Diana Had Today Off,

as she worked on Sunday, 

I spent the morning on the telephone, settling up the shops invoices, in the afternoon we were out, warm clothes on, it was still frosty from the morning,

and this is where we were going, the Vue cinema in Bromley, 

to watch this Avatar: Fire and Ash, 

well I just had to!

drink purchased, 

and we were inside, 

we had the comfy reclining seats, £15.00 each plus £2.00 to buy the 3D glasses, I just love 3D films,

naturally we came well prepared, the cinema does not sell Buterkist popcorn or chocolate raisins so we brought our own, 

but what we did not bring was one of these, Diana was hungry, 

this is the official UK cinema poster, I will not say too much in case you have not watched it yet, but we both thought it much better than the second film in the series The Way of the Water, in fact we thought it better than the first, but a slight word of caution, at 3 hours and 17 minutes long, make sure to take a trip to the bathroom before you start viewing! 

after leaving it was a walk from the bottom of the High Street to the top, it was sad to see so many shops boarded up, one every so often, then a couple next to one another, then three in a row together, also a big store with many windows was boarded up, Bromley is getting like Croydon, haemorrhaging shops along its High Street, well I should know having just closed my shop in Beckenham how difficult things are for retail stores,

on a happier note we were walking to the Mount Everest Nepalese restaurant, one of our 2 favorite Indian type restaurants we like, as it happens the other Kathmandu Masala is also Nepalese, after some poppadums and a starter of lamb samosas for Diana and a prawn puri for myself, 

we decided on a chicken tikka masala, a lamb Gurkha, which is lamb cooked with peas in a medium spiced sauce, recipe from Gurkha Land Nepal, accompanied with mushroom fried rice and some nan bread, there was so much of it a doggie bag was needed! including a coke and a coffee for Diana and a bottle of red for myself the bill came to £93.23 including a 10% service charge, at today's rate $126.39, as I have mentioned before, eating out in the UK is no longer cheap! arriving home it was feet up for a couple of television programs, tonight a old favorite was showing, 

Call My Bluff, a great quiz show, basically two teams of three alternate between giving and guessing the meanings of obscure English words, all of which are found in the OED. (Oxford English Dictionary), for a little more detail of the game, the game comprised two teams of three (a captain and two guests) who would compete to earn points by identifying the correct definitions of obscure words. 

The teams take turns to give three definitions, one true and two bluffs, while the other team attempted to determine which was correct, examples of words used in the show, taken from a 1972 book published in connection with it, include queach, strongle, ablewhacket, hickboo, jargoon, zurf, morepork, and jirble. 

The word queach was defined by the contestants as "a malicious caricature", "a cross between a quince and a peach" and "a mini-jungle of mixed vegetation" (with the last definition being the true one), it was great fun and amazingly Diana did in fact choose the correct definition more often than I did, the program was broadcast between 17 October 1965 to 22 December 1988, I have to admit I enjoyed it at the time and so did many others as can be seen from the number of shows that were broadcast, there were 12 series shown on BBC1 and 25 series on BBC2, BBC1 showing 469 episodes and 542 episodes in BBC2, just over 1,000 episodes, amazing! after which Diana was off to bed, for myself a Have I Got A Bit More News For You before I too was off to bed.

I Had A Quite Day,

Diana was at work, 

she had a early morning start, on to my lunch, first a read and a sherry,

followed by a toad in the hole, 'Cheers!', then I spent some time playing with a few photographs, 

from our last trip to Thailand, above the view from our hotel in Bangkok,

a reclining Buddha with over 300,000 coins attached to it, 

taking a break from her job selling goods on the canals, before Diana returned home in the evening, when it was feet up for a coffee and a chat, before our evenings viewing, tonight a double helping of Sherlock Holmes before rounding off our evening with a Midsomer Murder, after which we were off to bed.

I Had A Quiet,

but busy day whilst Diana was at work, 

image DPReview, I took the 100-200mm F5.6 lens for my GFX 100s II camera out of the box and played with that, it was a learning curve all over again, (and I am still nowhere near mastering the controls of the camera body), I have to admit that early on in my photographic hobby every camera I own was totally manual, set the ISO, (depending on what film stock was bought), and then the triangle of the lens aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO., at the time it was all second nature, then I started buying what I call modern cameras, just put the dial to automatic and the camera sorts everything out, it made me so lazy for more years than I care to remember, my old craft, if you would call it that, was forgotten, but now I am having to relearn everything, and it takes time!

in the evening a read and a sherry, 

for my evening meal a chicken curry and a rather nice bottle of wine from the Côtes du Rhône region, I found lurking about in my bottle store, 'Cheers!', after which a evening with 2 from Midsomer Murder, I had watched both of them before, but so long ago I really could not remember until at least half way through who committed the dastardly deed, when Diana returned from work, time for a coffee and a chat, well a spiced rum for myself, as by now it was late we were then off to bed.

