Buckets

A mixed day today. We started with some cleaning and tidying. And then we went to visit S’s mum! She was very sleepy, but we managed to rouse her sufficiently to feed her lunch. No real conversation was had, but at least we saw her.

Back home we had our own lunch, and then decided to view the wonders of … Hartlepool, home of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. It’s a museum of an earlier generation than the last two we visited. The vast car park was virtually empty, and we wandered round the exhibits alone. The main attraction is the 150 year old 38-gun warship, Trincomalee, built in India for the navy. It’s nicely preserved, and if you’ve read Hornblower books, it’s very evocative — all the features you expect are there. The rest of the museum takes the form of tableaux in the buildings around the dock (gunsmith, chandler, nautical instruments etc), narrated by disembodied voices. For that type of display, it’s quite well done, though some bits are looking a bit neglected. Anyway, it was all so fascinating that my blip is some buckets in the chandler’s.

There’s an indoor museum of Hartlepool which was less than compelling. We had a quick walk round that and then decided to call it a day, as we needed to return the hire car for 5:30. We should have had plenty of time — it was only 4:30 — but unfortunately we got stuck in a stationary queue of traffic due to a burning vehicle on the A19. I think it had only just happened, so we saw the thick black smoke, the fire brigade, police, and ambulance arriving, the clouds of steam as the fire was put out, clearing up … we ended up waiting for about 45 minutes. But however tedious that was, someone else was having a worse day.

In the end we got to the car hire within minutes of their closing time of 6 pm. They will usually drop you back where you want to go, but since they’d officially finished work we got a taxi instead. Luckily they are plentiful and cheap around here, and you can book via an app. Still, it was nearly 7 by the time we got home. G & T (non-alcoholic) and a supper of bits and pieces, including an excellent pork pie from M&S.