And so back to work. Once again, despite the clocks going back, it is dark when the alarm goes off, and seems like a very bad idea to be up before the sun has even thought of rising. But, we do, get ready and are out of the house as the sky turns ever lighter shades of blue, and is showing red and orange on the horizon at the appearance of the sun gets nearer.
I drop Jools off at the factory and head up through Buckland, past Tesco and onto the Sandwich road. It gets ever lighter and there is a mist rising on the Stour as I head over the bypass bridge. The sun has risen, and I knew there would trouble in Ramsgate! Trouble as in November and February, the sun rises straight ahead as you drive out of the harbour tunnel, and yesterday it has just past the not quite bright enough stage where you can still look directly at it onto the “oh my word that is so bright I really don’t want to look straight at it”, but as it is in the direction the road is heading. I have spots on my retinas for hours afterwards.
It is rough out on site, so the technicians, or monkeys as Isometime call them (when they’re annoying) are in the office until being told they can go home. And today they outdid themselves as the soon got bored and started to shout insults at each other. I left at midday having given up trying to work. And anyway, I had an appointment with a Black 5.
The forecast, as I always seem to describe the weather in these pages, was expected to get worse as the day progressed, and by one should have been producing heavy drizzle. Which, annoyingly, is what happened. Shame then that I had decided on my way home to stop off on a lonely over bridge to wait and snap a railtour come by.
I tried the bridge in Buckland, but the parapet was really too tall to see, and being in the middle of a housing estate, me standing there with a camera would involve stares and maybe embarrassing questions as to why I was there. So, I headed further up the line, past the cemetery and up a dead end lane to where there was a bridge over the line just in sight of the southern portal to Guston Tunnel.
The drizzle got heavy and time passed. Another photographer turned up, and so I had someone to talk to. The minutes passed into quarters of an hour until it was nearly an hour late. After a few ‘just five more minutes’, we heard a mournful hoot of a steam whistle from the valley below, so we knew it was on the way. All ready now, check camera, make sure its switched on.
And then we could hear the Black 5 working hard up the steep incline. Louder and louder it became until it rounded the corner in front of us, producing a fine trail of smoke as it hammered along. Whir went the camera as I took a long sequence of shots, and as it passed below we crossed to the other side to see it climb into the tunnel. Or would have done were it not for the pall of smoke that lingered in the valley on the tracks, until the 47 on the back vanished from view too. And it was all over.
I dropped the other guy back in the centre of town near Priory station and headed back home to warm up and dry out.
Later in the afternoon I went to the docs to see if my leg has healed, as on occasion it still itches. But all is fine, although it took an hour’s wait to find this out. I get some more allergy pills, as I have not had an attack since getting some from the quack back in September. And I’m sorted, so go into town to pick up Jools from having her barnet mangled and then back home.
A quiet night stretched out before us, I cooked steak and ale pie, then sat down to watch the rest of the weekend football before calling it a night at nine.
And that was then end of Monday.
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