Sunny Bank Holiday (in part)

The Bank holiday weekend showed all the signs of living up to its reputation on Saturday, when the rain varied between light and torrential.  No complaints from us, except that it gave us a foretaste of the months to come - as do the shrinking evenings.  At least it filled up the water butts, which is handy now that we've had a couple of dry days.  The tomatoes are coming along nicely, though I turfed one out yesterday.  Its leaves were yellowing, and the fruit were rotting in from the blossom end: the badgers have nevertheless eaten them... 

We took a ride up to the teeming Metrollops on Monday: Kate and John had invited us to a barbecue in their back garden, so we got to spend a pleasant few hours with them and their neighbours and friends (we shall not drop names, since we can't imagine that those whose we might will be dropping ours).  Good company all, and Kate's cooking and John's barbecuing were terrific.

An old BT France colleague, Gurch was leaving St Pancras on the 18:00 Eurostar back to Paris, so we met him for a glass of pink fizz at the station.  Isn't it maddening when you find that people you haven't seen for close on 20 years haven't aged a day in the meantime?  Or perhaps, gentle reader, you're among that blessed company, and notice all too readily how much more noticeably I have aged than you. 

Fish and chips at the seaside?

We went yesterday to try out a fish and chips restaurant in Dungeness on a friend's recommendation.  We arrived to find a good half of the restaurant reserved for a coach party, and there was another coach load of geriatric delinquents already in there: day out from a care home, I think.  The only space we could get was in a cramped and dingy part of the house.  Ten minutes elapsed with no sign of an order being taken - and this was before the second coach arrived - so we voted with our feet, I'm afraid.  Par conséquent, we have no news as to the quality of their fish and chips.  A similar pub nearby - a disappointment last time we went - was likewise chokka.  The pub we used to use at the top of the hill above Rye was shut for a private party.  Good old Café Rouge in Tenterden, then.  Arrived to find it encased in scaffolding - but mercifully working!  Excellent salmon fishcakes and a glass of Picpoul de Pinet per man.  All's well that ends well.

'Our' badgers are becoming a nuisance.  We have been feeding them because we love watching them.  But now they have started digging latrines in the lawn we start to go off the idea a bit.  Since the foxes take a somewhat more distributed approach to the same exercise, we shall not be encouraging them either. Elsewhere in the garden, we have cropped the last batch of spuds, and are starting to eat home-grown tomatoes.  The badgers can't have spotted them yet, though someone tends to start nibbling at the courgettes before they can reach maturity.  The roses at the front are doing pretty well this year, so I've been dead-heading assiduously, and feeding and watering them.  I threatened one with digging up and composting last year, and it seems to have taken heed, putting up a couple of strong new shoots, and record numbers of flowers!  I was very late starting the bedding plants from seed - and it didn't help a bit that what I'd labelled antirrhinum turned out to be aquilegias, of which we aren't exactly short.  Still, a lot of the former over-wintered successfully, and have flowered well.  I've cut them back hard, and they look as though they might flower again.  This year's cosmos and rudbeckia seedlings have been rather feeble, but the cosmos are starting to show a bit more enthusiasm, and the few rudbeckias that survived are starting to flower. 

Interesting morning at the hobby last Friday, followed by discussion thereof in the afternoon.  Looks like I may be allowed to carry on practising it for another four years.  Assuming that it's still in existence in four years' time.

Wildlife

As I write, Martyn is at his PC as well, editing his footage of last night's badger and fox visits to the back garden.  The previous night, we had two badgers at the tops of the steps, grunting and growling as they cleared the seed and peanut trays.  Often, when a badger is feeding, a fox will be waiting nearby, trotting in when the badger leaves to pick over whatever food it may have left.  Unlike the rather relaxed badgers, the foxes are distinctly jumpy, stopping feeding and peering and listening at the slightest sound or movement.  Equally jumpy are the herons, one of which visited us this morning.  When it started marching towards the pond, no doubt having selected a newt or a frog for breakfast, I made a distinct movement at the window, and it was off like a cork from a Blanquette bottle.

If we aren't skulking in darkened rooms watching wildlife, we're out on the terrace watching one of the new airliner types.  This morning we watched the British Airways A380 lumbering over on one of its familiarisation flights to Frankfurt.  I think it begins its long-haul career next week.  Norwegian are doing a similar routine with their new 787, flying it between Oslo and London while they get the hang of it.  We saw one from a distance last night, but this morning another flew directly over us.  It's very quiet in the approach, and the A380 was pretty discreet as well as it climbed through 12000 ft.  It would have been carrying nothing like a full load of fuel for its short hop to Frankfurt, so I imagine the engines weren't having to work too hard.  Quite a contrast to the noisy brutes of 40 years ago.  A British Airways 707 used to rattle me out of bed in the morning in my Putney days as it idled towards Heathrow, and the dear old Concorde was a conversation stopper, if only by reason of its deafening noise, even on final approach.  Talking of the latter, I twice felt and heard its double-tap sonic boom: once on a ferry between Portsmouth and Cherbourg, and again a year later on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Dakar.  Not having been warned to expect it, the very loud bangs just about scared us out of our wits.  This was soon after a number of DC-10s had crashed with dreadful casualty numbers.  When we left Rio, the Concorde was at the gate next to our DC-10's, and by the time we landed in Senegal, it had been and gone.  These days, the noise nuisance is more from the small Airbus airframe, I think, since they all make the same whining noise whichever engines are fitted.  I haven't heard one yet with the new wingtip extensions, but doubt if they'll make much if indeed any difference.  It's really only an issue in the summer when we have windows open at night: then we really notice that Gatwick is open all hours.

