The mornings are getting lighter already.

 

 

 

Yes, the sun is definitely rising earlier.

 

Or I am getting out of bed later.

Last time I saw this Christmas tree it was in the dark but this morning the sky is already lightening.

A bit breezy this morning.

 

It's a good job that I have powerful lights on my bicycle. This sapling was obviously unable to withstand the power of the wind.

 

It's quite a surprise when you are travelling fast downhill.

Call that a sunrise?

 

 

 

I suppose the sun will rise a minute earlier tomorrow.

I hope it will do better
than it did today.

Sunrise is getting later.

 

As we near the shortest day, the point at which I see the sun rise is moving further and further along the road.

Redhead on the bus

 

 

 

This was the first time I had been on the bus in ten months.

I saw a lady with red hair.

It burst into flame everytime that the sun hit it.

Caught in the trees.

The moon got caught in the trees this morning.

 

Foggy morning

 

 

 

 

 

Foggy, dismal and damp this morning.

 

 

 

And the view was not much better after sunrise.

Sunrise over chimneys

 

Remember houses with chimneys? They have become a thing of the past.

A bit cold this morning.

 

But luckily it was dead calm.

Footprints and tyre tracks

 

 

There must be a pedestrian somewhere ahead, I can see the footprints.

Foggy morning.

 

Mist is cold and damp at six o'clock in the morning.

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no.48

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.

Peruse and wonder. 

In 1933, Carl Erik Carlsson is a 51 year old Swedish fisherman working on a ship out of Lubeck, a fishing port in northern Germany. Two years later, in the pretty fishing port of Flensburg, Germany, his passport is endorsed by the Swedish consul to prohibit his travelling to Spain or the Spanish part of Morocco. This was a ploy to prevent him, a neutral Swedish national, from taking part in the civil war in that country.

Whilst in Flensburg he is granted a residence and work permit to remain in Germany which is stamped in his passport and from 1939 onwards these renewals bear the swastika endorsing stamp.

This is the photograph in his passport, not his seaman's book. It can be seen that his image has been cut from a larger group photograph, leaving the left arm and hand of his neighbour in the margin. He remains in Germany after the outbreak of war and continues to renew his German residence in Flensburg until February 1941 at which point entries cease in his passport.

Four years later, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) is arrested in Flensburg by two British soldiers. He is brought back to the UK where he is accused of treason, tried and hanged.

 

 

They are making breakfast.

 

 

They have lit the fire and are preparing breakfast. 

In the calm of the morning the chimney smoke gently drifts northwards. 

That is good news, the wind will be behind me now, blowing me home.

The Biden Trump Show

 Apparently it is not over yet. Can you believe it? 

Does anybody watch this sort of media reportage?

Here is another pretty picture. Look at that instead.

 

Biden or Trump?

 How difficult is it to count pieces of paper?

Here is another pretty picture while you are waiting.

 

Trump or Biden?

Remember? Trump or Biden? They still don't know. Oh yawn, yawn.

Here is a pretty picture to look at while you are waiting. 

 

First frost of the season.

 

 

The frost is not much to talk about but my fingers and toes got cold.

Trump or Biden? Who cares?

 As I went to bed last night the BBC radio at newstime was jubilant to anounce that they would run all through the night to bring us the up to date news of the American election. They introduced their various correspondents in different parts of the USA and mentioned the plethora of pundits who were going to expound. I just wanted to hear the news. You know, the real news. Eventually they started to read the news: the first item was the announcement that there was going to be an election in America but they had just spent the previous five minutes telling us that. Was there nothing else happening in the world? Or even, dare I suggest, in Britain? It is the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation isn't it? 

 Just consider this election for a couple of seconds, that is all it needs. The result is going to be either Trump or Biden. How can you make an eight hour programme out of the flip of a coin? I'll remind you – Trump or Biden. Or you could say, Biden or Trump. That is going to be the result. Either Trump will win, or Biden will win. Or you could say that Biden will lose or Trump will lose. One will lose and the other will win and the choice is between those two. Trump or Biden. Biden or Trump. Do I make myself clear? It's a choice between two. It will be either the one or the other. Or the other or the one. One is called Trump and the other is called Biden. Those are the two candidates.

In the morning I switched to RadioFrance for a change. Apparently there is going to be an election in the USA and either Biden or Trump will win but nobody knows yet. The result might take hours, it might take days, it might take weeks.

I went for my cycle ride and at 07.00 in the freezing cold and frost the usual girl was on her garden swing, swathed in her anorak, scarf and gloves and swinging her heart out. Back and forth, back and forth. One way then the other. Just like the American election but a damn sight more interesting.

 

Birds on a wire.

 

 

Everybody has to sleep somewhere. I hope nobody snores.

The white sheep of the family.

 

 

Poor chap! I bet he gets teased something rotten.

Not quite the burning bush.

 

Just the sun rising behind the trees.

This blogspot software really is rubbish, you never get what you want. The 'new, improved for customer convenience' version now requires four mouse clicks to every one of the former system and it still does not work properly. Let's hope that somewhere, one of their, 'no, we don't scan your posts' spies is sifting this information and will do something about it.

Wot, no bridge?

