Bills Posts

I felt “normal” when I got up this morning and that feeling continued right up until just before lunchtime. We had family around so it was going to be a big meal, lots of veg to prepare it was all fine, the family turned up, all lovely and good and then I sat down.

I immediately came over all tired and could barely stay awake. I enjoyed the meal, it was lovely, and then I moved back to the comfy chair and the tiredness hit again.

It ended up with going to lay on, not in, the bed at about 5pm. I slept. I surfaced long enough just before 8pm to tell my friend Pete that I wouldn’t be on the radio the radio this evening and then spent the next hour or so drifting in and out of sleep.

It’s 2142 now, and all of a sudden I feel the closest to being normal since about 1PM. I don’t know what’s going on but I am going to read for a bit and then try and get a nights sleep- let’s see how that goes!

several years ago, I bought a Gopro. These cameras produce imgaes of an amazing quality. Yet I have mostly ignored it. Probably because I think, it means carrying another tool (the camera). But in reality it is compact, easily fits in the pocket and not heavy.

I don’t know what made me get it out, b ut having done so, and having had a bit of a play with it I am slightly more than annoyed with myself for having neglected this amazing tool.

But what then happens to my phone? The main thing is that it is still a very important tool, but there will be circumstances where it will take second place. On the otherhand, there is an immediacy of the availability of material recorded on the phone, whereas there is a very mildly annoying separate process whereby I have to access the camera through an app on my phone, and transfer media off. The good things with this are; that if the camera is turned off, accessing the app automaticually turns it on, transfers the media and turns the camera off – pretty seamless. The media is stored in my online account and is immediately accessible from my desk top and can be transferred out, so that’s good. Fairly straighforward really, and mostly pretty seemless.

I need to reconfigure my working arrangements slightly to fully incorporate the gopro, but I have most of what I need. All I need to do is get out and record some video.

I’m not sure how this snail got to the top of the bird table, but if it did climb up, and I have found snails half way up the post before, well done to it. I couldn’t bring myself to take it off. I’ll check in the morning to see where it got to.

Snails are fascinating beasties, and whilst I do sometimes tread on them I am always sorry when I do so, as I don’t like hurting/killing them.

We spent a bit of time working in the garden today, and I put some food on the bird table, the pigeons and starlings were getting a good meal as I had left the screen mesh open so they the pigeons and starlings can get in and clear the table.

I had a pleasant few minutes cutting back the centre of our olive tree and then cut the grass.

This is a picture converted to mono of some litter that was thrown in to the Cockleponds, something which doubly annoys the heck out of me; the fact that people treat these lovely resources with such disdain and disrespect and the fact that for some reason the pictures really appeal to me. I can no more tell you why than I could flap my arms and fly.

So what’s with the title “is there a point” and this one is version two. In last nights post (if you read it) I mentioned briefly about shop units on the high street being converted in to flats. There are several application in for this kind of change now. The question I have is;

When does a high street stop being a high street and become little more than a housing district? Annoyingly, as customers who use the high street, there is little we can do about it. Partly because we are so wedded to online shopping, and partly because running a shop I suspect has become so expensive as to be impractical. It is surprising how many new shops open, only to close a short time later.

These questions go through my mind.

I have been looking at planning applications. I wanted to see if I could identify any activities that it would be good to track (like the demolition of No. 8 (Poundstretchers) and its replacement by a block of flats. I’m going to have to vary my walk now, to track that.

I haven’t finished looking at the applications yet. I only started this year and have so far only reached March. There are a lot of applications. 90% plus, I’m not interested in. Of the remainder though, I’m not massively interested, but can’t help noting that they mostly involve the conversion of shop units into flats. OK only 2 or 3 of them so far, but I am nonetheless surprised at the number of them.

I’ll carry on looking when I get the chance.

The weather is a bit. Variable tag the moment. I thought that we were heading away from my heavy winter coat, but I really appreciated it in the chilled morning air. Let’s see what it’s like in the morning.

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.