Everything seems to be moving along rather fast these days…
A lovely day out:
Anna and Leslie came to visit Hever Castle yesterday. It was a beautiful day, if a little hot for my taste. Inside the castle itself it wasn’t so bad though. Being such a lovely day the place was busy. Much of the ground floor of the castle was refurbished (unusually well) around 100 years ago. I love some of those galleried rooms and figuring out where the ‘secret doors’ lead to.
We broke a priceless 16th century lock (but don’t tell anyone) and passed a collection of model dogs, including a scary yellow one, on the way upstairs to the long gallery. The gallery itself is now full of wax figures of the wives of Henry VIII and an ornate plaster ceiling, which together conspire to prevent its use as a convenient cricket practice area. Oh well, I’ll just have to change it all around when I buy the place…
Onward, through the evil ’60s badrooms to the museum of torture implements. Where Anna was all too excited about some of them, scary girl.
Time for a walk around the gardens – they’re full of peculiar pieces of secluded sunken gardens and classical style promenades. The lake is gorgeous but would be even better if you could hire a boat and row into the middle of it – another thing to change when I’m in charge.
We got distracted by the water maze on the way back. This is something I would have really loved when I a kid, and, indeed, it was full of kids. Its basically a maze constructed from stepping stones in a pond, where some of the stones trigger a ‘wall of water’ when you tread on them. The idea being that you find the route through without getting wet. Though on a day like yesterday there seemed to be more people playing-to-lose than usual.
There is also a display of models of manor houses. However it seems to only cover a few styles – there were no Regency models. It is as if they’ve not finished it yet but thought they’d set up the exhibit anyway.
We popped in to Chiddingstone afterwards – a quaint old village – where we went to sit on the Chiding Stone, a sandstone outcrop on the edge of a field. Leslie slept a little while we admired the countryside and decried the state of todays society from atop the rock.
On the way back to the station we stopped at Hilden Manor, where we confused the apologetic barstaff by asking for Pimms. A cultured way to finish of a beautiful day out.
Some boring stuff:
I finally got to the Embassy today to hand in my visa application form – I can’t pick up my stamped passport until Thursday, which kinda scotches plans for flying Thursday. So I’m now aiming to be flying Saturday and starting work in the middle of next week. Looks like I’ll be going cattle class without a flexi return, cheapskates. On the upside, that does mean I’ll definitely be back for Whitby as I’ll have the plane ticket anyway.
And something weird:
While I was shopping for suitcases (just call me Mr Organised) I heard a little voice calling my name. Now, I normally ignore that because invariably its some mother calling their three year old son, but this time it seemed a little more persistent and familiar than usual. A young lady introduces herself. Kirsty. Someone I’ve not seen for 12, maybe 15 years. And just around the corner is Catherine, who I lost touch with at the same time. They’re on their way to an appointment elsewhere in the store.
Weird. We catch up a little, what have we been up to over the last few years, where are we now, what about everyone else (they’ve all moved to Australia by sounds of things).
Weird. They’re not like I remember. Catherine was the first girl I had a serious crush on, all those years ago. Its so weird seeing them after such a long time, kinda like I remember them, but not really.
1 comment