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Sunday, 9 July 2017

20 of 50: Sir Norman Wisdom (Deal, Kent)

The Blog Starts Here!

This is really where the blog starts, this is my first entry since starting the blog properly.  I have decided that I need to take more pictures and try to make the log entries a bit more interesting.

The day started in an unusual way, our son delta got up before us.  Delta probably does not know that mornings are a real thing, so something was obviously different.  Today he is going with some friends to Chessington.  This leaves me and the wife on our own again.

Yesterday we went to Katherine’s cousin’s wedding in High Halden, with pims and morris dancing on the village green.  It was a really great day, and best of all I was driving, which means today I can do the drinking.

Katherine suggested a trip to see the new spoons in Ramsgate, it’s not open yet, but it might be good to see what progress they are making.  We started the journey and put on some happy tunes (Will Young’s excellent ‘Echoes’).  The sav-nav suggested going via Dover, which I did think was a bit strange, but if it avoids going via Canterbury then it seemed like a good idea to me. 

There is a stretch of the A20 after Folkestone that for some reason is limited to 40 miles, this was originally because of ‘operation stack’, but it’s been like this for over a year. 

We drove through Dover (which I am told is the best thing you can do, although I disagree slightly as it has a good spoons and a nice curry house ‘Cinnamon Island’).  Katherine nearly crashed into an Italian driver who decided that he didn’t want to go on the ferry after all and he cut across the roundabout straight in front of her.  It is the first time she has been scared that she might actually cause damage to her lovely car.

As we drove on our sat nav (mine is called ‘greta’, I tried to get her to call hers ‘ping’ but she was having none of it), told us to turn off to the left towards Deal.  I thought it was strange and said so, it was at this point I was told that I never listen and that Deal had been the destination all along.  Of course, this was not a problem for me.

As we pulled into Deal (after driving though Ham and Sandwich), there was some event going on that meant all the parking was conned off on the main street.  As drove along the front we found a marking space and prepared for a walk into the town. 

It was then Katherine gave the bad news, ‘we’ve already done this one’.  She remembered a recent(ish) visit to Deal and we had already done it.  I still think it is worth a blog entry, and it screws with my numbering, but we were already here.  The sun was shining, it was 28degrees.  We walking though the town and the memories came back, there was a market here last time, that’s where that smelly cheese was, etc.  And then the best bit, the pub was new, it was not the same one we had been to before.  The journey was back on track! 

My heart sank as we moved nearer the pub, from the outside it looked like a crappy old furniture shop (I later found it that it used to be a furniture shop, I don’t know if it was crappy or not).  We went inside and saw the familiar things, a unique carpet, some nice fancy seating, the ‘toilet’s upstairs’ sign.  We walked into the back area to find a table and I thought we might have taken a wrong turn, it felt like the old BHS café we had in Ashford.  Even the carpet was ashamed and did not want to be seen in there. 

We were hungry and ordered the ‘big breakfast’ (without mushrooms and tomato), and a nice pint of beer (perfect for breakfast), it was 11:30 by this time.  The wall next to our table (lucky 13) looked dirty.  I said to Katherine that we really need something to happen to make the blog more interesting, the best I had was a man with a squeaky shoe stand near me.  I did consider tripping him up but felt that he would not appreciate it.   Is the blog actually worth the effort without explosions and people with wood legs falling over?  A quick visit to the toilet, which was very fancy, and off we go.

After breakfast (Katherine insisted on calling it brunch, but that means I miss a meal, why would I want to do that), we popped into Lyndas.  I had left my sunglasses at work on the Friday so needed a new pair, this shop sells a bit of everything.  We brought glasses and a new wallet (mine was falling apart), a gift for Katherines friend for her new home and a purse.  I don’t know if Lynda served us or not, but the woman working there did not really seem to be happy to be there, I felt like I had insulted her by having the cheek to spend over £20 in her shop.  I was pleased to leave.

We popped into poundland, got a 5 pack of mentos (living it up) and some peanut brittle.  They also sold sunglasses, and unlike happy Lyndas they went one step further and had no staff at all, just ‘self-service’.  Then we went to the beach.  The beach was lovely, the weather perfect. Beta will tell you that every day is beach weather, she loves the beach and really would go rain or shine.  However today really was perfect.
My legs were starting to go red with the sun. 

I would have been happy to stay longer, but then remembered that we only put 2 and a bit hours on the car parking, which, thanks to parking in another country, would be a 20 minute walk, so we made our way back to the car. We got back to the car with 1 minute to spare.  I did suggest that we stay longer, but Katherine suggested we go to Ramsgate to see the new spoons there. I left Deal with a sense of Déjà vu.














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