Thanet...

...is an island. It's part of Kent, but not part of Kent. Water all round it. Lots of crucial history. We were there to speak at a Deanery meeting at St Ethelbert's in Ramsgate. Ethelbert was the King to whom St Augustine was sent with his mission from Rome.

It was lovely being on the Kent coast - it's still real English seaside. At Walmer the beach had fishing boats and tarry ropes and lobster pots and bits of metal this-and-that and mess. We ate fish and chips sitting on the pebbles. On the greensward along by the sea there' s a big new bandstand built in memory of the Royal Marines killed by an IRA bomb a few years back - it has their names all round it.

The weekend was a campaigning one, following on from the grim new legislation passed by the Govt on human embryos, future threats to Catholic schools, and more...we were giving info and collecting names of people interested in the Catholic Union ... spoke at Masses at St Ethelbert's and also at St Peter's at Westgate-on-Sea.

A large and cheery meeting on Saturday night at St E's - a good atmosphere. Afterwards a convivial dinner with the parish priest, and talking till late.

Before coming home we stopped to enjoy the sea a final time. It had been lovely in Saturday's sunshine but I particularly like an English beach in the rain, and the sea grey and not many people about, and the wind all buffeting and clean, and then indoors for hot drinks and the water lashing the windows.