The Smoke

You'll infer that we've been having a quiet time of it lately, catching up with interesting stuff like an undramatic trip to the dentist, ditto to sundry car fettlers and testers, researching whom to hire to replace our current gas and elec suppliers, replacing the kitchen rubbish bin, etc. 

A trip to London yesterday, then, made a nice change.  One of Martyn's Canadian cousins was in town for a night, so we arranged to meet in the evening.  We took the opportunity also to go to the Royal Academy summer show, opting to take the train up from our semi-homophonous neighbouring town, which has a more frequent service.  The journeys were mercifully uneventful, though in each train we got seats at the end of the carriage, and rattled around like peas in a drum.  At this time of year, the lavender fields just north of Sevenoaks are in full bloom, looking like gigantic swathes of blue corduroy.  [A parenthesis on fares: my old-geezer return ticket came to £8.65.  Martyn's, with an add-on for the London buses (which I get free) was £18.80.  So there is some modest compensation for aching joints.] 

We arrived in Charing Cross to find a lot of people on the concourse clad in spray-on lycra and propping up bicycles.  The streets were fuller still, since yesterday was the day of the Ride London cycle race.  It all looked like great fun - the West End was heaving with cyclists.  The knock-on was that our already paid-for bus route up to Picadilly was closed, and we had to leg it.  Not unpleasant, I admit, and the walk helped to slacken off the stiff, painful hip and knees that have been bothering me for a day or two.  Lesson: don't grizzle, walk!

The RA summer show was fascinating.  The main reason for our going was that Martyn's niece and her husband each have pieces in the show, and Fiona's is sold.  There was a lot that I liked, and in particular the architectural models and some of the drawings.  But I can't get enthusiastic about huge, lurid abstracts and portraits by people who can't draw a face any better than I can. 

Thence to Upper Street, N1, near which Martyn's relatives were staying.  We'd a bit of time to kill, so first went for a glass of wine.  The first free outdoor seats we found were at a restaurant called Meat People on Essex Road at Islington Green.  They were very happy just to serve us drinks, and we spent an enjoyable half hour sitting in veiled sunlight, sipping Sauvignon de Touraine and watching the world go noisily by.  In due course, we went and found the relatives' hotel.  They having been out and about in London needed showers etc, so we had another hour to fill.  A stroll round to K&J's house (which looked fine in their absence, except for a couple of pizza menus half-way through the letter box - no longer), then back to Upper Street for tea and muffins at a chain coffee shop.  A group of people came and sat at the next table.  One of them, an enormous, muscular black man, leaned over and said 'do you mind if I ask you a question?  Are you two gay men?'  (I reckon Martyn's cappuccino was the giveaway...).  Turns out he was hoping to write and film a programme or series about the gay 'community', looking at differences of perceptions and attitudes to life, love, sex, drugs etc seen in various contexts of time, age, geography, economics and demographics.  At first, Martyn was afraid we were about to be proselytised at; I thought rather that the sub-text had to do with funding.  In the event, we became a sort of mini focus group on what we might or might not find interesting in such a programme. 

Well, the main event was meeting the relatives, and that was really enjoyable.  (Sorry about the waiter's shaky hand...)  Susan, Kelly and Alessandra were visiting from Canada, and have been setting themselves a typically punishing schedule, including a trip to Paris.  As I write, they'll be on their way to Victoria Coach Station to join a bus trip to Stonehenge, then aiming to visit a couple of London markets this afternoon before getting the train to Manchester for their flight back home.  They took us to the Cuba Libre tapas bar on Upper Street, where I was not alone in struggling to follow the conversation over the ambient noise.  Still, the food was quite good and sensibly priced, and the Prosecco (when it finally arrived) ditto.  We were celebrating the engagement of Nick and Kelly (L and R), and Alessandra's (2L) recent nursing qualification.  Susan (3L) and Martyn are second cousins, and had met once before in Canada, so had lots of stories of family to exchange. 

Back in sleepy Disgustedville, we'll get back to our usual pottering pace now.  The thunderstorms of the past week or so have wrecked the roses, the fuchsias have appreciated a bit of extra water, and the tomatoes are coming along well.  The wildlife has been slightly wilder than usual: Martyn awoke to crashing noises the other night.  It transpired that one of our neighbourhood beasts - probably a fox, possibly a badger - had upset a drum of poultry manure pellets, spilling its contents across the terrace (stand by for industrial-strength weeds later...).  Perhaps the same visitor had managed to get the lid and the trap off the compost bin, and doubtless had a good rummage.  No accounting for the tastes of the local fauna.  Meanwhile, a juv blackbird is running his father ragged, chasing him round the garden and demanding to be fed.  He can in fact feed himself now, as we constantly remind him, but he pays no attention.