Having a quiet week in the house as lots of the groups and counsellors are taking a half term break. but T, J,and G plus Jumble the dog came to stay for two nights and that was a treat. I am still disorientated from the clocks changing (and so is T who wakes up even earlier than usual)Also I have been sleeping in different beds. I had booked in a B and B so I had to let him have my room. Every room here has its own strange creaks and rumblings in the night, but we discussed at breakfast today whether anyone feels there are any ghosts, and we all agreed that there are none. It feels very safe and unspooky though the house was built in 1751 and must have had many dramas and excitements over the years.
I have just been to see the Coen brothers` latest film, Burn After Reading. I loved it. It had a complicated plot and it is only afterwards that you realise how cleverly it all ties in.
It is very cold and last night it snowed. In October! When I went swimming early this morning my bicycle saddle had a layer of ice on it which was a very odd sensation. There were only two of us in the water which felt positively hot.

Yesterday we had a memorial meeting here for K who was executed in Texas some months ago. He became a Quaker while he was on Death Row. We planted a silver birch ree in the garden in his memory and we scattered some of his ashes under it. I asked M who had visited him in prison and was there at his execution, about his favourite music and she said English folk songs and the Beatles. So two friends played violin and piano arrangment of folk songs by
Vaughan Williams at the beginning, and I put on `Let it Be` on a CD with John Lennon at the end. It seemed the right thing. There was a good lunch afterwards, people brought things and they all tucked in.
Afterwards K and I worked in the garden and I also had a satisfying shed clear out. This necessitates another trip to the dump, something to look forward to.
I have a busy writing day today: firstly, items for the Courier, our meeting magazine, then my end of the month report which I have to submit to the House Committee tomorrow in which I make it sound as if the Meeting House is a model of efficiency, and lastly my writing group homework which is to be an observation of a couple, imagining their lifestyle. Each a completely different style, so I must try not to overlap.
Also J, T, and G are coming for half term this evening plus Jumble the dog.

In spite of T`s gloomy prognostications, I went to Germany for my holiday, and arrived home last night unscathed. In fact I had a lovely time, having cups of tea brought to me in bed in the mornings, reading novels, watching films, eating tasty meals, and talking, talking to my beloved sister and niece. The Meeting House seemed to survive perfectly well, just a lot of emails, ironing, mysterious messages, and slightly mouldering food items in the fridge, when I got back. The Germans do every thing very very well: plumbing, dentists, apple trees, houses, bicycles, you really notice when you come back to dusty old England. But there is nothing to beat that moment when you get back into your own bed at night with your own cat beside you.
D has just come home from working at the Mill and said `lets go and have a burn up` This means lighting a bonfire down the end of the garden. The wetter it is the more he likes it, he says its a challenge. (He has also just said that he was up till two am making the pumpkin soup that we had for lunch You have to be quite an unnusual person to like being a resident here) It is beginning to get dark so it will be good to be outside poking at the flames.

I was wondering aloud what to write today in this blog and D said `Don`t you ever write about all the hectic goings on in this house? ` I said no because firstly I like to imagine that the house is an oasis of calm, and that I am totally unruffled by it all, and secondly, I am firmly of the opinion that we all create the sort of lives we lead and if I wanted peace and quiet I would not do this job. I have got used to cooking with three or four in the kitchen all trying to get at the stove at once plus a few Buddhists as there are tonight making their herbal teas. I am trying to cook a lunch for twenty Catholics tomorrow. You could not say we are not ecumenical.
My son T takes a very gloomy view of the credit crunch situation. He prophecises that the banks will not have any cash soon so we must store some under the mattress. Also he is horrified that I am flying off to Germany to see my sister. `You will be stranded, the airline will go bust!` he cries. I am an optimist and will set off as planned for Stansted on Friday.

