Saturday 16th November 2019

Imagine a whole weekend with no plans?

Yeah, imagine that!

Yes, it is true. Nothing planned. At all.

To compound matters,I am not sleeping too well, so even at seven in the morning, I am woolly headed and in a foul mood.

Jools does make me a coffee, but it helps little.

I will get over myself in time.

Jools has a haircut booked for half eight, and I am planning to go to Tesco at the same time. So we leave the house just after eight, she drops me off outside, I get a trolley once I had called her back for a pound and the clubcard fob.

But I am all set.

I go round and round, filling up the trolley with stuff we feel we needed, including ingredients for another Christmas cake for Jen.

That calls for more brandy. And I need lots of wine for the sloe port we will start next month.

I am done in half an hour, go outside and Jools had just arrived, so we load the car up and then drive back home to unload and make breakfast.

We have fruit then followed by croissants and coffee, which is a fine way to get my mood back on the right track.

We potter about for an hour, then we load the car with old books and other stuff, as part of our de-cluttering as a result of getting lots more stuff from Mum, and then we need to thin the stuff out we put in the attic we put up there two years ago to see if we would miss the stuff.

We didn't.

So, off to the charity shop with them.

And there is no name shop to walk to for some stinky French cheese and maybe some crusty bread.

Deal is a ten minute drive away, we park away from the seafront, on a side street near to Oxfam, and take the bags of books there in relays. If you have not looked at a book, no matter how wonderful the shots and text are in a decade, then you probably never will.

We walk up the High Street, me hoping to snap St George's church, one I have never found open, though we don't go to Deal that often, still we should have found it open at least once.

I walk to the churchyard and there is a sign: church open ten to twelve. I look at my watch: ten to midday!

Eeeek.

So, I walk into the church, introduce myself and the project. They nod and are faintly interested.

But I am aware I have a limited time, so rush round taking shots, just wide angle ones as the church dating from the 18th century is mostly square, so the wide angle would be best. I also feel like a tourist carrying two cameras with me.

Go figure.

No Name Shop is opposite, and you have to be careful, as it is easy to get half a dozen cheeses, crackers, cakes and whatever and have a forty quid bill. As it was I spent £25, and by the end of the day, most of what I bought had gone.

But cheese.

We were done, so we walk back to the car, load up and drive back home, getting back at half twelve, and with no football to watch, the rest of the day stretched out before us like a ling stretching thing.

We have cheese and bread and sausage roll and cheese sticks for lunch, and cider/beer.

Meaning its all we could do in the afternoon to stay awake when we were watching another art documentary.

We have some kind of eggy/custard flan for mid-afternoon snack, also bought from No Name, it was divine.

The evening was laid back, with me beating Jools as Uckers.

Yay, me.

Outside the rain hammered down against the back of the house, and the cats waited for us to go to bed so they could curl up beside us.

Relaxing day!