Form an orderly queue...

A lovely day, a mixture of work and leisure!

Not the usual sort of work - MrM and I set off this morning for the outskirts of Newcastle, to meet with an engineer. We need some more tailpieces for our musical instruments and, if possible, we'd rather have some made locally than buy Chinese imports. Now they know the exact specification, we await a quotation.

On to Hexham for lunch and to do some Christmas shopping. But first we stopped for a walk by the river with Louie - it was ridiculously mild (15deg), and we really didn't need our jackets. These black-headed gulls obviously like perching on the top of this railing - they flew off as we walked past, but soon reconvened in the same place.

We inadvertently chose a very good time to walk through Hexham - the stalls at the Christmas Market had finished setting up and had just opened for business. A great selection of locally made craft items and produce. Christmas shopping made easy!

MrM drove us home a very long way round via the scenic route, across the wonderful, wild Northumberland Moors. Now for a quick bite to eat and a bit more work on those accounts...