It's that Livingstone Geezer!

This was a proper day off. Jof is always much nicer about letting me 'Have a Relax' when on actual holiday, some of us might not always want to cycle 10 miles a day, however interesting the destinations.

So we did think about going swimming in the sea but I did that yesterday and we hadn't had lunch yet so we rode north to try out the new Harvester. Same building, different menu, and we'd been assured that the salad bar would be better.

The salad bar was better. And the toilets were still upstairs. But I had to send my fish back for being undercooked and get money off the meal and that's when we heard the 2 tables either side of us doing exactly the same thing with their meals. This does not give you faith.

But on the way up there, we'd looked at the big diggers that are doing the flood defences along Bens' Bumpy Paths. They have cut an ugly furrowed swathe across the face of reality but it'll heal once they've gone. Fortunately, the area still has lots of blackberries. My best buds and I harvested sackfuls here exactly 6 years ago and we thought we'd do it again, so rang Bud and he ran up with some plastic bags and our questing fingers got busy.

This whole area is reclaimed land made of broken houses, often bomb-damaged ones from the war, so we're eating the proceeds of dead people's dead houses, but they do taste good. It is however very uneven (hence Bens' Bumpy Paths) and a step in the wrong direction can be a leap of faith into the eternal crevices of unreason, all hidden by long grass and foxholes. It is a very big place and we were frequently separated from each other and had to keep yodelling to keep in touch, they kept calling each other Livingstone.

But bit by bit we filled our bags from the bushes that went on forever, with their cruel spines and allied stinging-nettles and dog roses and thistles, shame we were all wearing shorts. Then I fell into a particularly unreasonable eternal crevice and went down screaming. This was the cue to go home and I showered immediately and we all examined our numerous contusions, cuts, prickles and puncture wounds. And the full colander of free vitamin-laden food, hurrah. There was the odd bit of creepy-crawly wildlife within so Jof decided to cook it all.

Incidentally, Grandad is visiting the sewers of London today, amazing what s**t you have to go through when you're 87.