First birthday

No, no - not his first birthday: the first birthday of the year for our family. Always a bit of a challenge this close after Christmas, but the chaps came up trumps with the ideas, mostly involving food, and my novel idea is still in the post. It was all a bit hectic first thing, feeling rather like the first day of term, which of course it was for the school here and for the grands' schools: trying to fit in that urgent phone call to the plumber/builder/gas fitter about getting that non-doing fire sorted, opening presents and getting out to Pilates, which started again too. Mercifully I was able to scamper along the lane to meet my lift in between torrential showers - gaudy leggings are no sort of protection in a downpour, and exercising in damp ones is miserable.

I'm afraid we both gave up on exercise after that; there was no quarter given at my class and I was pretty knackered. We opened some of the Italian fennel salami to have at lunchtime, though the arrival of a mini pizza oven has inspired us to do more exciting things with some of it at least - Himself assembled it this afternoon. Watch this space...

Later I wrote a diatribe to go to a meeting I can't attend, uploaded photos of Christmas to Flickr, did a good half hour of Italian, and tottered downstairs to indulge in a bottle of champagne before dinner. (No, we didn't quite finish it - there's some left for tomorrow.) My triptych shows the hamper of Italian goodies and the champagne, which bubbled over most picturesquely; my extra is a photo I took just now as I was locking up and realised the garden was glowing in the moonlight. 

It'll be wet and blowing again by morning.