Breakfast bliss

It's my birthday, and although it's a very low key event these days, I've had an unusually indulgent day and rather enjoyed it. I've not been feeling very celebratory recently: my neighbour C wrote, in the card he left in the post box, "at least we can hope that the future can't get much worse than the recent past", but I'm not so sure. However, it's been a glorious, warm, sunny day, I've been eating lovely food all day and opened some nice Sauvignon Blanc this evening, so despite stresses and anxieties, I have much for which to be thankful. P made his delicious savoury vegan scones for breakfast; once J was settled with her PA S, I took mine to the balcony with my morning pint of tea and enjoyed the sun and the very green view. I stayed there a while with my knitting, a gentle half hour of peaceful activity, then made a lemon drizzle cake, which I shared with J and S this afternoon - P doesn't really eat cake, but has made two particularly nice meals today as well as the scones. He looks after us very well. Tomorrow, I will get back to trying to lose weight - though we have a few more days of cake to look forward to. 

I'm also glad that my laptop is more or less working today, after taking forty minutes to wake up and allow me to open a browser, and that the compact camera I bought on ebay at the weekend arrived yesterday and has been tried out today. It's a replacement for my Panasonic TZ20, which I also bought on ebay and have used for years. It has been a really nice little pocket sized camera with lots of optical zoom, great for family outings when I don't want to carry and change lenses and need to frame my photos reasonably quickly. Sadly, it has developed faults which would cost more to repair than a replacement camera, so I've been looking out for something similar from the same range. The one I've bought is slightly higher spec, didn't cost a lot, and seems to be in very nice condition, so I'm hoping it will serve me as well as its predecessor has.

Thank you to everyone who has commented on my 500th blip or left other comments, hearts or stars. As a result of my computer problems I haven't yet responded to anyone individually, but I appreciate all the kind words and hope to get back on track soon.