of boomboxes as we bulled and studied.

We both did our fifty minutes, then after a short cooling down outside in the sunshine, we went to Tesco to fill the car up, then to the Promenade for a walk.

In a change from the two previous days, and the two following days, Sunday was gloriously sunny, though with a stiff westerly.

It was too rough and too near high tide for anyone to be swimming. No Sean and Ange, so we walked down the promenade and over the new bridge before turning for home, when the café under the clock tower said we were too early as opening time was still five minutes away.

So we saved our money and walked back to the car, me doing some light botanising on the way on the few flowering plants on the edge of the stony beach, before reaching the car and climbing in.

A quiet morning, so we drove back to Townwall Street, then along to the port and up Jubilee Way, free of traffic as there were no ferries in.

Once home we put the kettle on, and in a change had a shortcake each which I had made between halves of football the previous day.

And a very good start to the day it was.

I had another shower, changed and so was set for an afternoon of football. Or in the case of Manchester United, an attempt at football.

Lunch was our old favourite of chorizo hash, all prepared, cooked and eaten before kick off at two, at which point the week of preparation for Man Utd was for naught, as opposition, Bournemouth, had already in the six days before beaten both Sunderland and AC Milan (!), so the current iteration of The Red Devils would pose no serious issues.

So it was that Russian monied Bournemouth cruised to a 3-0 victory, and on another day might have scored more. In their last four visits they have won 3-0 three times and had a 4-4 draw!

Much less said about the second game, Sunderland v Leeds, which due to storm force winds was something of a bore-fest.

And as the commentator stated there had not been a 0-0 draw in between the two teams in living memory, it was then inevitable that it did end 0-0.

Disunited they fall

I was going to write about Manchester United on Wednesday after they were thrashed by Como in their first season in the CL, but held off.

And so today, United were thrashed again, this time by Bournemouth at the Theatre of Revised Expectations in Salford.

Should manager, Michael Carrick be sacked?

Would make no difference, as it doesn't address the real problem at the club.

And that is thirteen years of terrible decisions, poor recruitment, unable to develop most young players, and when the going gets tough: sack the manager.

Until the root cause, the terrible run club above the manager.

The latest terrible idea was to change the forward line in the summer of 2025, the midfield in the summer of 2026, and the defence next summer. Only good teams are built on strong defence, and while that is as old and injury-prone as it is, United will conceed more than they score more often than not.

As a club, not to have any apparent idea on how the team should play, and recruit and develop players to feed into that vision means that it falls on coaches and managers to try to fix the mess.

And that is impossible while having to provide good results.

It used to be said that clubs like United were two games from a crisis. That's no longer the case, when winnin titles or getting into Europe swing on small differences.

Its not as if the rebuilding over the last two summer transfer windows have actually fixed the apparrent issues with the forward line and midfield. The more the personel changes, the more the issues remain the same.

So here we are: another crisis with the manager about to be sacked, like the guy from Portugal before him, like the Dutch guy before that, that Austrian coach before that, that former legend of a former player before him, beofre the grumpy Portugese guy, before the grumpy dutch guy, and before the Scot that Sir Alex recommended.

Nothing has worked, managers and coaches of all kinds and styles. All with the same result. So, go ahead, sack the coach again, and let the cycle repeat.

Madness is repeating the same mistakes and expect a different result.

Rinse and repeat.

Saturday 24th October 2026

Its the weekend again already. So its time to go to the gym. But with checking the freezer and larder, it seemed we could do without going to Tesco at least until Monday. So there's that. Saturday dawned bright and sunny, once the sun had risen, which wasn't until we had drunk coffee and driven to the sports centre. This was the last day of BST, the clocks were to go back at 02:00 Sunday morning, so it will be lighter in the mornings. For a time. But darker, earlier in the evenings. Or afternoons. A second named storm, Storm Boelo, was to sweep through after lunch, so once back home, best make use of the sunshine, while it lasted.

So nice was it, that it seemed impossible we were to get twelve hours of gales and heavy rain, but the storm had already hit the West Country, so it seemed it would.

So, just after eleven, the clouds built, and the winds increased, but no rain.

Yet.

For the afternoon there was the "joy" of watching Norwich at Charlton. City were on a six game losing streak, so it seemed hopeless.

Doubly so when after five minutes, while trying to play out from the back, Charlton nicked the ball, played it forward to their centre-forward, and he scored from an acute angle.

For the next ten minutes, Norwich were in danger of being blown away by a team in the middle of their own slump.

But, City levelled, and for the remainder of the first half, Norwich had their tails up.

Confidence is a funny thing, you could see Charlton lose theirs, and we hoovered it up.

A fine second shortly after half time, and a deflected cross gave us a third.

But City still were shaky, and nothing was certain until the referee blew after eight minutes of injury time.

At the same time, Villa beat Citeh, so two good results.

Then on the sofa to listen to the radio, and watch the scores on Final Score.

That was followed by Chelsea v Spurs. Spurs had not won there since the last century, and only once on 40 years.

So a 2-0 victory to them was a surprise.

At three the rain began to fall, and battered the back of the house hour after hour. The wind howled, and the cats refused to go out.

It was still bucketing down when we went to bed just before nine.

Friday 23rd October 2026

Somehow it's Friday again.

But I am back home. As nice as travel and mixing with like-minded people can be, its still good to be home.

That being said, I have another 2,000 give or take, pictures to edit and post.

A couple of weeks ago, I said that we had not had an autumn storm so far this year, as there had been no Atlantic hurricanes.

Well, it's good to know Mother Nature reads these posts, as not only was there a hurricane last week, but we have three successive days with named storms sweeping across the country.

And it was raining when we got up, so dressing in waterproof jacket was needed to put out the bins, and making sure they'd not blow away as the winds built through the morning.

It wasn't cold, but felt it. And by ten the gales were sweeping the rain across the Dip, so the cats just slept on.

The bins were collected as soon as they were emptied, so they did not end up on Station Road or beyond.

While I was away, I received three books on the churches of Kent from a good friend, so spent the afternoon enjoying reading descriptions on how some familiar, and unfamiliar churches were in the early 1970s.

Scully enjoyed having me sit next to her, so she slept on, even happier once I put the heating on.

We had defrosted and warmed ragu for dinner, all eaten in time for the start of the quiz, which I fail to guess until it was too late.

And finally, Ipswich v Forest on the TV, and in an entertaining game, Forest were the better team, but fluffed their lines and finishing, and so the game ended 1-1.

Play it at your sister!

1976, it is believed, was the year of punk.

It wasn't.

Punk really exploded the following year with the Jubilee and all that.

And shortly after it ate itself and became new wave, post punk and so on.

Punk may well have died when The Clash signed for CBS.

However, the first punk record, single, was released on 22nd October 1976, before then there were no punk records, which is why Don Letts played dub at The Roxy, and afterwards there was a link between the two genres.

And it wasn't the Sex Pistols who released that first single, Anarchy in the UK wasn't released for another five week at the end of November. And then came Bill Grundy, and music wouldn't be the same again.

That first single was by The Damned, and was, of course, New Rose.

It begins with the same phrase as Leader of the Pack: Is she really going out with him?

And its fair to say, there the similarities end.

Drum kicks in, and then the geetars, and Dave opens his mouth, and something new comes out.

Anyway, a day late, but Happy Birthday.