Friday 18th September 2020

Today, I am officially old.

I joined the RAF at twenty five, quite late. Stayed in 15 years, best years of my life and all that, and as off 11:00 yesterday (Friday) morning, I have been out longer than I was in.

Meaning that 30 years ago, I took the Queen's shilling and joined the Royal Air Force.

I mean, I know we say time flies, but that is incredible. 30 years, gone in a flash.

I joined the RAF after being a giblet stuffer by Royal appointment, but I was selected to be one of the bretheren of piss heads.

What could go wrong?

Well, not much, all went to plan, other than not doing 22 years which would have meant a livable pension when I finished, so now I have to wait until I'm 60 for a lesser pension. But I'll take that.

But it is Friday, last day of the week, but like every other Friday, I have four hours of meetings to start the day.

Sigh.

We get up and are having coffee as the sun rises.

There is the early morning meeting to prepare for. And by prepare, I mean get dressed. And have breakfast before it start. Which I manage.

THe big news is that our department now has its own cost centre, which is a good thing apparently.

The meeting ends, and we all join the next one for more auditors talking about audits and audit planning. Which goes on for an hour and fifty minutes before I have time to make a fresh brew before my weekly catch up with my manager.

It is more of a social call, we talk about work some, cats a lot, and pubs a lot, live music a lot. There goes another 50 minutes.

In that time Jools had gone out for her yoga class, had a walk with her friend, had breakfast out, had a haircut, had a facial, went shopping in M&S and back here before I had finished the meetings.

We have lunch, ham sandwiches with some of the chutney Jools made the day before. Very good indeed.

And then it was time for Le Tour, the final "proper" stage, with the time trial on Saturday and the final stage in Paris on Sunday. Better make the most of it.

Once that finished, we get ready to go out, as we had tickets to visit a local site where beavers have been introduced.

Beavers.

For the last twenty years, KWT have had actual beavers here in East Kent.

These are not North American beavers, but European beavers which were brought over from Germany and Poland.

The European beavers build separate dams and lodges, so are not so obvious as ones I saw in New Hampshire nearly two decades ago.

Beavers are secretive creatures, and it was always a long shot that would get to see one on land or swimming, and we didn't..

But Ham Fen is a wonderful site, and long may that continue.

We met at the site car park at half five, I along with another guy watching Migrant Hawkers, hawking before the sun went too low and it got too cool.

Once all 15 of us were there, the warden gave us a talk, explained where the beavers came from and their habits and what they had done to the site, turning woodland into a swamp and replacing the trees that were there which died because of the boggy conditions with willows and other favourites of beavers.

We walked to the fen, and for over an hour we wandered, hoping to see one on the surface, but we didn't.

We did see a beaver dam though, so good that behind the dam the water was two feet higher than the other side.

By the time we walked back to the car park it was just about dark, and the English longhorn cows had huddled around the cars out of curiosity, their shapes looming out of the gloom as we approached.

We had not eaten, so we went to Deal, parked on the seafront near the pier and bought two battered sausages and chips from the chippy, eating them in the car as the evening had turned nearly cold.

And that is that. We drive back home where the feline welcoming committee was waiting. They all got fed, I looked at my shots and the evening had gone.