Thursday 10th June – Off to Teston

I knew I should have got up earlier. It took longer than I thought to get all the bits out to the car. I had done quite a bit of packing of Wednesday night but it still took a while. I was late picking Tony up, and we were a bit late to work. It also took ages at lunch time to find the rain ponchos and pack the stuff from the fridge/freezer, and then I realised that I didn't have enough petrol to get us to Teston. All was going well to be ready to leave at 5 until we received two new orders that needed to be prepared for tomorrow. We got away about quarter to 6 in the end. We had a phone call from Batty to say that he had been stuck in traffic for an hour and it would be better if we went up to Junction 4. That upset Ovi but it was only a few minutes longer and an extra mile.

After unpacking a few bits, Tony and I were given “water” duty. We drove down to make it easier. I got soaked when the bottle got too heavy for Tony. It's not very easy turning the taps on and off either with the pliers. The very nice warden man offered us space in his wheel barrow to take the bottles back as he didn't notice that we had the car. Water mission completed and cookers set up, Batty started the cooking. Sweet and sour chicken. We had found some pre-chopped, pre-cooked frozen chicken in bags in Farmfoods. We have decided that one of these bags feeds 2 hungry people. (3 if it's me, Kat and someone else with a similar light appetite). Then we need 1 jar of sauce per bag of chicken. We cooked too much rice so we're thinking about cooking some up for breakfast. We decided we'd cook up the rice pudding while it was still light and we hadn't drunk much. Usually we cook the rice pudding as a midnight feast. In the evening, I finished off a bottle of cherry Lambrini and then had a bottle of beer. We had walk down to the lock at twilight to see if we could find any bats. Dave saw a few but I missed them. The sky looked really cool with a pink tinge. “Red sky at night..... that'll be Maidstone then!” Tony/Bonefish joined us later and we stayed up chatting until midnight. At bedtime, Tony was nearly wetting himself with laughter when he saw the state of his tent. The front of it had collapsed. No harm done. We pegged it down and cojld hear Tony still giggling as we got ready for bed.