Buildings of Maidstone, Jubilee Sq and Middle Row

An early morning visit to the dentist to have a crown fitted then into town to pay in some cheques provided the opportunity for today's blip. Recently I've been more positive about some aspects of Maidstone and this blip continues that trend.

The main building on the left, which is at top of Bank Street is the former Kentish Bank, later to become National Westminster. It closed a few years ago but recently opened as a pub called The Brenchley, named after one of the partners who set up the Kentish Bank in 1793 and provided the funds for the building.

On the right is the Town Hall which stands at the top of Middle Row, a line of buildings that were erected in the widest part of the High Street, creating Bank Street to the right. There are many interesting buildings to be seen on Bank Street, which will, no doubt, be the subject of future blips.

What is now the Town Hall, built in 1762-3 was once market buildings and then became a police court containing a couple of cells. Prisoner graffitti can still be seen inside the cells.

The rest of the morning was spent on the telephone to NPower Energy Company trying to sort out the mess which is Doreen's energy bill. After three quarters of an hour on the phone we got to the bottom of the issues and agreed a solution, which was a great relief to all concerned.

Later on in the day I was able to solve a nasty PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) problem on the computer which had been bugging me for a day or two, sending lots of pop-up adverts all over any internet page. A full virus scan revealed a nasty on the system which I removed, but the problem remained. Firefox kept crashing with the message that the extension container was corrupted. A quick search on the net provided a solution to run Firefox in safe mode and see if the problem went away. It did so I looked at the installed extensions and there they were - a couple of adware extensions shoving irritating ads on the screen. Deleted and they were gone. I know how I got them too - downloading freeware, an important lesson there.