Bank holiday blues......

I always feel, that everyone but me is having an uproarious time on Bank Holiday Mondays. A chilly grey day, and daughter J, one grand daughter, Jumble the dog, and I went to a village fete and mingled with crowds eating hot dogs. We stroked well groomed lambs,llamas,donkeys and ferrets in pens in the car park, listened to an elderly jazz band, then a lively skiffle group. I always long to have a dance but know I cannot due to dodgy knees and feet.
I have put myself on a strict diet regime on account of aforementioned knees,but in spite of son T mending the bathroom scales (I wonder why they broke?) the weight stays obstinately the same. On the plus side, I am reading an absorbing novel by Margaret Forster about grandmothers: Isa and May, but lying on the sofa reading is not conducive to weight loss. Perhaps I will have to get a dog and walk for a few miles each day like all the other Ditchling -ites.

seventysix trombones...........

Yesterday I went to man the reception at the Brighton Meeting House as I often do on Saturdays,and there was a trombone concert on there, part of the Brighton Festival. What a wonderful contrast to the usual silent meeting!  Of course there were not seventy six, but quite a lot and they made a lovely sound. 
I have been away at Woodbrooke again, that Mecca of all Quakers, up in Birmingham. I had extraordinary journeys there and back. In all but one of the four train journeys, and four bus rides, my fellow travellers embarked on their life story without any encouragement from me. On the 73 bus from Euston to Victoria, a distinguished looking elderly woman begged me to join Dignity in Dying, thrusting phamphlets into my hands, on another, an actor learning his lines confided his hope and fears. Whoever said the British are reseved?   The time at Woodbrooke as was good as ever. I tried not to look forward to the delicious food too much and concentrate on the course, which was learning how to be a Quaker Clerk which I am rather apprehensive about taking on.
I keep thinking I would love to spend a day at the seaside: sit on a deck chair on the beach, have an ice cream, go for a paddle,eat sandy sandwiches, but I never seem to have the time. I am very busy in my retirement.
 

I have been back in Winchester for a few days. Sandra in the checkout in Sainsburys threw up her arms in disbelief when she saw me `Vicky Darling what are you doing here?` she cried. Then Barry in the paper shop did the same. I got hugged fit to bust all the way down the High Street, which was heartwarming, but tinged with guilt because of all the people I did not have time to see. Then there was a big picnic with lots of old but much younger friends in the evening on the water meadows, in the rain, but they lit a fire, something in all the fifty five years I lived in Winchester, I never dared to do. It was really lovely
Son T mended my car radio and did my income tax and fed me with veg from his allotment, so all in all it was a very good visit..
I am just back from helping in the Infants, doing a bit of Reading and Writing and also I learned about George the second and the Prince Regent, (the class teacher is hot on history) and also a great deal about hedgehogs that I never knew before.