Weekends

It's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks, but with some nice things happening. Last weekend I was at my parents, and got to catch up and spend time not only with them, but also with my brother and his partner, and with extended family, including one of my cousins and her children, which was lovely.I don't see them often enough.

On the Saturday. We went down to the harbour to watch the annual raft race, which involves lots of rafts, of many different shapes, sizes and appearances and with a variety of approaches to the relative importance of seaworthiness and looking good. 

The Thunderbirds raft seemed to be most successful in combining the two, and was the ultimate winner.

The Hawaii raft was impressive, but lacked speed. (and was much lower in the water by the end of the race). And the lego men started to sink almost immediately (I don't have a good photo of them, but their costumes were excellent.) 

It wasn't only the rafters who got wet, as it started to rain early on and we all got rather damp, but nevertheless,  think everyone enjoyed themselves. 

The rest of the weekend was quieter, and apart from spending 45 minutes stationary on the motorway on my drive home, I had a very pleasant weekend. (the motorway jam was due to an accident which meant the road was completely closed for a time, which was frustrating, but of course I would far rather be delayed by an accident than *in* one, so I tried to be patient.  

This weekend has been quiet - Saturday morning mostly involved running errands, and a little light baking, and the afternoon was spent admiring a rather nice baby, belonging to an old friend of mine. She is just 5 weeks old, and is a very nice baby. Lots of hair, no teeth, tiny little fingers and toes..  I admit I felt a little broody.
( Although she was very good and hardly cried at all while I was there)

Sunday was quieter, and involved stuff like mowing the lawn, laundry, pruning the lime tree and vacuuming. And cooking.

Friends and Puppies..

On Saturday I headed over to spend the day with an old friend of mine, (we used to live opposite one another, from the age of about 9 0r 10)

She and her husband farm, and had agreed to sell me some beef the next time they had an animal butchered for home use, so the purpose of the trip was to pick that up (I now have a large selection of steaks, joints, mince and the like in my freezer, all from a cow which was born and raised right here) and to generally catch up and spend some time together.

And, as it turned out, to meet some puppies, as one of their dogs had pups recently, and now there are seven utterly adorable little bundles of fluff and squeakiness...


They are four weeks old today, and are very friendly, curious and cute. I was tempted to take one home, but (a) they are not yet young enough to leave their mother (b) Tybalt would emphatically not approve and (c) my small, almost gardenless house, and office-based job are not really suitable for a working dog.....

But they are incredibly cute.

It was a beautifully sunny day, so we (and the puppies) were able to spend

most of the day outside, then later, J and I walked through the fields to see her parents (who were our neighbours all the time I was growing up, and until my parents retired and moved away 2 years ago) It was a glorious evening for a walk - the hedgrows were bluebells, cowslips, primroses and cow-parsley, and as well as some lovely views across the levels towards Glastonbury, we also saw lots of rabbits, a hare, and a magnificant dog-fox - the most vivid red, against the bright green grass, and very large for a fox.

I did manage to catch a picture of him, although it doesn't do him justice, and even J, who recently lost 11 chickens in a single night to a fox (maybe this one) had to admire him.

It's days like this which remind me what a beatiful part of the country I live in, and how lucky I was to be able to grow up here. And, of course, how lucky I am in my friends.

Of course, when I returned home, Tybalt was not impressed at me for having been gone 24 hours, and coming home smelling of 9 different dogs.....