Sunday, Jim …

Was it only a week ago that I wrote you could predict my Sundays without fail? * Well, mes enfants, today I slipped the leash of habit and …

First I loitered abed with my tea while Himself waited on the cats. Eventually I pottered downstairs, made breakfast, lingered over eating it, drinking another mug of coffee, tidying up - and then subsided in the sitting room with the Sunday paper (delivered!) and the day’s Italian practice. And that was the morning.

We spent the afternoon visiting Blipper Lady Findhorn. There was cake, for we were partaking of Afternoon Tea. (I was remembering when I was a small child when ladies who visited my mother for this ceremony would keep on their hats - a sort of token that the sojourn would be brief. I did not wear a hat.) It is perhaps a sign of how wildly the conversation flowed that not a single photo was taken to mark the event - not of the dramatis personae, not of the remarkable Dower House, not of the surroundings which I suddenly began to recognise from Lady F’s blips. And suddenly it was time to call a taxi and find it was only two minutes away and scamper breathlessly through the Mensa test approaches to the street … It was rerr.

We had time when we got in to replenish the cats’ feeding bowl, have a brief sit-down (long enough to write the first part of this epistle) and tidy our hair (hmm) before our friends arrived to drive us all into town for tapas in Café Andaluz. Twelve bowls of food plus four plates, four wine glasses, four tumblers, wine bottle and water carafe … it was a miracle that none of it ended up where it ought not to be. We talked absolutely non-stop as friends do when they’ve not seen each other for 9 months, and staggered out into the chilly evening.

When we got back to the house the family were home and Po the dog back from his auntie’s. Tomorrow we go back west - but right now …

Zzzz

Blipping the cats looking expectant because I didn’t remember to take any more relevant photos.

*Actually it was Mondays. Last Monday.