Given the choice of shopping on Friday evening on the way home from work or going Saturday morning when we might just like to be laying in bed, we chose to join the crowds and go on the way home from work. As is usual, just the essential items now costs over £60 and there really isn’t much to look at. Lots of fruit and salad stuff and a few other things, and there is all that money gone just like that. I have not been to the country butcher in weeks now, its not that we begrudge them making a living, its just the cost and the fact we spent the whole month’s money in five days in Germany. Not that we regret going, but it was ambitious, its just we have to literally pay for that trip now.
Anyway, shopping done, we feed the cats, prepare a salad for dinner and set about some relaxing.
Saturday morning we lay in bed for a while, with various cats coming along to say hello, demand attention or just be crazy. We get up, and go for a walk along the cliffs. We drive to the lighthouse, park up and set off, down the narrow path beside the lighthouse and then onto the clifftop path with fine, fine views over the Channel.
We had gone to look for spider orchids, which to be honest we were probably a month too late to see, but we might have been lucky; we were not. But anyway, its pretty enough up there, with many other wild flowers and insects flitting from one plant to another. I snap some macros and we walk on. Although the wind is keen, it is warm, and very pleasant indeed as we walk along.
Time to head back to the car, and then time to nip into Dover so Jools could change her library books and me buy the stuff we had forgotten is Tesco the night before: cream, bread rolls amongst other things. And time to head off back home for lunch of those rolls and to sit in the garden and relax.
And then in the afternoon, we do the family duty and visit Jools’ Dad and his wife and Nan. I take the camera along just in case he has some interesting shaped plants in his garden. So we sit in his new swing seat in the sunshine and chat, birds are singing in the bushes either side of the garden, even the dull hum of the nearby A2 seemed quieter than normal. It wasn’t bad.
Sunday began sunny enough, but soon clouded up just as those blasted forecaster predicted. So after breakfast, second breakfast and elevenses we headed out to Shepherdswell as there was a steam train due, and I wanted to photograph it. I and many others who were already waiting for 70013. I chatted to the really keen guy who had been there for two hours already, he was keen to know of signal boxes and semaphore signals between there and Canterbury. I admitted my lack of knowledge and he was happy enough. Until folks came along and ruined his sightline. As I walked away I could still hear him imploring folks to stand back from the platform, and as arrival time got closer to be quiet as he was recording.
Just to make my day, a no talent ass-clown with an expensive camera (the name of one of the groups I belong to on Flickr) came along. He has the most expensive digital SLR Canon makes, along with top line lenses and other gear; he is the reason I left the camera club due to his boasting and lack of basic understanding of photography. And he asks me what setting to have his camera on and what I thought was the best position for the best shot. I thought he knew everything. Just to make him feel worse I told him I use just two settings on my camera, sports and landscape so I could see the look on his face. Ha ha, tosser. It’s not quite the truth, but not that far either. And I get results you clown.
So, we head up onto the footbridge and wait. Like last week the train was on time, maybe even early. And soon we could hear her coming through the tunnel ahead. She got louder and louder before emerging into the sunshine and thundering through the station, leaving behind a lot of smoke and the smell of sulphur.
We leave and head home via McDonalds where we get a chicken deli sandwich and drive home. I settle down to watch the build up to the final Premier League games, manage not to fall asleep and the results went one way and then the other. Blackpool and Birmingham get caught by the trapdoor whilst Wigan, Wolves and Blackburn all survive.
And then it is time to catch Oliver Cromwell’s return run, and so Jools and I head out to Lydden to see her come out of the other end of the tunnel. We wait whilst cars pass by with their drivers giving us looks as if to say, why are you standing there, and us trying to not look like spotters. And then we see the light at the front of the train reflected in the rail, and she emerges almost silently from the tunnel, coasting down into Dover. I fire off a series of shots, and that is it.
Back home for dinner and to get ready for the week ahead, I try to read in bed by my eyes go heavy and instead turn the light out and go to sleep, it is only just nine o’clock; rock, and indeed, roll.
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