Sunday 22nd December 2024

I am not taking many shots this month.

Not on purpose, just that I have not travelled and weekends just seem good for relaxing in, not churchcrawling and there being little botany abut.

It might be the first month perhaps for nearly 15 years that has less than a hundred shots in its album.

I did try to increase the number last week by visiting a couple of churches, only that neither had a huge amount of detail to record, so neither have more than 30 shots to show for the effort and cost of the visits.

But, I have now increased the number of Kent churches visited to 390, if my calculations are correct, with number yet to do, getting few. Perhaps.

I did make a master list a few years back, of all the listed churches, and notes from John Vigar's talks on Kent churches of those yet to visit.

In the new year there will me many more opportunities for filling in the blanks, so who knows.

And there will be many more sites for orchids and other plants to seek out and explore.

As we come to the end of the year, it is always a time to draw breath, but for Jools and myself, time to think more of the future than we have ever done before: places to visit, old friends to reconnect with.

On Sunday we were going to go out, but in the end, didn't.

I laid in until gone half seven again, and by then the wind was blowing again from the north, too cold for a casual walk or some low key gardening.

We will get round to those tasks at some point.

We have coffee whilst listening to the radio, then have breakfast.

And when Jools goes to visit her sister and drop off presents, I stay home and read the book a friend wrote on the history of our trade in the RAF.

A couple of pleasant hours passed, and seeing familiar names jump out off the page. One name, and accompanying photo was of one of the larger than life characters I bumped into, Jeff "Bonz" Poole.

Jeff is no longer with us, another one who was taken before his time, and I wonder if it was the cocktail of chemicals and other hazardous stuff we were exposed to during our time serving.

I am still here, however.

And there is football. So after a small pork pie salad and some more Belgian Christmas beer, I settled down with Scully on the sofa to watch the two games, and maybe stay awake.

The Fulham v Southampton game ended 0-0, but there was little chance of that score being repeated at the Tottenham Stadium, where Spurs took on LIverpool.

Ended 3-6 to Liverpool, and could have been double that. Entertaining for the neutral for sure, maddening for the Spurs fans who have paid good money to see comical "defending".

We end the day with cheese and crackers, then break out the Trivial Pursuit Jools bought last week, and so the evening drew to a close and we went to bed.