Had a wonderful weekend.
My course turned out to be really interesting, I had a great curry in Ealing and rather too many drinks before being poured onto a train to Ashwell, ready for an utterly fab time with my friend, Jane.
Pictures to follow tomorrow, but there is a great snap of her jack russell, Teal, known as 'Little Pig'. Little Pig is all rickerty now and totters about the kitchen, picking at her tea and tossing out onto the floor any morsel she decides she doesn't fancy. There is also Robert, young tyke and Murphy, old hand. more beers, much chat and then bed by midnight (it's the country air, you know!)
Saturday morning I was woken at 3.50am by the dawn chorus. How beautiful! Like an orchestra of little birds, with owls twit-twooing for good measure. You hear nothing like it in the town and as the sun rises the volume drops and you drift off back to sleep to gentle, soothing twittering.
On Saturday we had monster brekkie, lashings of tea and then set off to Harrow in the land rover to be gardeners. This was after we'd bobbed in to see Dick who has the most gorgeous garden in the world. Jane buys his gin and fags and helps keep his garden going. He has asparagus and artichokes and an amazing variety of flowers and a stream and, oh everything you could ever want in a garden. Absolutely beautiful. Jane is, in effect running a support service that allows Dick to stay in his own home without too many worries. And she does this for several other folk she quietly looks after while apparently being the gardener.
Harrow-boy, however, is not a pensioner, but a 40-something theatreland accountant who can't tell the difference between a geranium and a weed. Jane's made his garden look amazing, with some smart urban design touches, sweeping purples flowing across some nifty paving and a rather fetching gin deck.
We rattled back down the A1 just after 6pm, bobbed into tesco for gin, beers and scoff and spent the evening listening to The Who, cuddling Little Pig(Jane)and eating ice cream (me) and extolling the virtues of Live at Leeds very loudly for a very long time.
Husband, Malcolm, very very lovely. Tiger the cat in fine fettle. All gorgeous in effect.
Oh, and have caught the sun so when I wended my way back to town, hair uncombed for three days, birkenstocks and jeans muddy and a bit dog/cat haired I looked like the country girl scruff I am at heart. Marvellous!
