Friday 21st May 2021

It nver rains in May here in Kent.

Until this year.

And westerly gales are usually things that happen in October and November.

Until this year.

And this year we have both in May. Just the week I was off work for two weeks of orchid chasing and I had people down from Gloucestershire to look at Kent orchids. So, we had to do all the visits round the weather, when it allowed. But with the weather good, mostly in the mornings, it was a laid back week allowing them to do castle and garden visits in the afternoons.

So it worked.

But Friday. Friday was grim on an all new level.

Sometimes the wind blows, but Friday was expected to get to 65mph/100kmh and rain and be generally useless for macro phorography, or as it turned out, standing up.

In the event, I had to stay in to take a call from my doctor regarding the long-delayed blood test results, and Jools had a pretty full day of yoga, shopping, collecting stuff and so on, so she went out, I stayed in.

We had coffee, then Jools was out at six fifteen to get to her class, now that indoor stuff was allowed again. I stayed here and had another coffee

And then the roofers turned up.

Which was a surprise as the weather was really winding itself up into a good old storm. Just the one had come, having dropped another guy off in Folkestone to work, alone, on a 3 storey house that had no scaffolding. I said I didn't think it safe to go up, but he said he would try.

Soon, he left to collect the guy from Folkestone, and when they came back, I made them brews and said that I thought it unsafe for them to work, but they said they wanted to get the pointing done, at least. So, after their brews they went up and worked for three hours, getting most of the work done round the chimney.

When they bailed, they said the flat roof from next door was rippling, but I thought little of it. But sadly, they turned out to have left loads of old tiles and stuff on the upper level of the scaffolding, which then rained down on our drive and next door into the evening. There was little we could do to be honest.

And then when Kay came home from work, I saw her pointing at our roof and talking to Bev who lives the other side of us, in the other half of our semi-detached house.

The flat roof on their bedroom extension had lifted and was now folded back onto our roof.

Eeeeek!

And there was really nothing we could do about it, just hope that the rain didn't arrive before Bev and Steve could get it fixed. At least the gales was due to ease during the evening and into the night, so hope that what's left was water tight.

After the music quiz, in which I did poorly, we went out.

To eat.

Yes, from memory, we last ate out in the evening on January 31st last year, and since then we have visited a greasy spoon twice, had bacon butties last spring in Dover and ate out at the Lydden Bell last August.

We had tried to get into Nameste, but couldn't work out from their website if they were open for dining, so we went to the New Raj in Whitfield, booked a table, though as it turned out there no one else in at seven.

We had popadums, pickles followed by spicy curry, rice and garlic nann. I had king prawn garlic chilli something. It was splendid.

And we had eaten, paid and dabbed our faces and hands with steaming towels in half an hour, and back in time to see most of the Blackpool v Oxford 2nd leg.

Good game. For Blackpool.