Yesterday was my birthday. Eighty six years is a long time to have been on this earth. A ninety five year old friend who phoned me yesterday said `every day is a gift` and I wholeheartedly agree. I tend to live vicariously through the lives of my children and grandchildren who do interesting and challenging things, like running marathons, and going off to far flung spots: Grandson R has just gone to Indonesia to work for a charity called Smile which helps babies born with cleft palates and harelips (he says it is lovely there but there is a bit of a worry about dog stew) and another granddaughter is spending a year working in France as part of her degree, others have worked in China, Uganda and Ghana. I never did anything like that. So I enjoy hearing of their adventures.
Anyway I had a lovely birthday with grandson M and partner L coming for the night and cooking a slap up breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast. What a treat. And there were other splendid family get togethers in Mdhurst and Brighton.
I tried to pay my car tax on the phone and inadvertently pressed the wrong button, and what a palaver! I signed the car off the road and as I was only dealing with robot voices I couldn`t undo it. So I was terrified I would be arrested for not paying the tax over the weekend. Eventually the human being in the Post Office managed to sort it out. She said it was always happening, and not just to daft old women like me.
I am trying to organise an Open Day at Ditchling Meeting House for Quaker Week next Saturday which is also hoping to raise money for unaccompanied refugee children in Calais but I am full of gloom as I fear that no one will turn up. I wish now I had advertised it as an Indulgent Breakfast or a Cream Tea like the ones we used to have in Winchester at the Meeting House as that would have lured them in. I have visions of sitting there with a pile of cakes and scones and no villagers to eat them.