Friday 27th April 2018

Prayer Day (DK)

I mention the above as it is pertinent in what happened on Friday.

You have time off, for whatever reason and you dread the inbox upon your return. The mails, the calls the meetings.

And then when you power up the laptop, and Skype starts, and all you see from your contacts is lots of people not in work.

What the actual heck?

Prayer Day.

Public holiday.

No one in work.

I had some mails, dealt with those. Did some admin, spoke to those German and UK colleagues, and that was it.

I vacuumed the living room.

I weeded the new flower beds.

I emptied the bins.

I had lunch.

I checked in with work on a regular basis, and nothing.

Jools came home at three, so I switched off the work computer, and so let the weekend begin.

We were going to go shopping, but an accident on the A2 meant that it was traffic hell out there, so with the clouds having cleared, it was a fine evening. What the heck, lets just chill out this evening and do the shopping thing in the morning? Why not indeed.

We have made it to the end of another week, and that calls for a celebration. Have a cuppa. Have two.

Why not go out for dinner? I cannot think of a reason not to. We haven't been to the Old Lantern in Martin for years, we heard it has been taken over and the rumour was it was some kind of Japanese fusion place. Turned out half true, in that a Japanese guy owns it, and does Japanese nights, but otherwise it has a new menu, wider choice of beers.

Martin is down from the station, under the line and up the narrow lane the other side, left at the top and at the end of a dead end lane, on the right is the Old Lantern, an old pub, maybe 17th century; the windows don't fir, the floor is uneven and there are low beams everywhere. Wonderful.

We are the first customers, so order drinks and wait for the menu to be printed out, when it was, I ordered fish and chips, Jools had a burger. We then settled down to listen to the chorus of birds outside, mostly blackbirds all so busy feeding their young families.

The food is good, so good we plumb for a large cheeseboard between ourselves, and cracking that was, but our eyes were bigger than our bellies, and we failed to finish it. Only just though.

Jools drives us back home, arriving just in time for Monty, and a slump on the sofa as we both struggled to stay awake.