Bills Posts

The way these two gulls were acting, like they were in a tug of war, I thought their beaks had been superglued together. There was obviously something that neither wanted to let go, I did seriously consider getting closer to see if they were stuck, but I backed off and when I looked back a few yards down the road, they had gone their separate way, so they were OK.

I had gone further along Clarence Toad, so that I would join the High Street further up. That’s because one of the shopping units, No. 8, which used to be Poundstretchers has had planning permission to be turned into a four storey block of flats, I think with a shopping unit at ground level.

I am going to have to start paying more attention to the planning boards, as I’ll. pick up a lot of information from there.

I have had a thought about something else as well, that I’d like to do, but I won’t sway anything about it until I’ve checked it out,just in case it’s a no-goer, as it will involve a delicate piece of negotiation. If it does work, it’ll be good as it will give me an excuse to buy a decent label printer. Oooh, the mystery deepens. I bet you are really keen to find out. It’s going to have to wait until at least the weekend I’m afraid.

OK, a slight play on numbers. It’s 1607 – 267 = 1340. There’s nothing significant beyond it being the sequence number of this post. There’s nothing significant about the 267 except that’s the number of years difference between 1607 (for the purposes of this article, an insignificant date) and 1340, which is the year that the building in the picture was built.

That building is the Ightham Mote, in this case mote is a perfectly acceptable spelling of today’s Moat.. 1340 is the year this building was… built (Sorry, shades of Austin Powers). It was the first destination of our last day of tour of Kent.

We had enough time to look around this rather magnificent moated manor, whilst it has undergone some changes (one big one obviously,m would be the installation of electricity, which from the style of the plugs and switches looks like it was done in the 1940’s, but surprisingly, I have just found out that round pin plugs, which I thought went out of use decades ago are still used in some very limited circumstances. I don’t know if this would qualify – but I guess it must.

Anyhow, the visit was delightful, we had a stroll around some lovely gardens, we got a little bit of the history of the place from a 15 minute presentation from one of the guides, walked on some 700 year old cobbles, and based at a fascinating very old building.

One thing I will say, that when we look around old stately homes, they always look so grand that I can’t imagine anyone living there (clearly they did though). Even though this place was obviously built and owned by several very wealthy families, some of the rooms had a certain homeliness to them that I could even imagine myself living there. Never experienced that feeling before. Fascinating.

We obviously got home OK, to a slightly stressed cat, who had been fed by some very kind friends.

The first part of today was a trip from Tenterden to Bodiam on the Kent & Easr Sussex Light Railway (K&ES). The trip to the railway was across country along some B roads, they were to say the least a bit tight and twisty in places. We arrived with not many minutes to have a look at the Tenterden station, the transfer from coach to train really did feel a bit rushed. A pity. It’s the only time this trip where the flow of the day has felt out of sync with the flow of time.

We would all, I think, have appreciated some time to explore. Anyhow, the train trip itself was lovely. Apparently the line and trains were used in Downton Abbey, that immediately endeared them to me. We went through some truly delightful countryside. Not surprising as most of the line runs through an area officially designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

We had a bit of time at the Bodiam end of the line. I would quite liked to have had a look at Bodiam Castle, I was surprised to hear it described as a folly due to its poor design, but remains a visually impressive building. Sadly we weren’t able to do that.

From Bodiam we went to Rye. From the way it was being spoken about I really wasn’t expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised An interesting like town, not impressive to the eye, but one loaded with history. Luckily we had more than enough time to explore and have a cup of tea.

We ended up back at the hotel with time to relax.

There’s a phenomenon in photography that typically occurs with architecture when pictured using a wide angle lens. It’s called converging verticals. Let’s just say that the verticals of Canterbury Cathedral don’t slope anywhere near like what they do in the picture.

Anyhow, you’ll gather that we visited this august city and building today. The cathedral is magnificent especially when you think how old it is, with the foundations being laid in 597 and parts of the building dating back to 1070 and the event that took place on the 29th of December 1170, the assassination of Thomas Becket, the effect of reverberations of which I think can still be felt today. The history that present is just breathtaking.

From Canterbury we moved onto Sandwich, I have to say driving into a town parts of which still remain from several hundred years ago and was clearly not designed for cars let alone a 52 seater coach was a hair raising experience which only serves to increase my respect for the drivers of these beasts. I also must apologise for the change in font between this, the previous and subsequent paragraphs. I don’t know how I changed it and it doesn’t matter what I do I can’t get it back to the original font.

Anyway, we arrived safely at the coach park. We had an ice-cream and later after having had a wander around this important, old village, we had a beer. We did not however have a sandwich in sandwich, because I’d had a large breakfast, and neither of us were hungry.

I can’t help wondering if you might think like me, that there is a thing about place names. Names that for whatever reason stick in your mind; Angmering is one, Princes Risbororough and Bishops Stortford are others. Of those three names I have a very tenuous link with only one, the others are there because I must have heard about them at some point in my life for some entirely random reason and they stuck in my mind.

