Monday 9th August 2010

By now it is Monday again. And the weekend has flown by like a very fast bird. Maybe a swallow. African or European, and certainly not carrying coconuts!
Quite where the time goes sometimes is a mystery. Anyway, that was the weekend ,and now it is the week again; the working week, and welcome to it.

I left work at half two on Friday, and headed to Tesco in Dover; we needed big shop this week, and the half empty shelves in Ramsgate just was not going to cut it. And so I parked on the edge of the car park, and grabbed a trolley and headed into the madness. I went round as quick as I could, round the gossiping friends blocking aisles, children screaming, and the generally slow or dead, and was out of there with most of what we wanted and back home to sanity.

I waited for Jools to come home, and we had pizza and some garlic bread before sitting in the back garden watching the butterflies and other assorted insects doing insecty things around the flowers. And then at a quarter to eight, the football season began, with Norwich kicking the season off, and completely blowing it by losing 3-2 to relegation favourites, Watford, live on TV. A new dawn faded.

And then it was dark outside and time for bed.

Saturday morning broke with rain, rain and more rain. Not pleasant, and gloomy enough so that there was little else to do than stay inside or find something to do that took place inside. We went shopping at the country butcher we sometime use; we were hoping to have a family bbq on Sunday and so needed burgers, ribs and the such. And then back home through the deep puddles and standing water and wait for the rain to stop.

I spent the morning looking through the slides I took on my trip to America 5 years ago, and was left wondering if ever I would have the time to transfer the 950 slides to digital before I die! It was good though, as I took many more slides than digital images, and so was good looking at scenes I had forgotten. Each morning I read the diary I kept on the trip, ad so to remind myself the fantastic things I did do over there, and the people I met.

Which it did just as the man on the BBC said, and soon enough the sun came out and the insects filled the garden. I did listen to football on the radio, but could not find it in myself to sit on the sofa and watch either of the games that were on. Also, a church near where to where we live was open in the afternoon, and so in the sunshine we drove over to East Langdon and had a peek.



East Langdon church is small, but nice, and there were stalls and people welcoming visitors; butterflies flittered around the churchyard and people sat at trestle tables and ate scones and drank tea. I bought some Kentish cherries and gooseberries, with the plan of making a crumble with the gooseberries.
This is what I did when I got home, with the radio on in the background, burbling away the football scores. I boiled the gooseberries with some sugar to make them soft, and made the crumble mix, and left it to cook later for supper.



For dinner I cooked bargain steak and Jools went out for chips, and once we had eaten we sat down to watch Girl With the Dragon tattoo on TV, which was not bad, and better when we had the crumble.

Sunday was rainy, but had planned to go on a ramble, and it looked bright enough to suggest that it wouldn’t be wet for long. In the end it turned out that it was raining in St Margaret’s only, and once heading towards Sandwich the rain stopped, and although it wasn’t exactly sunny, was bright enough. We met up in the village of Ash , quite close to the church, which was calling the devout to worship by ever increasing speeding peals of bells. At ten we set off, over fields and down lanes. It was a flat walk, which is just fine with us, and although it rain again, not much and we soon dried off.



We passed huge piles of rotten and rotting fruit at the bottom of a field, the peppers would still good enough to be eaten, and some took a couple for dinner later.
But soon we were back in Ash again, and some of us went for a well-earned pint in the pub before heading home for mozzarella and tomatoes for lunch and then prepare for the arrival of the family for the BBQ.
Jens son, Scott, from a previous marriage is over to visit, and it is the first time I have met him as he has not been in England since 1999 or 2000, there wasn’t much I cooked or poured he did not like, which was good.



As is usual, we cooked too much food, but it was good, and the drink flowed, as did the laughs. And then I opened the whisky. Yay, whisky.