Village By Moonlight, Aylesford

A large part of yesterday was spent attending to the slow cooking of an "aromatic shoulder of pork" - or as I like to call it, mostly just to annoy my brother, meat husbandry. I cook this every year around New Year. It involves making a paste out of fresh garlic, fresh ginger, chilli flakes, ground ginger, brown sugar, sea salt, sunflower oil and soy sauce and combining it with a dry spice mix of star anise, fennel seeds, half a cinnamon stick, cloves and black peppercorns and this is then smeared over the meat. It has to be roasted on high gas mark for half an hour and then cooked low and slow for 6 hours. It is a bit of a palaver but the result is worth it (I hope)!
Before having our meal in the late afternoon me and my brother went for a last take away pint at our local before he has to return to work tomorrow. It had been a rotten day - freezing, windy and wet but there appeared to be a gap in the weather so we chanced our arm and started to walk down to the village. We had only walked a few hundred yards when the rain started again and we were soaked by the time we reached the pub. However, we still managed to have our pints outside standing under the eaves of the pub as the rain came down. There was no one else in the street and it felt quite surreal being there but very atmospheric at the same time!
Just as we finished our pints the rain had stopped and the moon came out. This is when I managed to capture today's main image.
The second image is of what used to be a local restaurant called Sherlocks - hence the sign above the door - 221b Baker Street (well that and the Sherlock logo in the windows!). It used to only be open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays but unfortunately closed a couple of years ago due to a family illness. It was a lovely warm and intimate environment with wonderful food and great service and is sadly missed. 
The spots on the picture are actually the raindrops that were falling when I took the image.