Friday 31st December 2021

New Year's Eve.

I could have written this last night, but we were playing Cribbage and eating chilli corn crunchy things.

So.

The last dregs of 2021.

Most want to see the back of it, hoping that the New Year will be better. That's what we thought last year and look how that turned out!

Of course, I could be wrong.

But then again.

We slept to half seven if not a little beyond. The cats were quietly waiting for breakfast, happy that we were srirring at last.

We make coffee, feed the cats and ponder what to do. Worth Marshes again?

I had studied the maps and saw there was a nature reserve in one part, that's where at rare bird woulld go, right?

Wrong.

We were not to know, of course.

So, we drove out along the Sandwich Road before doubling back, parking in the edge of Worth near to my friend, John's, house. Not needing to wrap up as it was already 12 degrees and getting warmer.

A short walk over the fields until we came to the pool, then turning right, all the while looking at any bird on or beside the pool. No crane.

At a junction in the paths, I take the right fork, Jools went left.

For me the track miandered​ across the marsh between two drainage ditches until I came to a locked five bar gate, and on neither side had I seen a crane or any large white bird. So, I turned back to go and look for Jools.

I caught up with her talking to a young couple out with a roough terrain push chair and two small children, and the father tells us that we needed to be over the other side of the village, down a lane.

We turned to walk back to the car, the clear blue skies of earlier were no clouding over, and the warm breeze now had quite a chill.

Should we come back another day or go to look for the crane?

We decided to look for the crane.

So we drove to the village pond and walked to the Crispin Inn, taking the arrow lane beside it, through orchards still having dwarf trees still with fruit on, most was now rotting, but some look good enough still to eat.

We reached a lane, walked down that and on the left saw a small marshy area, and away far away on the other side was a large white bird with black wing tips. THis was indeed the White Crane.

I got a few distant shots of it I was happy enough, I mean we had found the bird, though something closer would have been nice. But I'll take it.

We walk back to the village, change into clean shoes before climing in the car to drive home. Oddly, Deal was packed, lots of people in the HIgh Street and no parking spaces along the seafront. But that's OK as we were heading home for breakfast and more brews.

New Year's Eve brings the chore of writing a review of the year, after I had written about the day previous.

There was so much I could have said about the old year, in the end I picked out the highlights , copy/pasted a few of the better days, and that was it.

We played cards, I got spanked at Cribbage, and then we watched a live feed of a show from the Hippodrome Circus in Great Yarmouth. Bandwidth was poor, and we gave up in the final ten minutes, as it was so fractured and buffering. But it takes me back, as a trip to the Hippodrome was a childhood treat for us, especially at the end when the churcus ring floods and smimmers join in for the end of the show. It is the only such place in Europe.

Nothing else to do to see the New Year in other than to watch Piano Blokey on the tellybox, but as soon as it was gone midnight and the fireworks stopped outside, we went to bed.