Catching the light!

What an absolutely glorious morning to greet the day!
We were up earlier as some cleaners were coming in as usual. They began in early April 2019 to help us out, as Stephen was still doing some consultancy work then and I was going into hospital for an operation.
I’ve actually had 4 operations since. And Stephen a major one in February 2020 just before the first Lockdown.
That was the reason a friend from our church recommended these cleaners.
They’ve become like part of the family coming once every two weeks.
Only this morning Mick phoned to say his Nan had died and he and his team would have to postpone. I told him he had absolutely no need to apologise, it was quite understandable.
We took advantage of having got up early and went to the Farmhouse Bistro for some late breakfast, and coffee.
It was 520 steps from the car and back again, once we had parked.
Once back home Stephen walked with me a short way along the school boundary fence and back which felt so good.
I took the photo of the daffodil there growing alongside the fence, where there are lovely clumps and also in the school grounds the other side.
Bright nodding heads in the sunlight.
What a delight!
I am now in the summerhouse for an hour. The breakfast was enough for lunch!
Stephen is going to the funeral of a well loved minister at the Baptist Church this afternoon which we joined in 1981 on moving up here. It is at 3:15pm.
We knew Eric very well. He visited me at our local hospital in November 1981 when I had to have an operation fairly quickly. Admitted on a Friday and operated on Saturday morning.He was always on hand for support or advice.
I was in for a week.
Surgery was different then.
Later in 1984 he came to visit us to see our new son Alan, not quite a week old.
Matthew was 8 then.
He made a wonderful Minister, responsible for pastoral care, alongside the Main Minister, Alan Pain.
A good team. He set up a Pastoral Visiting Team, which I became part of eventually, to see housebound members, and others, to make sure, as well as possible, that the housebound and elderly had visits.
His three children are grown up with children of their own. His grandchildren love him to bits, and 5 of them want to read at the Thanksgiving Service today.
I will really miss being there.
We moved churches in 2018 to support a young friend of ours who was beginning a new work as Youth Pastor at Birmingham Vineyard Church, where we have been ever since.
Rites of Passage like these stir years’ worth of memories.