winter Weekend

And so, the first weekend of the New Year; Jools was going to head back to work on Monday, so we decided to do some practical stuff as well as fun stuff.

And so in preparation for our move to the new house we headed off to Folkestone to the land of the superstores to look for a bargain washing machine, as the one from my old place had had the lino covering on the floor glued to the bottom of it; with the result that moving the washing machine ripped up the floor covering, or would have done if we hadn’t have stopped. So, a new machine was needed.

Walking into Currys we were pounced on by a succession of salesmen each desperate for a sale. I did feel sorry for them, and the most helpful one we called back over when we decided to buy the one with the largest discount.

Next, was the one household item almost guaranteed to cause unction between the most loving of couples; a new TV.

Needless to say, I wanted a large one, fnarr, and Jools doubted the need for something as large as fifty inches. As it turned out we settled on a Panasonic one, and that turned into a plasma , and finally something just under the magical fifty inch mark. We did hold off from buying until we were actually in the house and we knew how much money we had to spend. As I pointed out, if we have a high definition TV then we should have a Hi Def box and a Blu-Ray player.

I had to try.

This one will run.

So, after that, as it was a bright sunny day, we went for a walk down by the harbour in Folkestone, along a grassy hill on which three Napoleonic defence towers known as Martello Towers. One had been surrounded by a golf course, of course; but the contrast of the green grass and the whitewashed tower and blue sky was really very pleasant.



Searching the internet after lunch we found a local shop selling the new coffee machine we wanted; the bad news being that the shop was in that monster of modern retail the outlet village. So we set out for Ashford and into the Saturday shopping traffic and set out to find a parking space.

After queuing to get into the car park, and then going round and round we did find a space and headed to the shop. We had called and reserved the machine, we walked in, asked for the item, paid and walked out. We looked around at the multitude of shops and we asked, do we need anything else?

No, was the answer; and so we headed back to the car, three hours and fifty minutes of the parking ticket remaining and set off for home and to try out the new super duper coffee machine.

The good news is that it brews a damn fine cup or eight of coffee, and stores it in a double layered jug which keeps the coffee nice and hot. A slice of two of Christmas Stollen went down very well with the coffee, and we sat back in the sofa and watched the sun set out of the living room window and darkness envelop the world.

Sunday we had decided to head into London to go to a photographic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

http://www.npg.org.uk/annieleibovitz/index.htm

Annie Leibovitz is a very well know photographer, best know perhaps for her Vogue and Rolling Stone covers. It was a wonderful exhibition, with the great and good mixed with pictures of her family and children. And showing how some of her best work shows the mortality of her parents and their eventual death.


After that, it was lunchtime and opposite was a posh looking burger place. We ordered what sounded like something amazing; but what turned up was a chilli burger and a cheese buger with fries and onion rings. And they charged us a king’s ransom for this; we did have a view down to Trafalgar Square maybe, but a burger is a burger, and BK was just around the corner and we could have saved ourselves £20.



Another walk through theatreland and into Chinatown followed, where we ended up once again in Soho amongst the lowdown and sordid. The one bright spot was a father and four bright Chinese children walking briskly past the peep shows and porn shops, reading the signs advertising sexy girls and the suchlike. We couldn’t help but laugh, and the father did turn to us and smile.


The final port of call was Kings Cross railways station, as I think its very photogenic and somewhere where I wanted to go and photographic in my own way. Sadly, the old Victorian building was as warm as a freezer, and not a place really to loiter, and after taking a dozen shots we headed back to Victoria and our train back home.



As we left London the sun was setting, and as the light faded to gray and then black we headed out over the Kentish countryside back to Dover.