House Hunting

So we're not going to be able to buy my sister's house. 

Money, you know. A discrepancy between what we'll get for this place and what she wants for that place of about £100,000.

*Clears throat*.

But are we downhearted? Not really. There are houses and apartments in that corner of Kent we can easily afford. Faversham isn't expensive. It's too far from London to make it first choice for commuters.

Ailz is enjoying herself hugely. Every few minutes she'll call me across the room to look at some greatly desireable mobile home or converted scout hut.

And we're casting our net wide.

"Sheerness is very cheap," she says.

I look at it  on the map. It occupies a little rhinoceros horn of land sticking out into the Medway estuary. Marshes all round. 

I love marshes.

Travel east and the first town you come to is Rotterdam..

 

Brookland

Brookland

This is St Augustine, Brookland, on the edge of Romney Marsh in Kent. There are lots of early 19th century people called Grist buried in the churchyard. I like to think they were my ancestors.

My father was stationed here during the war. He was with a Naval bomb disposal unit. Why the Germans were dropping bombs on a part of the world that contains nothing but sheep is beyond me.

The belltower stands separate from the church- like an Italian campanile. To the best of my knowledge there's nothing else like it in Britain.