Thunderstruck

I live in Sittingbourne, which is a very nice little town in the north of Kent, and we all know that Sittingbourne has it's very own micro-climate and therefore whilst everyone else is being treated to thunderstorms this week, we are not.

Last night however, I DID manage to capture on film a classic thunderhead as it passed out over the Island.

And yes.....it was just as dramatic as it looks. I think it appears this way simply because the sun was almost set and was shining UP to light the underside of the cloud. I'm no photographer, so I wouldn't swear to this though!

It missed us by miles though, and drifted off over the sea after providing a pretty stunning light show!

Photos From the Garden at Chez Moi

Superman Returns

Well, did he have to??

That's 2 1/2 hours of my life that I'll never get back, so thanks a fuckin' bunch Warner Bros for releasing one of the worst, most BORING movies I've seen this century.

Pirates of the....Medway!

Andy and I went to the movies last night to see Pirates of the Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest, but little did we know that walking into the movie theatre complex would be like walking onto the movie set.

I had to whip out the trust old cell phone to take some pictures because I knew folks wouldn’t believe us. There they were all in the lobby, about 30 of them….real live PIRATES!!!

The effort that these people had put into their costumes was superb. There were a couple of incredible Jack Sparrow look-alikes (the yummiest of which proved a little camera-shy), but the rest of the cast/crew were all well represented.

As I was taking some pictures one of the guys explained to me that they were all crew from the HM bark Endeavour which is currently moored in the port at the mouth of the river Medway. This fantastic vessel is currently sailing the globe crewed entirely by people who have each paid £12,000 for the pleasure of working like dogs on this faithful replica.

I digress….the people at the movie theatre had told the crew that if they all came dressed as pirates (or at least in period costume) them the entire group would be let in to see the movie for free. Bargain!! So they trooped in, en masse, and took up residence in the centre of the theatre, happy to pose and act-out as almost everyone took pictures of them.

Somehow it made the whole evening a little more special, and the movie was great. Roll on part 3!

Unexpected Guest

We had an unexpected and, as it happens, unwanted guest in the house on Saturday.

If she’d called ahead and said she was coming, we’d have opened the door to greet her. She would have received the warmest welcome to our humble abode….If only she’d have used a door.

But alas no. Only the chimney would do.

Yes, the flapping coming from the fireplace, (a peculiar sound which scared the bejesus out of both the dog and myself), was a bird which had managed to squeeze itself between the tiny bars of the safety cover on the top of the chimney, and fall all the way down.

Fast forward to 2 hours later, the fireplace is in pieces, and Andy’s arm is up the chimney searching for said bird. Thankfully the search didn’t last long. A quick scrabble and one sooty little Blackbird is flying around in circles around the lounge, closely chased by the german shepherd. Being far more agile than the dog (must be the wings!), the bird flew out of the window at a vast rate of knots……leaving us to reassemble the fireplace.

Total time taken….a little over 3 hours.

Summertime....and the living is easy??

It's hot.

It's gone beyond holiday hot, beyond the sort of heat normally experienced by BBC film crews while they loaf around Africa waiting for the rains to revive the parched earth. Frankly, we're into Tennessee Williams territory.

So where’s our precious precipitation? Word is that we’re going to get it all tonight…in the space of a bout 17 seconds, accompanied by thunder, lightening, hail-storms and our ever present friend the flash-flood.

Days like this were designed for swanning about in a t-shirt, drinking very very very alcoholic drinks with lots of ice in them and being angry and melancholic by turns.

But Christ, don't people kick up a fuss if you do that in a meeting.

Still…it’s not all bad. For entertainment we got to see David Hasselhoff get thrown out of the tennis championship Mecca that is Wimbledon for being as pissed as several newts.

Fun and games!

Its NOT Coming Home

OK folks, let’s look on the bright side. At least they can’t disappoint us anymore, and let’s be honest, that’s been the overriding emotion for most of the past 3 World Cup weeks.

It’s been a time of nationwide hysteria…4/5 of the population apparently swept away by the possibility…by the dream…the delusion that England might just win the World Cup for the first time in 40 years. 50 Million people….100 million crosses of Saint George.

Sadly it was not to be. We had a team as lacklustre as ever and a manager with as much backbone as a wet lettuce. We had a lone striker with the temperament of a schizophrenic and a face like a slapped arse. Then we had the opposition who, let’s face it, had been paying just as poorly as wee had to that point.

Then suddenly, on Saturday afternoon, the curing antidote to our madness arrived. It was brutal and it was painful and it came in less than a second from the right foot of the sly, winking, cheating Cristiano Ronaldo.

Like everyone else in the country, I spent Saturday evening picking over the carcass of yet another England defeat with my husband and friends. Interestingly, at no point did any of us blame the players, although we did question the selection. Neither did we blame those who failed the penalty test. England always do badly at penalties. We didn't expect anything else.

The players are boys, young men at most. They're extraordinarily overpaid, certainly, but that isn't their fault. They did their best, in the face of hopeless misguidance, and when, at the end, they cried, their tears suggested that they were genuinely distraught. Like us, they wanted to believe that misplaced, exaggerated hope could take them to the heights of their profession.

So here we are, still basking in the summer heatwave, perhaps wondering if the heat got to our brains a little too much, and putting away our dreams of glory for another four years as we turn our attention to Andy Murray, Wimbledon and our summer holidays.

Truly, football is the world sport, and obviously in any tournament there can only be one winning team. But in a game which is governed so much by the lottery of refereeing decisions, the random nature of the penalty shoot-out, the misfortune of injuries to crucial players and the diving and cheating for which some nations are renowned, it occurs that we take it all a little too seriously.

I'm sorry we didn't go further in the World Cup. But I'm not heartbroken. At least our country has regained its sanity. We can now all get back to living our lives.