Another reason to live in Kent

Tuesday, May 8, 2007
SPELDHURST, England – An 82-year-old man in Speldhurst, England, clobbered a robber in the face with a head of iceburg lettuce after the bandit tried holding up a local grocery store. The bandit was armed with a shotgun but after being hit a second time by the produce, he made like a banana and split.

Apparently it's not as daft as it sounds - he'd just come from his allotment and he had the iceberg lettuce ready in his hand. No, sorry. It is as daft as it sounds. I don't quite get the banana joke though. Well, I do get it, of course, but it feels like something that's been hanging around looking for a story to latch itself onto. At least, you can be sure the lettuce was fresh.

(Not) in the post...

It's seeing a notice like this today, sellotaped onto a village postbox, that reminds me how much I like living in the country. Can you imagine how the conversation might go? Honestly, the cheque IS in the post, it's just that there are birds nesting and we won't be able to open the postbox until they hatch...

And one day after...

... the earthquake, it's hard to imagine anything so violent happened here in Kent. We took the day off to visit the garden at Great Dixter.

It was a perfect English Spring day, and a perfect English House:



There was colour in abundance



But, as always, it was potential that proved more interesting



Even the trees seemed to tell a story of ease and everything fitting together



And just when it couldn't get better, we came across the dog!

So the earth moved

in Kent this morning. We felt a tremble at 8 am and turned on the news to see there'd been an earthquake. By 9.30am however, we were all shopping at the farmer's market as if nothing had happened. Somehow it seems quite surreal. The birds still haven't recovered though. They're spookily quiet right now.