Camellia……..

………spotted at the top of the garden.
This is the earliest I have ever spotted a flower on the bush,
But I did prune it back last autumn. I haven’t normally bothered.
A substantial drop in temperature first thing this morning, from 12C yesterday to 5C.
Early rise again this morning a 6:45am.
Our lovely gang of three arrived at 7:30 as usual.
We took ourselves off to the local Farmhouse café for breakfast.
They open at 9:00am.
I had a very tasty Light Breakfast, which consisted of a small rasher of bacon, baked beans, hash brown, sausage and fried egg. (There was a choice of how the egg was to be cooked, ) Stephen had a Breakfast Bap.
Toast and coffee also went down very well!
My normal breakfast at home is porridge with fruit.
The water is staying on all day today, thankfully.
A spot of shopping at JS Sainsbury’s plus picking up a new sink bowl, as our old one had sprung a leak, and a squeegee scraper to clean the new shower screen, once it is in use. There is an Argos catalogue franchise in JS’s store. It’s really convenient for ordering stuff and then picking it up after doing the shopping.
Just now as I am writing this the sun is pouring in the front lounge window, as the clouds move fairly swiftly across the sky in a brisk wind.
This afternoon we are going round to take our granddaughter’s birthday card and present and stop to have a cuppa and slice of birthday cake,
She made her own last year. It was excellent.
She is 11 years old today.
It feels like quite a watershed.
I can still remember my first day at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar school, in the Rossendale Valley, when I was eleven.
I had always wanted to go there.
Hated the school beret, and so it wouldn’t look so new, I took it off (out of sight) and stamped on it so it looked more grubby!
I am one of the fortunate ones who really enjoyed secondary school.
Before we moved house I had two buses to catch in order to get there,
Each evening there were School specials waiting at the bottom of the steep school drive, in the road, waiting to take us to various points in the Valley. There was one for Rawtenstall, one to Bacup and Whitworth (combined), and one to Crawshawbooth, which was my area.
My dad was a student at the same school years before, and there was a photo of him in a school concert on the wall in one of the corridors.
And he and his contemporaries had WWII interrupt any further higher education.