Sunday 17th March 2024

I'm not going to do too many of these, "four years ago" posts, but just bear with me.

On St Patrick's Day 2020, I met up with a friend who dies church tours to visit three churches on Thanet.

A couple of people had bailed, but I don't really think it struck us then how things were going to change.

I met the group at the church in Ramsgate, and in a few minutes the tour arrived, John talked us through the chuch history and features. We did not shake hands, and I think we wore masks, if so the first time I did that.

The second church, IN Margate, cancelled at the last momenth, so I left the tour as I had been to the other two churches they were going to visit. Withn 6 days the whole country would be closed down and we would go nowhere for months.

So it goes. So it goes.

Sunday.

And in contrast to the previous day, rain was expected to fall into late afternoon.

We had nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Until the football began at quarter to one, at least for me.

We did lay in bed, but the sun rising at six now means it is pretty much light, by quarter to, and our brains wake us up.

So, we lay in bed a while, then get up to feed the cats, Jools does get dressed to go to the early session at the pool, and I drink coffee.

Once she is back, I decide to go and visit friends Gary and Julie, over in River. Time slips through our fingers, I was last there just before Christmas to deliver cards, though Gary was out. And since then we have been busy, and then I hurt my knee, so have not been out much.

So, I drive over to Dover, down past the old flat, under the railway, past The Crickets and then the nursing home where Nan saw out her days, to their house on the corner beside the park.

They have many plans for the year with the motor home and without, in fact were going away the next day for the first trip of the year.

So we chat over a brew and look out of their back window over the valley of the Dour, and houses spread on the other side of the river.

Then back home for midday, making lunch before the football starts, and to listen to DID on the wireless.

Jools went upstairs to paint the back room some more, so Scully and I watch football from the sofa, the second game being Man Utd v Liverpool, which despite what anyone in the media is telling you was not the best cup tie of all time, instead a game between a team taking to casually (Liverpool) and the other (Utd) who didn't seem to be bothered to do the basics.

A game broke out, however, Liverpool failing to score more than two, and a last minute Utd leveller. And after one more goal each in extra time, Utd break from defending a corner to slot in a winner in the 121st minute.

Football. And that was that.