Saturday 15th September 2018

This year, the heritage weekend is spread over two weekends and four weekdays. Maybe its been like this for some time, its just that the second weekend, we're usually up that London for Open House.

But not this year.

I love Open House, and over the years we have visited many wonderful and interesting buildings, but the really good stuff, you need to book ahead or enter a lottery, and only on one occasion have we actually won a place on one of the limited spaces tours. So, with each passing year, I order the brochure, it arrives at the end of JUly, and we don't look at it until it is mostly too late to book, or even plan well for the day of action.

So, this year is the first year we have not ordered the brochure, and we did not go to London either. There were some City churches open, but not ones I want to revisit, so instead I had planned to go looking for butterflies, but as it turned out, I looked again at the Heritage website and found some hard to enter churches open.

As ever there was shopping to do first, go to Tesco to hunt and gather. Or rather to avoid almost any human contact at all, using scanners and self service tills, the only time we speak is to confirm that we were indeed over 25.

Back home for bacon butties and put the shopping away, and then get ready to head out for some churching.

Although most churches I visit are old, ancient even, some are much more up to date, and sometimes it is these that have suffered from neglect these past century and a half.

St Peter is a Victorian church, high above the harbour, the opposite side to St Eanswythe. It is part of a group of buildings of the same age, but the times I have been up there, the church has been closed, or for the past year or so, covered in scaffolding.

Renovations are now complete, so the church threw open its doors, and Jools and I visited to marvel at the multi-coloured bricks used to build the chancel and nave. For nearly a century, the wall s had been covered in whitewash paint, paint that was stopping the bricks from breathing, and causing damage. So, the paint was removed and beauty of the church revealed.

All the wardens and volunteers were rightly proud of their church, always have been, but now its beauty is there for all to see, and they wanted to show it off.

St Peter is a high church, so high that the Church tried to persecute it back in the mid 20th century, or that's the way it was told to me. Now the very things that the Church wanted to have removed is the very reason the church is listed, and thrives off to this day. Does nobody any harm really.

We now had to travel to the north Kent coast, to hanet and Ramsgate to try to revisit St George the Great which it was promised would be open. There was also a church at St Laurence which should have been open, all we had to do was find a parking space outside.

We drove north via Wingham to Ramsgate, to St Laurence where in the midst of suburban muddle and jams is an ancient church, perched beside a busy intersection, hardly noticed by anyone these days, and because of its location, it is mostly locked, except this weekend.

We do find a place to park, and I see that the heritage banners were in place, and lights could be seen inside.

I go in and am met warmly where we were offered more tea and cakes. But I only have eyes for the church and its glorious fittings and history. A surprisingly large church, explained that despite it being a mile from the harbour, until the middle of the 19th century, was the town's only church.

This was because then, what is called a chapel of ease, another church in other words, was built nearer the harbour, and this was St George the Great.

A wholly Victorian church then, built on a hill, with a tower complete with a lantern on top, overlooks the town. But if anything, the area around the church is worse than that of St Laurence, and the church is locked fast most of the tme, and the area has an unwelcoming feel to it.

But today the church was open, even if the sigh saying so was a little small and understated.

Inside the church is the size of a cathedral, with a balcony on three sides, a side chapel dedicated to the Dunkirk miracle, that partly meant I exist as Mum's Father was one of the third of a million soldiers evacuated.

The church is lines with memorials mostly to sailors and merchants who travelled the world and caught terrible diseases and were buried in a foreign field. One caught a fever and died whilst surveying the rivers of East Africa.

I am glad to have seen inside and recorded it, but was underwhelmed, even with the huge size of the church. We say thanks and leave.

On the way back to try to find a location I had been told where Clouded Yellow butterflies could be seen, behind Pfizer's I was told.

We go round the industrial sprawl that now covers the land east of the Ramsgate road at Richborough, the river was fenced off or had businesses occupying the bankside, so no butterflies to see here. We decide to go home for lunch, and just by coincidence, the footy had just started.

Liverpool beat Spurs at Wembley 2-1,, but should have scored at least four more, then the trial of following Norwich on Twitter as we took on Middlesbrough. City played well, soaked up pressure then scored a fine winning goal in the 2nd half. A long way to go, but a wins a win.

We go to Whitfield for more card malarkey.

I joke I had come for all their money again, but it was all jokey, though having won heavily two weekends in a row, the joke was wearing thin.

As luck would have it, nearly two hours of Queenie, and the pot of a four card run being over a tenner, Jen said that in order to finish the game, this would be the last game with a four card run, after that it would be a three card run.

I picked up my cards and had the seven, eight, nine and ten of clubs, and the five too, I just needed the lead and someone to lay the missing card. I got the lead and laid the 5. John laid the six. I have the six he said.

I have the seve, he eight, The nine. And ten.

Won again.

Bastard I was called as the joke was even less funny, but I was able to blame Jen for saying that game would be the last and that probably a four carder would be dealt.

We drove home under a bright crescent moon, arriving home just before eleven.