Wedding Anniversary

We celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary while in Northumberland with Bob and Judy.  Captain Butterfly managed to remember it at the last minute (we usually forget) and Judy produced a bottle of bubbly stuff.  And it was great.

We took them out for an Indian meal in Seahouses the night before we left.   Very good and a lovely drive back down the coast.    Our journey back was OK - done safely anyway.   And, on the eating front, we all went to a Turkish restaurant last night and had a great evening.

Col has disappeared off to Endcliffe Park - a ribbon of stream and woodland running from the inner city to the moors at Ringinglow - with a camera at every corner, on the hunt for what he can find. Nute is in her study working (she writes), and Ken is making the sphag bol for our lunchtime visitors: Keith, and Jo and Matthew.

I am re-reading "Trouble for Lucia" at the moment - E.F.Benson.  If you haven't read the Mapp and Lucia books, what a treat you are in for.

Here is a taste, describing the powerful effect the visit of the glamorous diva Olga Braceley has on the ladies of Tilling:

"Though Tilling remained the same at heart, Olga's brief visit had considerably changed the decorative aspect of the leading citizenesses.  The use of powder on the face on very hot days when prominent features were apt to turn crimson, or on very cold ones, when prominent features were apt to turn mauve, had always been accepted, but that they should embellish themselves with rouge and lipstick and arched eyebrows was a revolution indeed.  They had always considered such aids to loveliness as typical of women who shamelessly desired to capture the admiration of males, and that was still far from their intentions.  But Diva found that arched eyebrows carefully drawn where there were none before gave her a look of high-bred surprise: Elizabeth that the rose-mantled cheeks she now saw in her looking-glass made her feel (not only appear) ten years younger: Susan that her corrugated hair made her look like a French marquise.  Irene, who had been spending a fortnight of lionization in London, was amazed at the change when she returned, and expressed her opinion of it, by appearing in the High Street with the tip of her nose covered with green billiard-chalk."