A Peaceful Day

Feb 2

John didn't wake up until 8:30am this morning. He had been very tired the night before so he had gone to bed at 9:30pm even though he thought it was a bit early. Bit he had slep through.

Valerie was up and when he came out, she asked him if he was ready for breakfast. He was surprised but also delighted when it turned out to be a full cooked English breakfast: fried eggs, fried tomatoes, back bacon, and toast and tea. She apologised because she didn't have mushrooms but John said not to worry as this was plenty. Besides he had never quite understood mushrooms at breakfast anayway.

After breakfast he took a shower and decided to do some computer work. He had not backed up his movie files since being in Nanaimo so he got out his external hard drive and set it going. It said that it would take over an hour to transfer files from the laptop to the hard drive.

Val and he talked and watched a breakfast TV show. It was cool and rainy outside and neither he nor Val were keen on going out into it. When the backup was finished, John caught up on his email and started surfing the Net about aviation.

If the weather is good tomorrow, Alan is going to take his first flying lesson and the people at the flight school said that John, as a pilot visiting from Canada, can go along. Now, in Canada, that would be against flight training regulations and it might be so here in the UK. So, if they say that John cannot go along, he will understand and be happy to sit in the flight school talking to other pilots and reading avaiation magazines while Alan and the instructor are up in the air.

If he does, by luck, get to ride along, he will take his videocamera and bring back some shots over lovely Kent, the "Garden of England."
However, the weather forecast is looking grim - rain for the rest of the week, so John thinks it will only be an outside chance that they do go flying. But then, who knows, eh?

Later in the day Alan and Sandra invited their neighbours, Ron and Linda, to come over for dinner. John was very pleased to meet them as they are extremely nice people and they all had a typically English fun and laughter-filled evening. The meal of lamb shanks, with veggies was absolutely delicious. The 'pudding' (dessert) was apple pie with custard or homemade English trifle. John had both. But this was after having a beer. Now trifle usually has some sherry in it. But Sandra's trifle had a LOT of sherry in it. John started getting his words mixed up. What to do? Give him some Bailey's on ice, of course. John became very happy.

After Ron and Linda had left, John helped a tiny bit with the dishes (he dried a few glasses) then he crashed, happily thinking of the day to come.

TRB