Oh yes, my good friend Mr Weekend, how I've missed you.
Whilst working away from home is not as bad as my moaning might make it seem, travelling back on a Friday and flying back out on Monday makes the weekend seem very short indeed, especially as I leave left the offices in Arhus on Friday, so were many others who were making an early start on the weekend. Mine would have to wait some eight hours.
But the weekend did arrive, and very welcome it was too. So welcome I was laying awake at half five, listening to the silence outside. Is that even possible? Listening to silence I mean. Well, I love the quiet of St Maggies, and just the wind in the trees, the few early birds looking for food and singing to the whole world about it. And at least one of the cats meowing to make sure we knew it was time for breakfast. Or at least, cats breakfast.
I get up, put on my dressing gown and walk down the stairs, into the kitchen, filling the coffee pot and then heading into the utility too, to feed them cats. It makes them happy, and making them happy makes me happy.
We have a coffee, then plan the day: drive upto the Hoo Peninsular, snap a train, come back, maybe go out to snap it again, the usual.
Hoo is an area east of Gravesend, right at the end of the Thames estuary, and as well as the setting for Great Expectations, it is now home to power stations, Thamesport and still a few scattered communities. It lies over the other side of the Medway, but could not be more different to the Medway towns. Very quiet, rural. It also has a frieght only branch line serving Thamesport and another wharf. And today, a passenger tour was going to travel up and down it. Not earth-shattering stuff, but worth a trip out, standing on a windy bridge for half an hour with half a dozen other like-minded people with cameras.
It is a long drive up the A2 then the M2, past Faversham and then the Medway towns. I suppose we could have taken the tunnel, the Medway Tunnel that is, but I like to drive over the motorway bridge beside HS1. Just in case we see a train. But we don't.
I look at the clock, I realsie we are cutting it fine for my first shot, passing by the signal box at Grain, and to add to the pressure, the fuel light came on. No time to stop now, press on.
We arrive at the crossing with ten minutes to spare, I take out my camera with the nifty fifty, check some angles and decide on the shot I want with the small signal box and the gates in the shot. And wait. The gates are closed, I hear a rumble and a huge class 66 trundles up, stopping on the crossing to receive a token from the signal man. Engines roar and it inches off, accelerating to a quick walking pace. I cross back over the road to snap the loco on the back as it passes.
The gates are opened, I make my way back to Jools in the car and we drive back down where a new bridge has been built over the line to be ready to snap it on the way back. It is a fine, but chilly and windy morning. We wrap up and wait. And wait. We can just see the train dwarfed under the gas storage tanks a mile or so away, so we will have plenty of warning when it does come back.
Quarter of an hour late, it begins to move, and we get ready as the driver pushes the power controls and it speeds up to something like 30mph. I snap it all the while, and soon it fill the viewfinder before, seconds later, if disappears below our feet, and its all over.
The A2 is blocked at Canterbury, so we drive down the 229 on Bluebell Hill to join the M20, and drive down through Maidstone, Ashford and Folkestone before we approach Dover. Jools has an errand to run in town: I don't, so I suggest I wait in the Rack of Ale sampling a pint whilst I wait. Yes, that seems a very good idea indeed. I have a pint of mild, and then try the new barrel of stout which is very nice indeed before Jools comes back and we return to the car and drive home for lunch.
Two pints in half an hour means I would be snoozing on the sofa, which I do, whilst listening to the football. Later I wake up to follow City's game on the internet. We throw away a goal lead in the final 5 minutes to lose 2-1 at Forest and enter the crisis zone. What happens now? Who knows, but this aint good enough, and we all knows it.
The evening highlight is the final Dr Who of the series, which Jools watches, and I don't. But we're both happy, and that's what matters.
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