6 June 2010 (Sunday) - Rain

Rather late to bed last night as I’d been watching my latest DVD – “BattleStar Galactica – The Plan”. I’d ordered the thing from eBay on May 12, and despite my constantly emailing them to ask where it was, it was only when I lodged a formal complaint last week that they delivered it two days later. Funny, that!

In any event, the DVD was a disappointment. Basically it was a re-working of the first twenty episodes of BattleStar Galactica done from a different point of view, and compressed into two hours. If you hadn’t seen those first twenty episodes at least half a dozen times before, you’d have no idea what was going on. And I had to keep rewinding the DVD as I kept nodding off. It was dull.

And then having slept so much in front of the telly, I didn’t sleep particularly well for the rest of the night – the rain was rather torrential, and went on for a large part of the night. I suppose if nothing else it tested out the new felting, which doesn’t seem to have leaked (yet!) The pond is very full now, following my topping it up yesterday and then having had the rain. It’s odd how there’s always heavy rain immediately after I fill the pond up.


To Tonbridge for a one-day kite festival. I’ve not been to this event since the one in 2004, because the organisers seem to want to keep the thing secret. They don’t mention it on the Kite Calendar, which is the accepted place to advertise all UK kite-based events. Nor was it touted on any of the local kiting forums until I found out about it four days ago. For the last five years I’ve heard about the thing after it’s happened, which obviously is no way to run any event. I’m rather concerned because the people who were running this today are also the people who oversaw the demise of both Dover and Capstone kite festivals. And it is they who have taken on the Teston kite weekends. Interestingly all the information I’ve had about the upcoming Teston weekend has come via all sorts of routes other than from the organisers. I suspect (but hope not) that said organisers may well be the subject of a future rant on this blog. I so hope I’m wrong about this.


We arrived at Tonbridge in the early afternoon, and saw a few kites flying. I say “a few” – not many, but actually far more than were ever evident at Britain’s largest beach based kite festival in Weymouth (!). We spent a couple of hours chatting with friends before beating a hasty retreat from the storm which was so obviously on the way.

It would have been good to have “done” this kite day properly, and a shame that not many of the “usual suspects” were there. But those people who normally support kiting events live all over the place, and I understand people’s feelings that having done such events in the past so many times, they no longer want to travel for several hours for only a few hours’ kiting, only then to have to make the journey home again. After all, most successful kiting events at the moment seem to be those at which people can camp on the kiting field for the weekend. I must admit to feeling much the same myself. Roll on Teston…


As it was Sunday we came home via Lidl, which is something of a tradition. I love Lidl – it really is Pikey central. The staff today were getting really worked up because as the clock was ticking closer and closer to four pm, so the punters were still pouring into the shop. At 3.50pm they closed the entrance, so customers just came in via the exit. It was so funny watching “Porky” on the checkout getting wound up. He was getting so red in the face and shouting at his equally porky colleagues every time someone else sneaked into the shop. They clearly didn’t want the custom.

And the politicians would have us believe there’s a recession.


Once home I tried to mow the lawn. I got ten minutes worth done before the storm we left in Tonbridge caught up with us. The rain came down so haevily for five minutes, and then stopped. But those five minutes were enough to soak the lawn. So I played in NeverWinter for a while until the lawn dried. And then just as I was getting ready to mow, so the thunder started. Hopefully I’ll finish the lawn tomorrow…


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