I lay awake in the night feeling terrible. How could I have written so ungratefully about the Harvest festivals! We simply LOVE having them and the mothers from the family group will be delighted with the soup, Marks and Spencers is very tasty and superior. We plan to make banana cakes with the over ripe fruit, and I really enjoyed my cauliflower cheese last night and it had the added bonus of being blessed in church!
My writing group this morning. I am not too happy about my poem about the weather, but I look forward to hearing everyone else`s. And it is my reading group this evening, `House of Orphans` by Helen Dunmore which I love but I haven`t quite finished it.

The Vicar from the Almshouses round the corner turned up with their Harvest Festival this morning. I am never quite sure why they give it to us at the Meeting House, but we get several each year from different churches. They don`t know what to do with them. I said I would distribute it to the mothers who come to the family group tomorrow. I opened the hamper in keen anticipation to find: one mouldy cauliflower ( I ate it later for my supper), three withered parsnips, lots of windfall apples, a dozen or so speckly bananas, plus six tins of Marks and Spencer soup. A bit of a diisappointment.
We had a little leaving do this evening for Y who has been here for three years and is moving tomorrow. We had some bubbly wine and a blackberry crumble. We all felt quite tearful.

Two Quakers for B and B. I laid a tasty breakfast, Home made bread, muesli, boiled organic eggs,home made jam, fruit, hot cross buns and croissants. Oh dear. They are vegans with wheat intolerance. What a disaster, nothing on the table they could eat! They asked for peppermint tea. On my bike, I rode like the wind to Sainsburys and returned with the peppermint teabags, it was like Tigger`s breakfast. There had to be something I could give them. They are lovely people and ate the cereal they had brought with hot water on it and seemed perfectly happy. Two young students just starting at UNI as they all say, are staying here as their rooms are not ready for them. One is in the garden room up a ladder in the loft, the other in the sitting room. they seem absurdly young to have left their mothers. They managed to get themselves shut out in the garden twice last night in their pyjamas, another young resident also came home without her key. Poor Y had to get up three times to answer the door in the middle of the night. I blithely slept through all the banging and ringing. What will I do when she moves out next Wednesday?

My bones are aching as I have had an extremely active day. A slightly dodgy character turned up this morning and offered to do some gardening. I know him of old. He has a tendency to go wild when he has a pair of shears or clippers in his hands and cuts down everything in sight. So I had to work with him, mostly in the rain. The garden is now transformed. He wears very short shorts and big boots and he has strong sturdy legs. He tells me that he often sleeps in the
bus shelter up near the cemetery which he says is very cosy. At eight am the gate is unlocked so he goes into the cemetery gents and has a good wash.
I was collapsed in the kitchen, covered in mud, thinking I might lie on the sofa for a nap when three friends walked in. We had arranged to play some music. I had forgotten and my heart sank, but in fact it refreshed my spirits to play a bit of Handel and Telemann, and it was good to sit down for an hour.
People keep recoiling in horror when they see my black eye. I have invented several terrible stories to account for it.

I went to Clarkie`s funeral today. She was or helper in College Street for years. She celebrated her hundredth birthday in April, so it was not too sad an occasion. She was the worlds worst moaner but she was splendid too. She had high standards, believed in cooking good meat and vegetables, and brought us home made cakes. I sang all the hymns with gusto. And there was a delicious tea supplied by Waitrose. I had an interesting talk with the vicar who knew nothing about Quakers.
A very odd thing about my black eye which is even more lurid today, my sister has one too, and it appeared at the same time. What strange forces are at work?

I woke this morning with a dramatic black eye. I don`t know how it happened,I supposed I must have turned over rather violently in bed. At the pool, a young woman said, Oh dear, have you had a tumble? I immediately felt old and decrepit. Why is it that when you are older, people talk about having a Fall or a Tumble, but the young simply say that they have fallen over?

A misty moisty morning and as I cycled through the cathedral close at 8am for my morning swim in the College pool, I reflected how I will miss this kick start to the day, when I retire and move to Ditchling, as I must do soon. I have been back and forth on this route for the last fifty four years- to the Meeting House and the town when we lived in College Street, I know every tree and cobble stone. But I am making a resolve to think positively about the changes ahead. This will be the last Autumn that I have to rake up mountains of leaves in the garden, and also I will have far more time for reading and writing, and I can start something new.

Two nights away and back to the smell of bread baking, and D vigorously scrubbing down the garden furniture out in the sunshine. He told me that I had forgotten about a couple from Yorkshire who had turned up for B and B on Friday and were sitting disconsolately outside the back door when he came home from work. He said not to worry he had sorted them out and did not let on. I had been expecting a Wayne, but fortunately he didn`t turn up. How lucky.
It was J`s birthday and I had lovely times with everybody, but I got a bit sad though happy at the same time when we watched old holiday videos with Julia in them.
Then I went to Lewes and saw my old friend J. We have totally interesting conversations always. She has just moved yet again and I marvelled at it all. She has such style.

Wednesday 17th September
This morning I went to the grumpy nurse round at the doctors and had my ear syringed.What a blooming miracle. I can hear again, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone went. Everything before sounded as if I was far away in an echoey tunnel.
I served lunch today at the Meeting House for twe;ve Quakers: four men in their mid nineties, three women in their late eighties and no one under seventy. I felt young and skittish at seventy eight.

Tuesday 16th September

My sister Jackie asked, why are you doing this blog? I said, it makes me write a bit each day, other than my usual shopping list and `things to do` I read my poem out to the writing group this morning. It is called`Grave Concerns` and I wrote it because my friend Barbara was worried about who in her family was going to inherit her grand piano, and she said `Isn`t it a nuisance that we`ve got to die soon when we have so much to do. The average age of my group is about 75, so it struck home, but in a cheerful sort of way.

September 15th

At last, I`ve cracked it. I have tried for three days to get into this blog to write the second entry and here it is. The only problem is that no one else will be able to find it either, so I am just writing this into the ether. In the midst of a busy weekend, as the Meeting House was open to the public for National Heritage Weekend, I wrote a poem about death and dying for my writing group but it is not sad, just annoyed. I heard on the radio this morning that Andrew Motion , the poet laureate, often finds it difficult to get started on a poem, so he takes a Lemsip which reminds him of feeling ill which is when he writes his best stuff. So I feel quite proud that I was able to write something in between serving cups of earl grey and scones to the punters wandering round the building pursued by eager Quakers. I am sitting in my sunny kitchen with the cat beside me with his face pressed up against the aga, but I am just about to go out in the garden and tidy up m,y vegetable patch as the tomatoes have all withered up in the night. I have never been any good at tomatoes.

Friday 12th September 2008

The start of my blog! Drove to Brighton through the morning mist, had a swim in a pool, not the rough sea and then ate egg and chips on the seafront with T and J Its been a good day, youngest grand -daughter wiped the floor with me at cards, and then fell asleep immediately when I read Eeyore`s Birthday to her at bedtime. I`m struggling now with a very hard Guardian cryptic crossword to exercise my brain before I go to bed. Back home early in the morning.