Medway valley, eye clinic and Museum.
1. We go by train along the Medway past fields and woods and station platforms dusted by snow.
2. Waiting in the eye clinic I see people going in, shoulders hunched, feet trailing. I see them coming out walking tall and smiling. It's a great relief to see Nick come out looking relaxed and happy.
3. Since we have to be in Maidstone, we drop into the museum. It's in a Tudor building (mostly mock) with weighty staircases, tiled fireplaces and creaking floors. We don't have time to see it all -- we focus on the dinosaurs (a badger has somehow sneaked into a display of fossil bones set into the floor); the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment Museum (one of the treasures is a soup spoon with a moustache guard); and an exhibition of paper cutting (a delicate vine rises from a scalpel-cut roll of wallpaper, quite open to the public. Later, one of the curators tells us that they are amazed and delighted that it has survived this long -- "Because anyone could, you know, reach out and rrrrip.")
2. Waiting in the eye clinic I see people going in, shoulders hunched, feet trailing. I see them coming out walking tall and smiling. It's a great relief to see Nick come out looking relaxed and happy.
3. Since we have to be in Maidstone, we drop into the museum. It's in a Tudor building (mostly mock) with weighty staircases, tiled fireplaces and creaking floors. We don't have time to see it all -- we focus on the dinosaurs (a badger has somehow sneaked into a display of fossil bones set into the floor); the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment Museum (one of the treasures is a soup spoon with a moustache guard); and an exhibition of paper cutting (a delicate vine rises from a scalpel-cut roll of wallpaper, quite open to the public. Later, one of the curators tells us that they are amazed and delighted that it has survived this long -- "Because anyone could, you know, reach out and rrrrip.")