Thank goodness I seem to have more or less caught up! I do mean to write something about all of our visits, otherwise we have no memory of what we've done or where we've been. Paul constantly refers to my blog to find out what he's been doing, so I really need to keep it up to date!
The first two weeks of September have been quite quiet, for a change. I attended a meeting of hundredfamilies.org, a small charity dedicated to providing information and support for families of people killed by mental health patients. I am always struck by the strength that family members of the victims show in fighting for their right to know what is going on, especially after the trial and sentence. I find it hard to contemplate the awfulness of walking down the street and finding yourself, to your great surprise and horror, face to face with somebody who killed a member of your family only two years previously; yet people have had to face it.
I'm not going to turn this blog into a polemic, so I will say no more. I just hope that if the young man who killed my cousin gets out of secure hospital and comes back to London, I hope somebody will warn me - but I have my doubts. Anyone who was following my blog after my cousin was killed may like to know that the perpetrator was extradited just before Xmas and was recently tried in Germany for the other killing he carried out before coming here. I understand he is currently in a secure mental hospital in Germany.
Other things which have occupied our time have been the devising of a letter to all the residents here asking them to stop a) putting baby wipes or toilet wipes down the loo and b) washing oil or fat down the kitchen sink. There have been so many unpleasant drain blockages here that it is getting quite expensive, as well as grim and highly offensive for the neighbour who had the sewage floods; it has also not been nice for Paul, who had to deal with three blockages this month, plus the necessary sending of the camera down the drain all the way to the sewer to find out what was going on. He has got his own back by emailing all the other residents photographs of the disgusting 'fatberg' inside the drain which are truly horrible and which I won't post here! I helped him re-write the letter to go with the photos so it wasn't too hectoring in tone - after days spent clearing drains and staring at disgusting things on cameras, he was nearly beside himself!
Paul has also spent a whole day arguing with insurance companies. In March, there was a leak from the upstairs flat into our bathroom which did some damage and which we had repaired. The owner upstairs won't pay for our damage because it isn't in his property. The building insurance won't pay because there is a £500 excess and the bill is less than that. And our contents insurance won't pay because it didn't damage any contents, only our ceiling, walls and lights. Unfortunately, being charming to various insurance companies and even shouting at them does not seem to have helped; as far as Paul can judge, there is no way of insuring against this sort of damage and we will just have to pay up, though it seems unfair.
Apart from that, we managed to take my sister for a day out, which is difficult given she can't walk any distance. We spent some time at Redhill Aerodrome watching the small planes land and take off, which was a reminder of our shared childhood. And we visited Box Hill on a lovely clear day, so we had a good view. My sister can only walk a few yards, but we managed to park near the viewpoint so she was able to admire the view and get some fresh air.
This weekend, as my sister was with a friend, we went walking; we haven't walked for a while, and are now horribly unfit, so it was very good for us, though I am very breathless and have to go quite slowly.
Our first walk was at Knole Park, as Knole isn't very far away and, though we have visited the house, we never taken any of the walks. I had never realised how hilly it is round Sevenoaks - in fact, I had the impression that almost all the walk was uphill!
As it was a hot and sunny day, we soon took off on the paths through the woods, which were much cooler.
It was very quiet, and we met nobody apart from a few dog walkers. Although it was so hot and sunny, the trees are sadly showing signs of the coming of autumn.
I hope this comes out on a computer screen all right, but you can see the leaves here are definitely starting to turn yellow. Oh dear, and winter is coming.
Knole is a deer park, and there are frequent notices warning you not to approach the deer or feed them. We saw very few deer, there were a few which I just glimpsed through the trees and these two under a tree in the more open part of the park.
They seemed reasonably untroubled by people, though they kept a close eye on a passing dog. All dogs have to be on a lead, so they weren't really in any danger.
We walked for a couple of hours, so were quite tired when we got back to the car. I noticed that there were some organised walks, and thought we might try one of those in the future, rather than wandering at random as we did. We didn't even have a map - Paul said we didn't need one, but it would have reassured me a bit.
On Sunday we thought we'd try somewhere slightly nearer home, and chose a public footpath Paul had found which started alongside the playing fields that belong to Oxted School. It certainly was a pretty path.
Unfortunately we soon managed to lose the path which was much less clearly marked after we had climbed a stile, and we wandered through the woods again, which was pleasant. After a while, we lost the path completely and found ourselves wandering through a field. We found it remarkable that we could appear to be so far out in the country, a considerable distance from any houses or buildings of any sort, yet the main thing we could hear was not the birdsong but the roar of the M25!
We obviously need a map of the local footpaths.
We are about to be off down the Rhine, so I'll hope to have some more interesting visits and photos shortly.
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