I saw this building in Penshurst village last weekend and was impressed by the attention to detail on the extension. The left-hand side is the original building and the right-hand half is a new addition. The new addition is extremely sympathetic, using the same type of bricks with the same pattern, the shape for stone details around the windows and at propping up the roof, which has the same tiling. (Click on the picture to see it bigsized and more detailful)

You can only really tell its an extension because its all shiny and new but a few years of weathering (and corrosive exhaust fumes from passing lorries) will make it blend in a lot more. Much better than a lot of the monstrous and tacky modifications that are normally made to old houses.

Oh.. Does that all sound a bit ‘Prince of Wales’?

I can’t really understand why anyone would do that. It is even stranger as the individual in question was not a paper candidate who unexpectedly won – she was a sitting councillor going for re-election in a safe seat. I have heard that her attendance before the election was appalling: just the bare minimum to avoid disqualification, which didn’t stop her getting re-selected and re-elected but indicates a certain lack of enthusiasm for the job. But why not just stand down instead of all this fuss?

The plan was to go across and help, then pop down the road to visit Jayne’s parents but it turned out they were going to be away, so we ended up going to visit Penshurst instead.

I don’t know if Labour will stand any chance of winning the by-election in Pantiles & St Marks war, thus increasing the number of Labour councillors to one, but it was good to be out somewhere different for a change. I didn’t get the feeling that the 4-storey houses I was delivering leaflets to were necessarily our heartland, but you never know.

After all that we went across to Penshurst, purely to visit the Quaintways tea rooms. The last couple of times we went they had been closed and I remembered it providing fantastic cream teas. Today it was open and we had a slightly surreal ordering process.

Jayne and I asked for a cream tea and we were told that they don’t do it any more, however they could do us home-made scones with butter, jam and clotted cream and a pot of tea. (?)

I have probably said it before, and I will certainly say it again, but I think that the traditional cream tea should be Britain’s distinctive contribution to world cuisine and not roast beef. Its brilliant!

While we were in Tunbridge Wells we saw cyclists turning up at churches there, stay for a couple of minutes and set off again. I thought it was a bit strange. When we got to Penshurst and loked around the church there was a lady sitting outside in a folding chair and the bench in the porch was loaded with water containers and orange squash. Other churches we passed had a tables and chairs outside.

It turned out that there was a charity bike ride/walk going on in aid of Kent churches. The idea was to walk or cycle and visit as many churches in Kent as possible. What a neat idea.

Still, it was a good run out and Charlie was dead chuffed to discover when we got to Dungeness that he recognised the place from Eastenders. Apparently they filmed an episode there and it made his day to eat at the same place Kevin Wicks, whoever he is, was at.

Now I just have to go through the 50+ photos I took to see if any are worth keeping.

This was a big deal for the army cadets – they don't get a new flag every year – and all the cadets from all over East and West Sussex were there parading together in front of VIPs and however many parents were able to make it.

When Jayne found out that our MP was going down she managed to arrange a car-share with her but also found out that, at that time, of all the MPs invited ours was the only one who had replied. I don't know it it was all the Sussex MPs who were invited, or just those who had cadets from their area attending, but either way that is pretty shabby.  Even if they are away on holiday – not an unreasonable thing at this time of year – they could respond. 

I don't know if any other MPs did make it in the end. I know that the leader of West Sussex county council was there, so at least Crawley was well-represented even if nowhere else was.

I don't think that a lot of Laura's critics realise how much time she puts in to this sort of thing.  I know she had to rush back to get up to London and for her own convenience she could have done without a trip to Folkestone and back. Also, as an ex-sea cadet (I think) she has no particular ties to the army but she went there to provide support for the Crawley cadets.

Her regular stalkers are only too happy to write letters to the local papers if they think they have seen her using a hosepipe, but they don't mention this sort of thing.  As for the hose pipe, it was connected to one of her many water butts and being used by her son's girlfriend. She wasn't there as she was probably at yet another unheralded engagement. 

After that we headed out to Kent. Yesterday I promised Jayne a cream tea and , in my opinion, the best cream tea to be had is in Quaintways tea shop in Penshurst, Kent, so thats where we headed.

After negotiating the dangerously tiny roads we reached Penshurst, and the first thing we saw was that the tea shop was closed! Apparently they are closed on Mondays, but for bank holidays they stay open and close on the Tuesday instead.

How was I to know?

We had a look around the village, including the church, churchyard, and a group of ancient buildings called Leicester Square, then went on to Penshurst Place. It is a long time since I visited Penshurst Place – at least ten years – and it has changed a lot.

Not the house itself which doesn’t even appear to have been dusted since my last visit, but the ‘visitor facilities’. You used to enter via a gate in the garden wall, paying at a small sentry box sort of affair, but now there is a large gift shop and ticket office a lot further along.

It seems like all the investment has been going into that, and upgrading the tea shop, and building a ‘venture playground’, rather than do anything to the building and its contents. The public areas of the house are distinctly shabby and threadbare, with huge cobwebs and dust everywhere.

There are some paintings which may be quite good, but they are very poorly hung – high up on the walls with lighting arranged to reflect on them so you can’t see them properly. Some looked suspiciously dark, as if they needed a good dose of restoration.

If anything, Penshurst Place suffers in the same way Arundel Castle does, from still being a family home in part. Only a part of the house is open to the public and the rest is still occupied by the Viscount De L’Isle or someone like that. As a result all the guide books over-emphasise the importance of the family and are written with the sort of toadying reverence you would expect. All of the guides are pensioners who are probably in awe of the local nobility.

Personally if I visit these places I am a lot more interested in the building itself than in whichever chinless wonders have lived in it over the years. With each new room I could feel the call to arms in the class war getting louder. The gardens are nice though.

But before going back through the gardens we had a cream tea in the tea rooms. It was nowhere near as good as the Quaintways tea shop! A proper English cream tea is a bit ritualistic. Maybe not as formal as the Japanese tea rituals, but even so the experience is not enhanced by self-service, pushing a tray along a counter and carrying it over to pick up all the sachets of sugar, cutlery etc. The journey home deserves a post all of its own…