I Popped Into The Shop,

where I had worked for so many years,

Kingfisheries Aquarium, in Croydon Road Beckenham, 

 I arrived just as the shop was opening, so the lighting for the corals was just slowly changing from an ultra violet dawn to full spectrum sunlight,

a look at the counter,

 and some of the aquariums for sale,

 from bow fronted,

 to small,

 and large flat sided,

 and at a few of the rows of aquariums, 

 the shop sells three types of fish,

tropical saltwater,

 tropical freshwater,

 and cold fresh water, as in goldfish that require no heating,

 one thing that caught my eye,

 is the growing trend for nano aquariums,

 so much so that plastic plant manufactures are now producing mini pods of plastic plants so the owner does not have to worry about intense lighting to grow them, next stop a walk to the bank to pay off my maxed out credit card and order a debit card, then another mile or so walk to see Carol, Peter and Ian who are my finical advisers at Preston Smith, 

 next stop home,

 our Christmas decoration in place,

 I moved the planters

 to take a few pictures of them,

 and nice they looked too,

 after our evening meal, a sort of Christmas treat, 

 roasted chestnuts, and I still had not learnt from my childhood, let the nuts cool down before you try to peel them! but did I listen to myself? no, so a few burnt fingers later we had a delicious treat,

one thing I do miss about Thailand is the refuse collection, it is so civilized compered to the UK, you throw everything into a bin, 3 times a week, yes a week, it is collected, sorted into what to recycle and what to burn/dump all for wait for it £1.25 a month, and that includes the street lighting! over here it is a trial, in our communal bin store there are 5 bins/trays, heaven help you if you put the wrong piece of rubbish in the wrong bin, and to add insult in injury you have to drag then out into the street yourself, how backward is that? when I left the UK the binmen would back the truck in, go to the bin store empty the bins in the truck and that was it, so back to the picture above, before my morning exercises, as I write the blog I normally drink 3 bottle of soda, and a couple more in the daytime, but the empty bottles would have the bin store over flowing in no time, so behold, a soda siphon, it comes with a CO2 bottle, and I have to say it is petty good, and no glass bottles to block up the bin store, in the evening we watch some Poirot, and then for us we were off to bed.