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.