But I’m getting ahead of myself here, we have the weekend to deal with…..
Saturday morning was bright and so after looking at some friends photos, I thought we should try to find some rare butterflies. Heath Fritillaries could be found in East Blean Woods near Canterbury. And so we set off in the car to look for ‘a butterfly’. We found the wood after consulting with a very large scale map, and after parking set out for a walk. The recent heavy rain had left the ground waterlogged, and we picked our way along the paths, following a route sign decorated with a butterfly. We couldn’t go wrong, could we?
After over an hours walking, we had seen zero butterflies, not that it was unpleasant; the wood had a different feel than Kings Wood, as clearly much fewer folks come here. So the paths were overgrown, and the wood thicker. After a while we made our way back to the car, and we noticed some insect life in the bushes around the car park. Jools noticed a huge dragonfly, which we both snapped. We were still snapping away when another car pulled out and two photographers got out and we swapped bug news. He told us that the best spot for the Fritillaries was just 50 yards away and so we went off to investigate.
At first we saw nothing, then, a flash of orange and there on a leaf, sunning itself was one. All around the foliage the ground had been flattened I guess by other photographers coming here, but the butterflies did not seem to mind, and we saw a few others, and we snapped them from all angles before we decided we had got enough. The Fritillaries are found in only a few locations, so we were very lucky to have seen and snapped them. However, I had an even rarer one in mind now, The Duke of Burgundy. This is only found in one place, deep in Denge Woods, and after consulting our map we set off.
The wood must have been four times the size of East Blean, and the realisation struck that we could be walking around it for hours with no luck. So, we decided to head home for lunch and do some internet searches and come back another day.
We headed home for some creamy garlic cheese on crackers and a glass of beer. What could be better? An evening of football of course.
On Sunday we laid in bed until the cats suggested we might like to get up and feed them. On the last day of our holiday we were due to go to London to see the new film by Ridley Scott; I won’t call it an Alien prequel, but you know that’s how it was being billed. As the IMAX cinema is right beside Waterloo station, we thought we would take the normal train up to London and save some money rather than take the high speed service. It took an hour and 50 minutes to get to London, compared to 67 minutes on the high speed; but somehow took two hours to return, and the going was tortuous I have to say, when all we wanted to do was get back home.
But between then was the film, which looked wonderful, and the film itself was stunning, in places. Sigh. Expectations must have been so high, that most have been something between slightly and greatly disappointed. I think it was worth going, it looked great in IMAX for sure.
And that was our week off; a trip to Yorkshire, a rare butterfly and a film sequel 33 years in the making. All in all not bad.
One other thing I have done this week is to cancel my Facebook account. This has come after some serious misgivings I have had for some time. After returning from holiday in Germany, the advertising down the side of the FB page were either in German or for businesses in Germany. And FB is collecting this data all the time, and in their terms of use they can use it however they want.
I also have found myself sending birthday greetings to people I have not met since 1982 or even earlier. Is this really how I want to spend my spare time? Would my life be any less if I decided not to do this stuff and lose contact with the contacts and friends I have met up with on FB in the past 5 years?
I have 14 days before my account disappears completely, but as each day passes I find myself missing it less and less. Actually finding the account cancellation page proved to be tricky; maybe I inputted the wrong words in the search box, maybe not. I sense they don’t ever want you to leave. But, I filled in the deletion box, clicked OK and….
A Google search did not find my FB account, so I guess it must have gone. And this becomes permanent in about 12 days time. I will miss many of the friends I have on there, but in truth I did not really interact with many of them, most I have not ‘spoken’ to in the last three months; heck, year probably. If any of my old FB friends read this, as you can see, it wasn’t personal, I just though, meh.
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