Back In Black

I am back in black to test Blogger's new design templates and to re-awaken my blogging muse. So far it's not going too well. Muse has taken a strong sleeping potion and no amount of caffeine is able to wake it up. Can't really blame it since the cold and cloudy weather makes me want to crawl under the covers too. Let's see if I can drag something out of my semi-lucid muse.

Grey seems to be the theme this winter. It was suppose to be white, what with all the whiteout dooms day warnings. We didn't even get the white Christmas. Instead we had grey days, grey skies and even the weather man kept using the word grey. Made me want to quote  O Henry's famous line " a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard" (Gift of the Magi).

This year the Magi bought us the gift of FLU. The mythical wise men also bought a few other related viral and bacterial attachments, but let's just skip over them quickly. Referring back to the quote, I can't even overlook a backyard. All the windows in my new apartment overlook a very busy dual carriageway. So my quote will be modified to "grey cars whizzing past on grey asphalt reflecting a grey over cast sky." Now you can see how that will never become a famous line. Muse promptly falls back to sleep at this point. 

Dover Port

Fortunately, my blogging platform has introduced a few new features, so I decided to at least exercise my design muse. Hence I am Back in Black (hope AC/DC doesn't sue me for this) .

We also tried to liven up our grey winter by taking a trip to Dover. Unfortunately, it was grey AND cold there, adding to our misery. The famous white cliffs looked grey as well and to tell the truth, we have seen better white cliffs in Devon. 

The highlight of the trip was probably Canterbury. Colored somewhat by my recollections of "Canterbury Tales", the quirky mix of old and new buildings in the town center was interesting. Compared to many so called old towns in UK, this felt less staged and more genuinely charming. We will probably go back in summer for a Venice style boat ride in the older parts of Canterbury.

Canterbury

Thankfully the days are getting longer and hopefully we will get clearer skies. Muse is now definitely snoring. I will pop back in with some past summer glory soon.