At 11am

a single shot was fired, I imagine from one of our numerous local cannon, probably up at Chatham Naval Memorial which dominates the skyline for miles around. This neighbourhood has a long naval and military history so I expect that gatherings were happening almost everywhere. We have the Historic Dockyard, (which until 1984 was the Royal Dockyard), and we also have the Institution of Royal Engineers located within Brompton Barracks, (quite apart from The Command House, recently famous for fight training).

It was not raining, it was rather nice and sunny in fact, and had I not made other commitments earlier in the week I would probably have wandered up the hill to Victoria Gardens to see if anything was taking place at the simple memorial there. But I had agreed to assist my friend V, who had driven up from Hastings in order to fill her car with local treasures found on e-Bay. That job done, we retreated to a local pub for Sunday lunch and then she returned to Hastings with her booty and I returned to my quiet little flat.

In previous explorations of my immediate environment I have been bemused by a war-nostalgic tea shop which always has some customers at tables helping themselves to an unexpected assortment of treats from 3-tiered serving stands. I think what surprises me most is the homely variety of things on each stand; there might be a couple of triangular white-bread-and-ham sandwiches, a few biscuits, a handful of crisps and a slice of sponge cake, all arranged higgledy-piggledy as though by a four-year old at a birthday party. Anyway, it seems to be popular enough to have customers. Normally.

I thought it might be crowded today but I was disappointed.