Giles had left his cap at our house on his last visit. This morning we drove round to return it. As he appeared to be out, after knocking, I pushed the headgear through the letter box and prepared to leave. A giant snail on the window sill caught my attention and I paused to photograph it. Giles then appeared. He had been chopping logs down the garden.
Our friend is very creative with driftwood and pine cones.
We also had a birthday card to post. The Victorian pillar box nearby was pretty full, and the slot wasn’t really large enough for our item, so we travelled to the post office to leave it in their box.
An about turn took us on to Purewell, near Christchurch where we bought a present at Motorists’ Discount Supplies. We had some difficulty finding this establishment at 5a Sanpit. We could have been spared this, had we parked at Mudeford Quay before our search. This is because, printed on the back of our parking receipt, was a map advertising and locating the outlet.
In the event, we didn’t go to Mudeford until after buying a freezer at Curry’s. This was required because the Cook and Caterer in Chief had realised that we couldn’t stock up for all the Christmas guests we are expecting without something larger than our current equipment.
The weather is still very mild, and although it was high tide the water was calm enough to caress the sea wall with a gentle susurration. Jackie repaired to the cafe whilst I wandered in search of photographic material.
A vociferous crow cawed atop the crab baskets, then,
the air was filled with flocks apparently auditioning for a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic ‘The Birds’. They were squabbling gulls wheeling, screeching, and treading air just beyond the quayside.
I walked round the rows of heaped baskets to see that a fishing boat had come in.
Two fishermen were sorting their catch, boxing up what they wished to keep, and discarding the rest.
Since the fishers were definitely both men, I wondered whether they had borrowed the boat from Chloe and Christie out of Poole.
Some of the hopeful scavengers made their presence known from the concrete kerb. The noisy fellow was really rather large;
others, still airborne, scrambled over each other in their eagerness to catch scaly pickings.
It didn’t take me long to take three dozen pictures, then join Jackie in the Haven Cafe where we lunched on mixed seafood platter, chips, peas, and salad for me, and a jacket potato heaped with cheese and coleslaw for Jackie.
Despite our capacious cafe repast, we managed to dine on a little of Jackie’s splendid pork paprika and special fried rice, followed by chocolate eclairs, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I imbibed more of the malbec, still drinkable after the best part of a week.
That, of course, was after we had installed the new freezer.