It Was Diana's Day Off,

so off to London we went, 

Diana took this one from the bus, as we made our way here, 

the London Camera Exchange, one of the memory cards for the new camera was the wrong one, I had ordered one for a Fujifilm GSX 100S, in fact I had the Fujifilm GSX 100S II which takes a different card, D'Oh!, as I mentioned before the new camera is going to be a steep learning curve! the great news was that the card was change and I was given a cash refund with no fuss at all, also a real bonus, the camera takes 2 cards, so I wanted to have one card with normal photographs on it, the other card with RAW or in Fujifilm's case RAF files on it, one of the staff there who has a similar camera in no time had programmed my camera to do exactly that, well done to the London Camera Exchange, as an aside if any one out there needs any help with cameras or lenses I highly recommend this store, I know I could have bought all of this on the net, but I hate doing that, and as shown above going to a reputable store pays real dividends if something goes wrong, all I have to do now is find out how to view the RAF files!

as we were in London we decided on a walkabout, and a look at some of the more unusual shops on our way to Chinatown, so far my sciatica was not too bad, 

a quick pose, 

or two, 

as we passed this strange looking facade, 

and here we were in covent garden, 

complete with its Christmas tree, 

we called into Nespresso for a couple of descaling kits, the water in Beckenham is so hard you can almost cut slices of it!

then a quick look at the LEGO Father Christmas and Rudolph, 

we made our way into Chinatown,

under the lanterns, 

and passing lots of restaurants, 

until we found ourselves outside of our favourite one, the Golden Phoenix,

a quick purse through the menu, 

we ordered pretty much the same as previous visits, 

and it was all delicious, 

Diana has made a short video of out meal is you are ever in Chinatown and not sure which restaurant to choose remember this one near the corner, although one has to say prices have risen sharply in the past couple of years, it was not long ago that this or at least a similar meal here would be in the £80 - £90 bracket, today £130, but as Diana tells me so often, 'nothing stays the same forever', it must be my age, I keep thinking of things as they were, but it was excellent, we then made our way home where it was feet up for a couple of films, 

a favourite of mine, Blow-Up, the film centres on a murder,

committed in this park that we visited in January 2019, if you watch the film these views of the park,

will be familiar, the park is Maryon Park in South East London,

before we leave Blow-Up here are a few stills from the film, 

David Hemmings the main star of the movie, we then followed that with our last film of the evening,

 Murder on the Orient Express, the 2017 version, I have to say I preferred the original 1974 version, but there it is, fun to watch, and with the end of that Diana was off to bed, for myself last week's edition of Have I Got News For You, before I too was off to bed.

It Was Just Like A Sunday,

a read, 

and a sherry before our starters, 

peppered chicken liver pate, 

which was delicious, 

followed by gammon ham, with lashings of gravy for Diana, 

sans gravy for myself, 'Cheers!',

followed by, 

Christmas pudding, with cream and braby,

next feet up for our afternoon film, The Man Who Knew Too Much, we had not watched it before, it was quite enjoyable as it happens, after a evening snack, 

 Battle of the River Plate, or as it sometimes known,

Pursuit of the Graf Spee, a true story that really happened and as far as I can tell it stuck pretty close to what really happened, for the actual story have a look here, it is an interesting read, as an aside look out for Christopher Lee aged 34 when he played Manolo, a Latin American, after which a change of pace as we watched a Mrs. Brown's Boys, which we both thoroughly enjoyed, we rounded off the evening with a Poirot, Death on the Nile, which we had both watched before but a nice way to finish the evening, after which we were off to bed.

First Thing I Dropped Diana Off To Work,

then parked in town,

I had a few things to do, I had requested a repeat prescription from the surgery, they pass it on to Boots the chemist who then texts me when it is ready to be picked up, Boots the chemist had texted me, so I called in to pick up my prescription, but it turned out that I along with many others had been contacted by the computer in error, the computer had gone mustang, no prescriptions were available to be picked up, luckily the pharmacist gave me 1 months supply, so I do not have to call back in a few days, next better luck at Sainsburys where I exchanged our CO2 cylinder for a full one, also I bought a couple of lamb shanks for this evening,

 back home I spent the day playing with my new toy, it is so complicated compared to my Lumix cameras, in the early evening I popped out to pick Diana up from work, after which we had our evening meal,

'Cheers!',

lamb shank, mash and a couple of vegetables, 

we watched a new Midsomer Murder, which brought us nicely up to Jools Holland Hootenanny 2026,

the countdown in the corner of the screen, 

nearly there, 

any second now, 

and pop! it was 2026!

and above is a video Diana made of our welcome to the new year, we watched the rest of the Hootenanny after which we were off to bed.