The back of my hand

It's a bit of accepted wisdom that some of the best times we have are those events that are impromptu. So, I thought I was going to have Dan and Abi, tonight, so I invited Milly and her lovely boyfriend, Evan, 'round, too. And then the Minx said she'd come up but Abi opted to stay at her mum's and finish her homework, which appeared to involve making a sock puppet. 

I'd been in the office all day and I didn't have the energy to cook, so we went en masse to the Chinese takeaway and ordered a load of food, which we took back to the cottage to eat with some beer and wine (and lemonade for Dan). 

And it was after we'd eaten that the nice bit happened because everyone just stayed at the table chatting and after a while we got some playing cards out, too, and played 'Oh Hell' while we carried on talking. It was at some point around then that I glanced down at my hand, which kind of took me by surprise. 

Not because I feel it's suddenly aged or become more veined - it's been like that for years - but because I thought it looked rather splendid, like a good example of what a hand should look like! Mind you, my visual memory is so poor, I'm not that surprised that it caught me in unawares.