 

There should be an iron swing bridge between those two stone pillars to carry the road over the River Stour at Sandwich.

As I discovered on my bicycle ride this morning, Sandwich Toll Bridge is not there. It has been removed for essential maintenance to the bridge deck and the electrical and mechanical opening mechanism.

 Sandwich town is full of drivers following one set of diversion signs to the north and then mistakenly slipping into the southbound route and eventually running around in circles to end up where they started.

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no. 47

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.

Peruse and wonder.

It is 1921 and the economic surge which the Belgian Congo experienced during the Great War, fuelled by demand for its copper and rubber, is beginning to slow down. The Belgian government seeks to revitalise the country by investing millions of dollars in the country.

Jeanette Beymenhauch, a 25 year old housewife from Bruxelles with brown hair and black eyes wishes to go to Katanga. She first has to obtain a visa from the Belgian authorities to allow her to leave her country. She then asks for a British visa to transit the United Kingdom on her way to Cape Town to then travel up country to the Belgian Congo.

She lands at Dover in February 1921 and boards a ship in London Docks. This takes her to Cape Town where she arrives at Table Bay on 28 February. After a couple of months she applies to the British Vice Consul in Katanga for her return transit visa to Belgium via the UK and disembarks at London Docks on 11 June 1921.

Nowadays she would be able to fly direct in eight and a half hours.

Who is paying their electricity bill?

 

Blean Water Tower

Actually it is called St. Thomas's Water Tower, I believe, because it is at the top of St. Thomas's Hill in Canterbury. It was built in 1927 and stored and supplied water for Canterbury from the tank in the tower and from the underground reservoir it stands on. 

It is decommissioned now and empty of water but judging by the sky we will be shortly well supplied with water.

Slow to wake up.

 

The pheasants are hiding in that mist.

Roll on November.

Sunrise on the dunghill

 

 This is the sun breaking through the cloud to illuminate a dunghill.

I like to add culture to my blog.

In this case, organic culture.

 

 

Pheasants

 

I saw some pheasants today, I see them everyday. They usually stand in the road and expect me to cycle around them. When I stay on the road they try to outrun me. At the last minute they take to the air, squawking in protest. They really are the stupidest of birds.

Mist on the Minnis.

The sun had not risen when I left the house. If you look carefully you can just see the crescent moon and the morning (?) star. Or is it the evening star seen in the morning? I am no good at astronomy.

 

 

 

By the time I reached the Minnis at Stelling the sun was just climbing but the mist was hanging in pockets.

 

 

 

I don't think that the cows in the mist were awake, not one of them turned their head as I passed.

Walking the Morghew Park Estate.

The public path crosses the front lawn of the house 





  



and on past the Dutch House

to the Wealden countryside beyond.

The Morghew Park Estate can trace its ancestry back over a thousand years. 


Read about it here.

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no.46

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.
Peruse and wonder.

The Port of New York on 31st July 1918 and British seaman Frederick Arthur Kennett wishes to disembark from his ship. This is his portrait on the US Seaman’s Identification Card which was required of all foreign seamen arriving in the USA during the Great War. The official opinion was, 

'...a large number of dangerous and undesirable aliens are using every effort to enter the country in the guise of seamen.... It is known that many such desert.'
  
Fred Kennett is seen here in the uniform of a chief petty officer in the Royal Navy. The Great War will be over in four months and Fred will exploit his experience to obtain a Master’s Certificate, sailing during the 1920s and 1930s from the British ports of Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff and Liverpool across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and Vera Cruz. In World War 2 he crosses the Atlantic in 1942 arriving in New York on 4th October and in 1946, at the age of fifty eight, he is in Miami.

Hold on, there's someone on the line...

How else would you cross such a busy (!) road?

Out in the rain.

I was fed up of cycling in all that sunshine and at least the rain was warm.

 The thunder was a bit noisy though.

I know how the sun feels...

I know just how it feels. 

I didn't want to get up this 

morning either.

But it soon shook off its lethargy and began to play, making interesting shadows on the road.

I've found a new dunghill.

A touch of morning mist awaiting the sun to clear it.

Horses grazing in the fields.

And the sheep are now turned out onto the minnis. 

A minnis is an old Kentish word to describe an area of cleared grazing common land in the middle of a hill top wood.

 

And I've found a new dung hill on my circuit. 

That brings the total to six.

Crops in the morning sunlight.

  

Barley

 Beans, right

Vines, left

 

Too early to say what this is.

Maize?

I'll keep you posted.

Phew! Just in time.

Before they mow the road verge...

This is what is decorates the lane. 

Take a good look now because soon somebody will come along 

and mow the verge and it will all disappear.

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no. 45

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.
Peruse and wonder.

Hans Koster, a 26 yr. old German journalist from Berlin was posted to London in 1935. As an alien, working in the UK, he was obliged to register his movements and changes of address at his local police station.

He lived at Museum Mansions opposite the British Museum and then at Cliffords Inn in the City of London.

Returning to England from a short stay in Germany on 27 January 1939, his permission to stay in the United Kingdom was extended until 15 September 1939. Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September but there is no record in his registration book of his having subsequently departed from the UK. Eighty years later I find this book in Spain – a Fascist country which remained neutral during the war.