Feeling sleepy all day as I went to the Oxfam shop yesterday and bought a novel by David Lodge, Paradise Lodge (I love his books) I started reading it after supper and went on till 2am, or later. So good. I am like an alcoholic with a good book, just can`t stop.
Eeerily quiet here this evening no one about. But I have beds made up in the sitting room and the garden room and the proper guest room upstairs, all three arriving late, so I can sit up and start reading again.
There`s been terrible news of the sudden death of one of J`s contemporaries, only forty one years old. I keep remembering her as beautiful seven year old with shining eyes and pink cheeks, in and out of our old house in College Street. Such sadness.

Just back from day off in Brighton. Before I left I went for a walk in Stanmer Park with my lovely friend J and her two dogs, Madge and Dotty. They had just had a perilous escape from death as they got on the railway line and disrupted all the trains. They eventually had to be tunnelled out. J and I always talk and talk when we meet and never seem to have enough time, but she will be my nearest friend when I move to Ditchling so that is a plus point about going there. I have been feeling anxious about the whole businness of uprooting myself and leaving everything and everyone here.
Ever since I got back home at it has been one thing after another: moving sixty chairs for meetings, cooking red cabbage and crumble for Quaker lunch tomorrow , welcoming an extremely talkative B and B .He showed great interest in Quakerism, so I have done my best to make a convert. All in the space of a couple of hours. Roll on retirement I say to myself,

bank holiday blues

Bank Holiday weekend and I have nothing planned, but I suppose I will do a bit of writing, a bit of gardening and a bit of gazing into space, as well as all the usual: dealing with droppers in, and` gentlemen of the road` who fancy a cheese and pickle sandwich just as I`m thinking of going to bed, (always more of them about at weekends). This evening I went next door to feed the Rectory cats and saw two people getting out of their car who had come for B and B, from Southern Ireland. I had completely forgotten about them, luckily I had an empty bed! I could not remember their names though they had been before, so I had to spend an hour going through old emails trying to track them down.
I had just been to Ikea and had wandered about there in a haze of consumerism lust, seduced by fluffy white bath towels, shiny big frying pans and plump pillows. So cheap, I say to myself but end up spending huge sums.

Back from another tribal gathering in the Isle of Wight, but they have all drifted back home now. We get together every year for Julia`s birthday, this is the fifth since she died in 2004.
I had to get back earlier on Saturday, as I cooked supper for our dear Russian ex residents and their Auntie Maya from Moscow, plus her Russian professor friend Alexi, also Latvian Y who used to live here, and M, her chap, so we were eleven including the children. Baby Alexander who was christened here a few months ago by the Orthodox priest, is now crawling round the table legs. We had a bit of a sing song after supper.
Now I have an Australian woman staying who is a devotee of Krishnamurti so she has been out to Brockwood Park nearby to the Krishnamurti School. Otherwise everything is very quiet here. I shall be glad when it all gets buzzing again.

August is a funny month, everything seems suspended, and the house is dead quiet today, even the cats have hardly bothered to wake up for their tea. (It is plural at the moment as Shirley has come to stay from Brighton)
I have just been away in the Isle of Wight to join the annual migration of Darlings etc and a dozen or so of us have been sitting in rows on beaches, occasionally plunging into the sea. There is a sort of mud pool and the others (not me) like rolling around in it and emerge looking grotesque. I find it quite distressing, but I suppose it is what posh people do in spas and health farms. Anyway, I certainly feel the benefit of the sea air and my hacking cough has disappeared, though I have a red peeling nose.
I have been making some damson jam which has set well, but everything is very sticky, taps, doorhandles, it seems to have got everywhere. I am looking forward to blackberry picking, not long now.

my family and other animals

Busy here this morning, the plumber repairing two leaking taps, the grandly named Pest Control Officer dealing with a wasp nest under the roof, handyman J doing a bit of grouting by the sink. splendid T the cleaner wielding the Hoover, and cups of tea all round with three sugars.
The garden is full of mums and toddlers, It is Friends of the Family today, and there are also two B and B`s with a fout month old baby who is adorable but fairly voluble How strange it will be when I retire next year and I will not have all this activity all round me every day.
Last weekend I was away for sister in laws 80th Birthday party. I find that my social life these days consists mainly of 80th, 90th even 100th birthday celebrations, also golden weddings, interspersed with funerals. I stayed with brother P having picked up sister J in Islington (bravely driving right across central London) and it was nice sleeping in the same room as my sister as we did all through our childhoods I enjoyed seeing all my brothers children and grandchildren and spotting the family likenesses. My sister and I realise that we are the two old aunties that you always get in families.

no crumbs on the aga

I am just back from holiday and the Meeting House was pristine, there had been no floods or disasters, in fact `nowt to laugh at at all` Apparently it rained all the time I was away when I was basking in sunshine and swimming in the Lake Constance so the garden is looking green, and the vegetables are growing madly.
I read two novels and half of Julian Barnes book about death, called `Nothing to be Afraid Of`also I had just finished a book by David Lodge called Deaf Sentence (which wasn`t abouut death but about a deaf professor) the night before I left, so my head is still filled with the happenings and characters in those four books. So I feel as if I had an eventful holiday whereas in fact I lolled about, having delicious meals cooked for me by my beloved sister ( who does everything beautifully, even grinding up the coffee beans each morning for breakfast) and swimming in the lake with my lovely niece K, and living a very decadent hedonistic life.
Anyway its all go here today. It is the Garden Party for the Sight Impaired this afternoon and it looks like rain. This morning, T my brilliant cleaner helper has brought a carpet shampooer and we are doing all the carpets. It is so satisfying tipping out the filthy gungy water. That is the sort of thing I enjoy.