9 January 2011 (Sunday) - Whitstable


I was woken by the phone ringing. Were we going for a walk today? I looked at the clock – it was nearly 11am. Last night’s Stargazing Live must have taken more out of me than I thought. So I rescheduled our walk for a couple of hours and leapt into action.
Once up and breakfasted Batty arrived with some KFC. He fed a (unsalted) chip to the parrot – she seemed to love it. We then set off to Tankerton where we parked up and walked along the coast to Whitstable. It’s a lovely place to walk – there’s the beach huts, the offshore windmills, the view across to Sheppey. And once you get to Whitstable, there’s the Whitstable Brewery bar. Or that is there used to be.  It’s been closed on the last few times I’ve been to Whitstable, and from what I can work out on pub reviewing web sites, it rarely opens any more.

We wandered round the corner to the East Quay seafood restaurant. The advantage of popping in to this place is that they have a bar which does beer from the Whitstable brewery. However the disadvantage is that it’s staffed by arrogant schoolchildren. The chap who (eventually) took our order did so without a word to us, but whilst shouting at another spotty oik that there was too much work for him to do. Said spotty oik then (also wordlessly) slammed down a sign saying that they were no longer serving food. We took our drinks and sat down and chatted for half an hour or so. On reflection, although I’ve raved about the Whitstable Brewery’s Oyster Stout in the past, my home brew is better. And it doesn’t come with the attitude.
Mind you, the East Quay restaurant wasn’t all bad. As we were leaving there was a rather harried looking young lady loitering outside the gents lavatory who wasn’t at all pleased to hear the words “the poo’s not coming out Mummy” being bellowed to any and all passers by.

We then walked back along the beach to the cars, and returned home. For all that I’ve whinged about the bar staff, I do like a walk along the north Kent coast. If any of my loyal readers are free in a couple of week’s time, we might just go for a walk along the Herne Bay seafront.

Once home we opened up the parrot cage and let F.B. out for a bit, and I turned on the telly – “Are You Being Served – the Movie” was playing on one of the more obscure channels. I slept through most of that drivel, and then once tea was scoffed I spent an hour or so preparing my next talk for the astronomy club. It’s not due to be given until next September, but it never hurts to be prepared.
Whilst I was finding out all sorts of stuff about scattered disc objects (what?!) my mobile bleeped. I had a text from the chairman of the astro club. He said “Running a bit late, be there as soon as we can”. I wondered what this was all about – was I supposed to be meeting up with him this evening? I could only imagine this was a text in relation to yesterday’s Stargazing Live event. I went into the details of the text on my phone, and sure enough the message had been originally sent at 4pm on Saturday afternoon. I received it this evening at 6.30pm. It’s rather worrying that a text message (supposedly a form of instant communication) can take over twenty six hours to arrive…

1 comment:

  1. i thought one was abstaining until dover? ;-p

    ReplyDelete