One of the joys of my life is going to the dump on a Sunday afternoon. I had three huge bags of garden debris, the result of a very satisfying Autumn clear up yesterday, so today I staggered out with them to the car and joined all the others heaving stuff into skips. I always fear I will heave myself headlong in as well. There is cameraderie at the dump, we all help each other, and there is enormous satisfaction in getting rid of stuff, though the best part of the whole execcise is going round to the shed at the back to see what treasures you can find. Today I got: a very nice rush seated chair for one of the resident`s bedrooms, four pasta bowls, a big serving bowl, and two mugs. When I got back I lit a bonfire and was about to start mowing when one of the residents took pity on me and took over.
Yesterday afternoon, Y, K and I planted an apple tree for four day old baby Alexander, third child of ex residents. Beloved Russian granny was there and as it was her birthday we celebrated that too. Lots of kisses. Russians always give you three, one on each cheek and a third one for luck.

Last night I went to a party. It was in a house that had belonged to two sisters who were musicians and church organists, and who lived into their nineties. One died a little while ago and the second, E, went in to a nursing home, and good, kind C , a friend, volunteered to clear out the house and raise some money towards the cost of her care, but in fact E died soon after. The house was stuffed with furniture, including two grand pianos and one upright, and two large organs. There was more knitting wool than I have ever seen in one place, huge wardrobes were stuffed with fur coats, innumerable pairs of shoes, extraordinary knitted dresses and mohair scarves by the dozen. The upstairs was like a church hall, and one sister slept on the stage with the curtains drawn across . There were two ancient cars in the sitting room downstairs. It was indescribable and unique. C. organised a dance and thirty of us gathered there, including a set Morris Men (related to one of C`s friends)and a band. It was not a youthful gathering but we all joined in enthusiastically, stripping the willow, circle dancing and morris dancing, with abandon. The house is under offer. I expect a developer will pull it down and replace it with some boring, hygienic modern flats.
I was up early this morning putting up our stalls for Quaker Week. I got cold to the bone, but our cakes and jam all got sold. My daughter Julia always said that the Quakers were like the Mafia, quietly beavering away unseen and unheard, so we were trying today to redress the balance.

A new resident moved in with the biggest sofa I have ever seen. He brought three big blokes from work to try to carry it up the two flights of stairs up to his room and as I had predicted it got stuck halfway. What a carry on! We had to get it down again and manoevre it into the garage and this meant bringing it through the Meeting Room full of startled Theosophists
We`ve had plumbing problems for the past two days I have lived in this Meeting House for fifteen years and I still never know where all the many stopcocks are and the labyrinthine ways of the system. A young lad turned up to replace a tap and and as soon as I clapped eyes on him I knew he wasn`t up to it. It had defeated another plumber the day before, so the tap still drips. What happens next I wonder?
It is Quaker Week, nationwide. The numbers are going down drastically so we are trying to tell people what a good thing it is to be a Quaker. Tomorrow we have a stall in the Covert in the High Street. I have been making wholesome Quakerish cakes and flapjacks to woo the populace and we have balloons and `free party bags` with Q literature in them, so tomorrow I will be there at 7am moving tables and setting it up.

I had a very long birthday tea yesterday afternoon, eight came and no one seemed to want to go home. When they eventually left, someone else came, and when she left, a family of five turned up. It was good to see them, they were all people I love, but I could hardly stagger upstairs with fatigue when I finally went to bed.
Today the Meting House was full of Homeopaths, I keep wanting to say Psychopaths. They drank a lot of herbal tea, but were no trouble. This evening there`s Gamblers Anonymous, the Carers Group and a large number of Asylum Seeker Supporters. They are all milling about the kitchen as I write this, falling over each other, making their coffee and tea.
Today I have been to the chiropodist and also had a shiatsu massage. When you are old you have to spend more time just keeping yourself intact.

Today is my birthday. I am seventy eight, which is neither here nor there. I always feel unworthy of all the cards, presents, kind messages and texts as if I do not deserve them. I feel anxious that any celebration I organise is a bother for everyone. Odd that I should feel this as I simply love doing things for other people`s birthdays. This one is a four day event as I was taken out to lunch yesterday in a tapas bar with two friends. I never knew what a Tapas bar was before but it was interesting tasty food in little dishes. Today I had an early breakfast in bed and presents, and a cake at teatime, tomorrow, a lunch out and walk with family, and then on Sunday a tea party at the Meeting House!
Made quiches with four year old T this afternoon for supper. She was breaking eggs and hurling them into a basin, grating cheese and chopping veg up with such speed and skill. I feel I`m passng on the knowledge. We made terrible mess in the kitchen, but we enjoyed ourselves.