Sunlight in the beech woods

Val and I picked Whirlow for our regular Thursday morning walk, and the light along the hilly woodland path was intermittently wonderful. We haven't done this walk since the spring and it was good to rediscover it. We took a slightly different route back to the car from our previous ones, and came across a really good cafe. Excellent coffee, tea and cake.
Later I had lunch with two other old friends - more enjoyable catch-ups - before going to meet Frieda from school.
Frieda was on good form, especially as her closest current school friend also comes to the after-school dance class that I take her to.  Later I saw Jack, Marianna and Simone briefly too, when I dropped Frieda off. Richard and I will be seeing a lot more of them next week, as Simone is moving to a different nursery, and some extra help will be needed to manage the transition.  The nursery she's been at part-time for a while is closing at very short notice, possibly because of an adverse Ofsted report.  On the whole I'm relieved, as I hadn't liked the look of the place, and I think she'll be happier at the new one (fingers crossed). She'll only have 2 days per week there for the moment.
I continue to follow with dismay the reports from the US about Trump's appointments to his new team. Richard and I are still watching episodes of the West Wing regularly, as an odd kind of escapist therapy.