Fish and chip queue, notes in the dark, meal in the rain

From the pub opposite, I watch the queue outside the fish and chip shop. A mixture of old, and young, bright and faded. The straggling crowd seems relaxed in the warm evening, though there does seem to be a straightening of backs, a more upright and eager angle of inclination in people as they near the counter. Service is inevitably slow; orders are large and complex; and then emerging from the shop door in the opposite direction to the queue, comes a succesful purchaser bearing in his arms, as though it were a treasured baby, a pile of tidily wrapped parcels.

In the garden, I write notes in the dark. Heavy drops of water condense in the humid air. Later I will be interested to see what I have written.

To day on the terrace outside the Spotted Dog, Heidi, Toby, Kim Jet and I , sit under a sunshade in the perpendicular rain and eat fish and chips. Through a gap in the trees over the nettles and pink and white policeman's helmet, we can see through more distant hedges and trees fragments of Penshurst and the weald in which it lies.