Shadow

I did a quick walk around the block this morning. I suspect that, after every night out, I say something similar about it blowing the cobwebs away. But it does. It was a damp morning but I managed to get the walk in between the showers so it was all good.

I was reading Diamond Geezer’s Unblogged March when I read that the author Christopher Fowler had died. I only started reading his Bryant and May series as we started coming out of lockdown and we went on a couple of holidays. I took the first of the series with me and became hooked: I think it was the character’s fascination for, and the author’s obvious love of, the quirky bits of London that got me hooked.  I also discovered Christopher Fowler’s blog which was full of brilliant writing and, I hope, remains online so that more people (including myself) can discover more wonderful work. His last post was written back in January, which must have been an awful thing to have to write but I didn’t think I’d be reading of his death so soon (in fact, it seems I am late to the news).  Life is short, but, hopefully, not too short that I can’t finish the series.

PY left for The Island just after 11:30am.  The weather forecast has been for high winds on the south coast this weekend. It sound like his journey was fine and the crossing not too bad. I think walking down Ryde Pier was possibly the windiest moment.

My afternoon was spent reviewing some designs for our approach to the programme catalogue data that we need. I think it’s going to be an interesting week.

I left the house for the 17:30 train to Guildford connecting on to Portsmouth Harbour for the Isle of Wight ferry. The commuter train out of Raynes Park wasn’t as busy as in pervious weeks but I was still standing for the first few stations. Surprisingly, the Portsmouth train was much quieter than it has been for a while and I had quite a lot of space on the train. I wasn’t brining too much down this time but I did have a new kitchen blind in a tube that I was worried would be complex to carry. It turned out to be OK.

We had hoped to be bringing the replacement kitchen cupboard doors with us on this trip but they are not being delivered until next week. We’ll fit them after Easter. I thought I might snap a picture of one of the doors that were sent in error do that we had a picture if we needed it. As I was taking it I noticed my shadow and thought that made a interesting photo.

I listened to a couple of podcasts on the way down: mainly about Formula 1. The Fast and the Curious seems like a fun take on F1 and I listened to that on the final leg of the journey.  By the time we arrived at Portsmouth Harbour Station, there were quite a few people in the terminal for the 19:20 ferry but not as many people as last week to I wasn’t to worried about the crossing. It was a bit choppier than in previous weeks but it was the walk down the Pier that was windiest.   

We spent the evening watching TV. The new Joe Lycet Friday night Channel Four show seems like it’s going to need a few weeks to bed in. One of the guests was Joanna Lumley and I think she looked a bit uncomfortable through part of it.  I finished off the evening watching Andrew Lloyd Webber at the BBC, a collection of performances of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s songs on various BBC shows over the years. It was really good and appears to have been on one of the BBC’s red button channels on loop so I managed to watch the start that I thought I had missed.