Kent – the final frontier

Last week, Hubby and I boldly went where the cannons are aimed (but regrettably not armed) out to sea. They’re England’s finest antique military hardware: a symbolic repulsion of the huddled (m)asses of fit, fighting-age impoverished males fleeing for their lives, at a cost of thousands of pounds each in sink-ready deflatables, away from a safe, wealthy, democratic terra firma.

Well that’s me referred to Prevent, after I’ve been charged with a slew of non-crime hate incidents that is. It would be hilarious if Lucy Connolly were released to make room for me in our over-crowded jails that house more political prisoners than paedophiles. The latest asinine ruling from Britian’s judicial asses concerns the Kurdish-Armenian refugee who was found guilty of ‘disorderly provocation’ … because his non-violent act (burning a copy of the Quran) ‘prompted’ a knife-wielding maniac to attack him. At least this means that I’ll be within my rights, should anyone take offence at my blogs, to tonk them on the nose then plead self-defence.

Kent is a peculiar county. It’s full of peculiar sights I haven’t seen elsewhere in England, including:
• Converted oast houses
• Shelves-to-the-ceiling of human skulls, looking down on piles of thigh bones not connected to the (pause) hip bones (St. Leonard Church, Hythe)
• Castles constructed not destructed by Ennery the Eighth
• A remote community of shacks, architect-designed retreats and a bird sanctuary clinging to a windswept headland. It’s as wild and untamed as you can get, apart from the monstrous nuclear power station right next door (which isn’t as ugly as your average Barratt new-builds)
• Ashford – the worst contemporary development of an historic town. Ever. Worse than Aylesbury, Hemel Hempstead and Woking. Yes. That bad
• The best crispy potatoes in the world (salted then deep-fried)
• The worst coffee in the world (too weak, too hot, too milky, and not enough chocolate sprinkles).

An eye-popping sight we stumbled across was a young couple – er – ‘canoodling’ against the walls of a dilapidated relic (no, not Michael Heseltine). We saw the young man again that evening, having dinner in our hotel with a different young lady. “Way to go!” said Hubby.

One tourist attraction that isn’t unique to Kent is a small-gauge railway: the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway. While grabbing a sandwich to rival the worst coffee in the world at one of the stations, a train arrived, at which I said more loudly than I meant to: “It’s not a patch on Larl Ratty,” (the Ravenglass-to-Eskdale railway in West Cumbria). I survived to tell the tale, either because the good burghers of Kent can’t get their heads around a Cumbrian dialect, or because they still believe that the law goes after attackers and not attackees.

Other things in Kent are the same as other parts of England, such as:
• Over-development (might have something to do with what I was talking about in the first paragraph)
• Potholes and roadworks – never the twain shall meet
• Foul weather in June; whatever happened to global warming?
• Whingers against the water industry.

Our final morning in Kent, we strolled into breakfast past the bar with a selection of newspapers. The top one was The Guardian, which led with the banning of bonuses for some water company bosses, obviously much more important than Putin threatening World War III, Reform UK’s Chairman quitting, and Elon Musk calling for Trump to be impeached. No, let’s lead with the water industry being pilloried. That hasn’t happened for at least two days. The bonus-bans were contrived to look objective, but to the knowledgeable are so obviously a political stitch-up – new rules applied retrospectively; guilt assumed until proven innocent – the equivalent of an attackee being found guilty. Guess the judiciary doesn’t have the monopoly of asses.

 
We’re back home in Bucks now, having survived the stop-start-stall of the Dartford Tunnel which, according to green zealots who give we pragmatic environmentalists a bad name, isn’t busy enough to justify the Lower Thames Crossing. The frequent gridlock, they claim, can be mitigated by cycle lanes, reed beds and bat roosts.

We’d stopped at the butchers on the way home to nab some meat for the weekend: pork tenderloin, chicken pies and brisket. Vegans look away now. Woops, too late. While slicing the pork and peppers for a stir fry, I asked Hubby to pour me a dry sherry (I am my father’s daughter).

“A sherry, really? After all we’ve had to drink this week?” he admonished.

“It’s Friday,” I reminded him. “I always have a sherry before supper on a Friday. Them’s the rules.”

“New rules as of today,” he insisted. “No Friday sherry.”

“You can’t apply new rules retrospectively,” I argued.

“Why not?” He shrugged. “Ofwat does.”

If the Cunliffe Commission doesn’t do for Ofwat, then I will.