Outage and outing

My Gemini capsule was off-line yesterday because of a server upgrade. Then it took ages for the DNS change to reach my ISP. My phone's data connection got the correct address much sooner, so I found myself fixing things up with ssh and vi on my phone.

We went to the seaside. I'm not sure that I've ever been to Worthing before. It was grey and it rained a lot. The ferris wheel was nice. We were the only people on it. I found out later it's called the Worthing Observation Wheel, or WOW*. There were some weird and interesting glass panels** that I enjoyed along the pier, and we watched the gulls squabbling over food. The tide was out, and there was a lot of smelly seaweed. Away from the sea, the town was like any other, except for the sculpture of four giant heads***.

* Just how big is the WOW?

** Windows on the Pier

*** The Desert Quartet

"Let's go to that cafe where we had lunch and have tea and cake" because I saw the cakes and they looked good. But it's five past four when we arrive. "Sorry, we're closing". So we ended up in Costa just because it was still open, and even there "We're closing in 15 minutes". All my life I've arrived at places that don't want to serve me: "We've stopped serving food"; "The chef's finished, so we can't do any hot meals"; "We're closing [three hours early] because of Covid." The world is on the wrong timetable (it couldn't possibly be me). One exception was the man with the little stall selling gin on Worthing sea front. His hut was defiantly open, ignoring the wind, the rain, and the lack of potential customers. There were a couple of tables which, on a sunny day, would have been prime spots. Maybe he didn't want to close up because then he'd have had to leave his hut and go out into the weather.

back to gemlog