Not much warmer.

  

 

It may look warmer but the temperature only rose about four degrees even when the sun had risen.

Cold

 

 

Minus 5.6 degrees Centigrade and 8 miles of black ice.
Not very enjoyable.

Thank goodness there was no wind.

Early morning pollution.

 Let's start the day with some good old fashioned pollution.
Where are these people flying to at this time of the morning?

 Yes, I am back on my bicycle now that it has been repaired after the collision with the fox.
(See my post of 31 January 2021)

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no. 50

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

The Great War has started, the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium is being forced back into France by the assault and the Kentish Channel ports are flooded with refugees.
    Folkestone is awash with Belgians who have fled before the foe and sought safety in Britain, but how do we distinguish real refugees from the possible spies which might have been infiltrated into the throngs of desperate humanity?
    The answer is to engage Belgian police staff to attend the pier at Folkestone and interview any suspects as they disembark. Ernest Godefroy is a forty year old Belgian detective whose job it now is to meet the ship from Ostend every day and make himself available to the Immigration and Security staff  working there. He has taken lodgings in Harvey Street, only a few minutes walk from the port.

Sunset on my bells.

 

The End of the Line

 

 

 

This is as far as the train can take you on the Kent & East Sussex Railway – to Tenterden railway station surrounded by fields of buttercups.

 

 

 

 

 

But you can continue along the trackbed on foot if you so desire.

 

And at the site of the former level crossing you will come across this line of pretty 18th century cottages.

Brown corduroy.

 

  

 

 

 Brown corduroy trousers.

 

 

 

 

 

        Brown corduroy field.

Don't you love a high pressure over Iceland?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here comes the sun...

 

 

...burning off the morning mist

...and making a dung heap steam in the frosty field.

 (My cycle ride is somehow incomplete without a dungheap.)

The Nailbourne is high.

 

 

One of the two fords where the Nailbourne crosses Old Palace Road.

 

 

 

The Nailbourne at Littlebourne Mill.

 

 

The Nailbourne is high.   So is this pile of dung.

 

Sun on the pylon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mornings are lighter now.

This is the sun reflecting silver on the electricity pylon.

Sunrise on British Summer Time

 

Cold and windy but, thankfully, no fox.
(see my post of 31st January.)

New house with garage for sale in Tenterden

 

 

A dedicated parking space or garage for a house in the town of Tenterden is a valuable selling point. Always supposing that you can actually drive the car into the garage, or course.

Next Year's Christmas Card

My walk this morning provided me with an image for next year's Christmas card.

I am trying to think of a suitable message for inside the card.

Any ideas?

How to choose your shaving foam

 

I've got a brilliant technique for choosing my next can of shaving foam. Working on the principal that no matter what properties that the manufacturers claim for the product on the can, all shaving foams are fundamentally the same, then I use the reliable indicator of the colour of the cap. That is something that they cannot lie about – it is patent and obvious. So I always try to find a shaving foam which sports an unusual tint to the lid. It makes no difference to my shaving but it does brighten up my bathroom.

 

Sunset on the icicles.

 

Confined as I am to the house because of recent events,
I find myself looking out of the window.

Fox: 1 Cyclist: 0

 

 

Badly bruised, strained shoulder, no bones broken. mild concussion.

 

Cold, solid tarmac is very hard at 10 mph.

I hope the fox has a headache.

The moon on the sea?

 

 

No, not the moon on the sea, it is the moon reflected in the field at the side of the road. There is always a bald patch in the crops here and now you can see why.

Not the time and place to have a puncture.

 

 

 

But then, I suppose there is no convenient time and place to have a puncture except, perhaps, in your nice warm shed equipped with a bicycle repair stand and all your tools.

Just in case it is not apparent, the white stuff on the lane is frozen snow charmingly spread on a layer of ice, punctuated by solid ice puddles and gaily decorated with random stretches of black ice.

Roll on Summer!

Last one in bed, switch off the light.

 

 Or do sheep always sleep with the light on?

 

I bought a new alarm clock.

 

 

I bought a new alarm clock to replace my current clock which was almost apologetic in its function and really did not want to awaken me. It made an electronic beep which could easily have been a chaffinch chirping about one hundred yards distant.

So I purchased a clock with a proper bell on it. In keeping with the functioning of the old clock, the delivery person deposited the box in my front porch and then stole away without signalling his delivery. I suppose he was also unwilling to awaken me.

Or was he embarrased by the size of the box that Ikea had used?

Snow's gone.

 But it leaves a lot of water behind.

First flutter of snow this year

Stinging snow in my face at Stelling Minnis but a little more gentle once I had turned out of the snow-laden southerly wind and the sun had started to rise.

 

Radio mast at dawn.

 Relaying your telephone calls, night and day.

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no.49

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.

Peruse and wonder.

Nicola Simitchi is a forty two year old post office employee from Serbia. In June 1914, one of his fellow countrymen, a student called Gavril Princip, assassinated the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, precipitating another conflict with Austria which quickly developed into the Great War.

It is now 1916 and the Serbian army has been beaten, allowing the Central Powers to open up their desired supply line through Serbia and Montenegro to their allies in the Ottoman Empire. It is at this point that Nicola Simitchi, who is living in the town of Gap in southern France, changes his dinars into francs in Marseille and buys a ticket on a ship which takes him to Rome in June.

A new year in Tenterden

 

 

An understated end to the old year in Tenterden High Street.

Calm and deserted. 

Perhaps it is trying to slip away unnoticed.

 

I did not hear the usual midnight bells on St. Mildred's Church welcoming the new year.

 

Let's all hope that 2021 decides to improve as it becomes older.

 

It has plenty of scope.