5 June 2010 (Saturday) - A Good Day, Really.

Having spent a lot of Thursday evening and Friday morning preparing a lecture for the astro club, and then having spent half an hour last night explaining to the astro club (very loudly and very confidently) that the nearest aliens are 800 light years away (825.2 light years, to be precise), I was rather miffed to read in the news today that NASA have actually found aliens. In orbit around Saturn, on Titan. Still, I got an email from the people from the Canterbury astro club this morning. They said they liked my performance, and would be inviting me to give them a performance at some point.

This morning’s haul of emails also brought in two friend requests on You-Tube. I rarely get those. The first was someone blatantly trying to sell USB memory sticks, and the other was a particularly fit bird with some rather raunchy dance videos who (on closer research) turned out to be ten years old. Ten!!! I wonder if her mother knows what she’s up to.

So then we got the bikes out and cycled to Warehorne. And in retrospect we went to the wrong pub. We’d decided not to go to the World’s Wonder, because that involves cycling along a busy bit of road. Instead we went back to the Woolpack. Regular readers might recall I’ve blogged about how good this pub is in the past. It’s now under new management and is quite frankly the biggest rip-off in Kent. When I visited last October, the place was full, Today, all but empty.

I’ll concede the beer selection was good. However, when one pays nearly ten quid for scallops, one expects more than two of the things. When one orders a cesar salad, one expects more than a few lettuce leaves smeared with salad cream. There is more to a ploughman’s lunch than three piddly bits of cheese and some small pieces of stale bread.

We exchanged a few words with fellow customers who were equally disgusted, and we left. I will go back, because I can't see the current management keeping the place going for long. I shall return in a few months to see who takes over... And no matter who takes over couldn't do a worse job....

I suppose this proves my point about the need to re-visit pubs. They change hands (and standards) so often these days.

We cycled back up to Shadoxhurst, planning to get some back-up scran from the Kings Head. We’d eaten there only a month or so ago. We forgot that they close for the afternoon, and we only just got there in time for a crafty half before they shut the doors and locked us in the beer garden. Thank the Lord for the local corner shop doing ice-creams.

And so home, where we got the barby out, and half a dozen of us scoffed and drank ourselves silly for less than a third of the price we’d paid at mid day. Once stuffed we watched Doctor Who – possibly the best of the season so far.

And it’s only as I come to the end of today’s blog entry that I’ve realised that I’ve not taken any photos of what I’ve been up to today. That is so unlike me. Instead, today’s picture can feature the racy child I mentioned earlier.

In closing I’d like to welcome my brother to Blogspot. That is, if he’s found it. If you have, give us a wave…..