Two beaches.

Two bits of History

Two brushes with authority.

The lovely feeling of mirth bubbling up through absurdities

Another day of domestic and Tennis Club administration loomed yesterday. Embellished by a trip to two different beaches at either end of the day.

My first minor skirmish with authority with an armed escort as I returned from the tidal pool to home on the morning dog walk. Following hard on the heels of Royal Marines returning from their morning walk.

My next walk of the day was with a friend to explore the historic but hidden walls of our maritime town.

We wandered with our dogs and looked at ancient walls hidden amongst small housing developments. Crenellated walls providing shelter to chickens and an urban orchard.

A much wilder area of bigger walls was inaccessible to us but appears to be being cleared to provide a place for lunch breaks and beehives for a local boatyard. Although local,  intrigued historical sleuths were discouraged by the deliberate placing of fallen branches and brambles.

We had to make our way out via a shiny car dealership. Now the trouble with locating historical defensive walls is that they are effective. We couldn’t scramble down a possible rampart.

So we had to make our way through the car dealership. Not under the watchful eyes of keen eyed Archers with poison tipped arrows aimed at us or our dogs. But CCTV cameras with Cyclops eyes following our every move in case we made off with a new car tucked in our pockets. We had been seen. We carried on our history ramble for maybe twenty minutes or so along the course of a reclaimed river bed.( Once the location of the actual Shit Creek where sailors were trapped without a paddle)

Soon enough we found ourselves back where we started near the car dealership. We may not have caught the flinty eyes of  Archers on battlements but we had raised the hackles of Car Salesmen . Two men in bright white shirts, over tight trousers, and trendy, but cheap shoes were fixing hastily created laminated signs to their perimeter fence.

In the search for history we had transgressed. Historically things could have been so much worse!

So that is me done with close encounters with authority but history was not done with me for the day.

For about 8 weeks I have been trying to apply for a postal address and post code for the Tennis Club I help to run.

The on-line form just didn’t work for me. Two failed attempts had disheartened me and earlier this week I took the  last chance advice of the website and wrote a snail mail, old school letter to the advice desk of our local council. I won’t bore you with all the complexities of the situation but there have been a lot of boxes to tick and I feel I may have ticked them all and still stumbled.

Less than 24 hours after the snail mail was posted I got a helpful email reply from the council. History has bitten me on the bum!  The box I needed to tick for a 100 year old tennis club without an address or postcode was …

New Build.

It really was a day where my funny bone was tickled by the absurdity of modern life clashing with history.

A day of admin, absurdity and beaches, with history as the entertainment.