Monday 20 March 2023
We had a more tedious than usual drive back to London on Saturday. We left Scottish Borders at 08:25 and didn’t get to Lewisham until about 17:30. All was good until we got near Peterborough on the A1. We hadn’t known that a chunk of the A1 south would be closed all weekend. The diversion was long and, unbelievably, had roadworks and wasn’t signposted at key places. We rejoined the A1 over an hour later, a mere few miles south of where we left it. The next issue was on the A12 towards Blackwall Tunnel. We sat in traffic there for about an hour too. We had a stop at a farm shop in North Yorkshire, Mainsgill, and saw new-born lambs, a service station near Cambridge and a petrol station in Lewisham. Very long day.
On Saturday evening, a good friend of ours, Duncan, came round for dinner. It was lovely to be able to do that.
On Sunday, I drove to Kent to see my mum. It was mother’s day and I was glad I could get to see her. We had a walk through orchard paths as far as St Peter’s Church, Boughton Monchelsea, which has views from the graveyard across the land of Boughton Monchelsea Place. It’s a beautiful spot, looking across a gentle valley full of more deer than I’ve seen the entire four months we’ve been in Scotland. I love the Kent countryside, the orchards, trees, fields, agriculture and hedgerows but it was interesting seeing it through slightly Scottish Borders-influenced eyes, seeing it as far less vast and uninterrupted by houses and, in that area of Kent, fairly busy and noisy main roads. I don’t mean that to sound “Scotland is better”, just that it is an obvious difference. I suppose all the times I’ve been there before I’ve had nowhere particularly different to compare it to. The traffic noise was a bit disappointing.
This morning, I’m going out to meet my friend Rachael for what used to be our fairly regular Monday morning pre-work walk. I then have a day at home in London and quite a lot to do at my desk.
As I’d anticipated, it’s good to be back in London, though my current thinking is that it’s good to be back for certain specific reasons rather than a full appreciation. That sounds vague, but I know what I mean and I’ll inevitably have a think about it and write more about it in the coming days.