A curate’s egg of a day


Friday the 13th was a mixed day. We got up, drove to Westport and had breakfast, then walked down the bleak grey seashore, just as if we were on a traditional British beach holiday. There were a few surfers bobbing up and down in the waves but failing to actually do any surfing.

We walked back, bought some doughnuts, and somehow avoided having to explain to the girls why there is a shop called Hookers And Blow (it sells fishing hooks and kites, obviously), before going to the coastguard museum. This is a charming little place in the building the coastguard used to inhabit, and it has a perfectly preserved light from the old lighthouse, which is also the biggest Fresnel lens in the country. This is a beautiful construction of hundreds of glass panes that together create the same effect as a single much larger lens, and the girls were entranced as it slowly rotated.

Then we drove on to the International Mermaid Museum, which lists the various mermaid myths from around the world. Long story short, some aquatic bint steals some bloke, or has her coat stolen by him, hilarity ensues. Outside the museum there used to be a vineyard, but as the sign mournfully admits, they failed to ever get a harvest of grapes so they tore it up in 2016 and made a nice garden instead.

We walked around the garden and played draughts, where I beat my wife via the proxy of our daughters, Destroyer got scared by a bee, and we went back to the campsite.

Then while the girls went to the beach, I set off to charge the car and do the laundry. The EV charger was hidden in the enormous car park of the Walmart in Aberdeen, and it took me ten minutes to find it when I got there. Then, car charging, I walked to the laundromat, hoisting twenty pounds of laundry on my back and crossing busy roads and a bridge in the blazing sun.

Eventually I got to the laundromat, which only takes coins. I had no cash at all, so then I had to walk back to the Walmart, find an ATM, find it charges $2.50 per withdrawal, find Walmart store policy is to refuse to break a $20 for two tens, which meant I still couldn’t make change for the laundry, and then drive back home in an utter snit, swearing to never spend money at Walmart again. Not that they’d notice as we’ve been there once in the last twelve months, to buy fairy-themed nonsense for the girls at Christmas.

Aberdeen is where Kurt Cobain ended his days. On a hot day itsynot very nice: no shade, unpleasant architecture, a Star Wars memorabilia shop that has a big sign suggesting all covid variants are just a big trick… I left as soon as I could, got back, sulked for a few hours, went to sleep. Kurt should have gone somewhere else.

Anyway, tomorrow we move again. This peripatetic lifestyle … We also expect an update from our builder. Who knows what the house looks like now?


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