Friday 19th September 2014

Good afternoon, and welcome to Friday afternoon. The middle Friday of my 17 days off, and my official mood is: relaxed. And today is our 6th wedding anniversary. Yes, six, you count 'em! One, two, three, four, five and now, six. And in celebration I have treated my dear wife some facial surgery. No, not really, but in clearing some rubbish into a skip that had just been delivered, I managed to throw two panels of corrugated roofing at her head rather than in the skip. Now, I stress this was an accident, a major, stupid accident. I was about to throw two panels, one slipped from my grip, and in trying to control them both as I went to throw them in the skip, I managed to miss the skip and instead launch the panels at Jools' head.

Coming soon after Jools had lacerated her hand on another panel, she now has a bandaged hand, a cut on the bridge of her nose and what is looking like a black eye too. She was only expecting flowers. Probably.

So, tonight I am cooking rib eye steaks along with smoked garlic mushrooms and fried potatoes. Should be wonderful. That we chose this meal rather than going out speaks well of my ability now to cook a steak to perfection. Yay!

Our driveway is now blocked by a couple of pallets of remder which is to be applied to the parts, well the walls, on Monday morning, if Nobby can be relied upon. Now, let me stress, I have absolute confidence in Nobby to do the job, however, tying him down to anything definite is tricky. We shall see how this all pans out, but we have the render, we have the skip into which to put 'waste', and possibly a bloke and a labourer to applier said render to said walls of Chez Jelltex.

But before I tell you about today, let us go back a whole 24 hours, or more to what we did yesterday.

Tuesday.

THe alarm went off at five. Outside it is still dark, with the hint of dawn on the horizon. Mulder has been climbing over us for over an hour trying to convince us it is breakfast time. He is handsome, and cute, but he has, so far, failed to learn to tell the time. We ignore him, and mostly he leaves us alone. And lets us go back to sleep. But this morning we were up before him and getting ready for the big adventure. Well, not that big, but heading over the foreign lands to, well, visit a couple of warm memorials.



I had looked on the interwebs Wednesday evening, and found two places that looked good; Tyne Cot and The Menon Gate; I programmed them in the sat nav, and so all was set fair for a day in the fields and former battlefields of Flanders.

We load up the car with: cameras, coats, more coats, spare car bulbs, warning triangle, maps, coats, shopping bags, sat nav, coats and us. And we were off.

Now, in the modern world it could be said that some of the romance of travel has been lost. Nowhere is this more true than in the crossing of the Channel by car. Or by train. Trancar. Oh I don't know, look you drive your car onto the train and they take you to France and you drive off again. The fact is, that the whole process is so simple, efficient and works so well. I booked online, so as we approached the automated barriers, a camera read the number plate, and the touchscreen already had pulled up my reservation. Which train did I want to leave on, is this your car reg? and so on. Our reservation was printed out and we hung it on the rear view mirror, so we drove to the terminal to get a GB sticker and headlight filters.

20 minutes later, we drove to the train, held for ten minutes in a waiting area. Onto the train, safety announcement as the doors were closed. And off we went. 35 minutes later we arrived in France, the doors opened and we drove off, onto the motorway and we were off to Belgium. So simple, so modern and with no romance. But it works.

Up the motorway, and then across mile after mile of flat fields, small picturesque villages until we came to Ieper, which used to be called, or spelt, Ypres. It was then a ten minute drive across more fields to Passchendaele. Now that name alone is enough to chill the blood. As we drove I was already getting emotional, as I knew from some more research on Wednesday that two family members were remembered her, as their bodies had never been found.



We found the cemetery of Tyne Cot, it was well signposted once we were near, and so, got the cameras out and walked to the entrance.



Flanders is, as it ever was, I suppose all green rolling fields, small farms and villages. I took some shots showing the verdant countryside as we walked round the edge of the cemetery. On one side of the path was countryside, on the other over ten thousand graves standing in neat rows. And they seemed to go on and on and on. The shocking this is, once we had passed through the gates is that a lot, maybe something like half, we unidentified. Some they knew the regiment, but most are known only to God. Jools found a directory, and so we were able to identify which panels my relations were on. Seeing my family name, which it an usual one, there among the lost is sobering. A great-uncle, that I did not know nor had heard spoken of, gave his life because it was thought that the fight was good. I don't know about that, but he and his comrades gave everything.



We stayed for an hour or so, the sheer numbers, 165 panels of names for those without stones whose bodies were never found, and over ten thousand stones marking those bodies that had been found. What else is there to say?



We drove on to Ieper, Ypres in old money, looking for another memorial to the lost, the Menin Gate. The address I had could not be found, and so we drove into the city centre hoping to find a sign, instead we found the gate itself. We parked up, and I took some shots. The Gate is a memorial to the lost, whose bodies could not be found, and despite its size, it became clear that the gate was not big enough to record all the names, the wall at Tyne Cot was built for the overflow. So much death. So many lost young lives, it leaves you numb.



We find a nice place to have lunch, Jools orders fish stew and I have garlic scampi. Both are glorious and come with huge amounts of Belgian fries and mayo. All wonderful.



It was by now very hot indeed, like high summer. There was no breeze, and the small amount we had to drink was making itself felt. We go into the local church, more like a cathedral for a while. I take shots, then we decide to head back early. Anyway, we had some shopping to do first. So, back to Calais and to the supermarket for some stinky cheese and spicy sausage, before hotfooting it to the wine warehouse for a few boxes of the cheapest of the cheap red wine. Yay!

At the tunnel we have half an hour to wait before boarding can begin, so we have a cool drink and people watch, then off we go, as before, a short wait, onto the train, safety announcement, and off. Arriving in Folkestone half an hour before we set off thanks to the time zones, and we were home by half five, feeding the cats and unloading the car. It was a tad cooler home, but not by much, so we have a shower and a coffee and feat of pistachio macaroons which we also had bought from the supermarket.

As darkness fell, the mist and fog rolled in, and we went to bed just after nine, with any sounds outside, dulled by the damp air. All we could hear was a badger in the front garden, munching on peanuts and sunflower seeds.