Then you have names that stay in your mind and you build a picture of them even though you’ve never been there. One such place is the Spa town, Royal Tunbridge Wells. Today, we visited this town and that is the ambition fulfilled. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to visit Royal Tunbridge Wells, and today I did.

A very reasonable question you might as is; were my expectations fulfilled? And I have to say that no, they were not. I am beginning to suspect though, that is not the towns fault, we just did not see the right part of town, concentrating as we did on the high street. I have Wikipedia open the moment to confirm that the accolade “Royal” was granted by King Edward VII in 1909, at the same time I can see a picture of The historic centre of the town, The Pantiles. Somehow, we completely managed to miss those.

Does that mean that my now distorted picture of the town painted, as it is now by my version of reality needs to be corrected by a re-visit? Arguably yes, as I am in danger of doing it an injustice.

When will that re-visit take place? Who knows, not in the immediate future I suspect, but you never know.

It’s almost like there was a hiatus – Wetherspoons is now open and working, after what was a £1Million refurbishment, Bon Marche will have opened today and things are happening with McDonalds I can see through the screen, but nothing is visible on the high street.

It’s fairly obvious that the bus station won’t be there for much longer. Pretty much confirmed by the Ticket Office person I spoke to on Wednesday that they start demolition probably sometime in the next two months. I’ll track that.

There were three vans from a company parked on the high street I didn’t think to get a picture of them, so I can’t remember the company. I was going to ask them what they had been doing but they drove off before I had the chance.

What i’m trying to say is that after the high pitched excitement of a day or so ago, things are settling down to a bit of stability. It is kind of a bit of a lull before an interesting storm, but relaxing.

The light during the last few morning walks has been a glorious gold. I thought these red flowers get a hint that gold. As time marches on the mornings are rapidly becoming normal daylight.

I’ll freely admit that it isn’t always easy to get up for my morning walks, but one of the delights is looking out of the window to see what the light is like. There are times of course when it’s not worth checking, because it’s dark or daylight. But these in between times can produce some special light. It just adds to the pleasure of the walk.

I will be brutally honest. The title of today’s post does not reflect that accurate state of my office, it is without putting to fine a point on it a tip. Please don’t think I like it like this, I very much do not.

So, what can I do about it? Well every time I start to do something about it, I end up getting stuck. I’ll give you an example. One of the things I did today was to look at what books there are in the office that are not on a bookshelf.

I ended up with a pile of twelve non-fiction books, and a similar pile of fiction, perhaps not quite so high. Now I am going to focus on the non-fiction pile. There some there which will purely be reference books, I am unlikely to read them cover to cover. There’s a book about the Internet’s early days – I’d like to read that. There’s another about how share traders became successful.

The one that I am really waiting to read is the abouth the Civil War, but that will have to wait until I finish the current book about James VI of Scotland and I of England. Even that book is temporarily on hold until I finish the book on TED Talks, which I had started reading whilst on a bus trip, and am finding quite enjoyable. It’s also a bit of a break after a very heavy historical session.

Anyway, the office is still untidy, and I am no better off, except perhaps there’s a bit more rubbish in the bin.

Not to the city centre, a different part of the city to attend a special birthday party. We drove up a trip of roughly 70 miles. We left home with a full charge, and arrived at our destination after roughly two hours, and having consumed a third of the batteries capacity. More than enough to get home.

We had a lovely day, the party went very well, everybody enjoyed themselves and we all had a really good time. Then came time to go home.

Well, the way that’s written makes it sound like something bad is going to happen, but it doesn’t only what’s amounts to a minor inconvenience really, for us at least.

Just as we were leaving, we got told that the police had closed the Hindhead Tunnel on the A3, our main route home. That would certainly mean a diversion, but where would it take us?

The diversion kicked in just after Guildford, we were directed of the A3 onto the A31, heading towards Winchester, that was fine, we were ok with that, depending on which way it sent us we could follow a different route. Just before Alton, we were slightly confused as the instructions for the diversion were to follow the black triangle on the yellow background. At the point of confusion the diversion went in two different directions.

We ended going to different route than that expected. Getting near Four Marks and Medstead, we took a known road to Fareham. Why am I telling you this?

At the end of the journey, I looked at the stats that the car offered.. I noted on the journey up that we were averaging 2.9 miles per kilowatt hour, now admittedly, we were doing quite good speed wise but I’m not sure what the average for the journey was.

On the way back, we travelled about 77 miles. Actually, that surprised me, the diversion really did seem a lot longer, over the journey we had averaged 32 miles per hour, quite a bit slower. But we arrived home having used 24% of the battery, and hadn’t arrived that much later (half an hour) than if we had followed the un-diverted route.

I suggested to Elayne that we should travel everywhere at 30mph. The response was equivalent to lead balloons sinking – not popular at all, but that is effectively what we had done, and actually we had both quite enjoyed the journey.