Son in law D and I went to a new restaurant in Brighton on Easter Sunday called The Silo.  I had read a good review of it in the Guardian.  All the waste goes into a huge composter and then they grow their own mushrooms in it. .  The chairs are made of chipboard,, the water glasses are jam jars and some of the plates are made of melted down plastic bags. The food was delicious but unnusual!  Mostly local and organic, the menu  includes wild boar and venison but we had a tasty mushroom risotto and local Sussex wine.    

Daughter J and ggT are still away in New York and Washington. I will be glad to see them safely home at the weekend.   Here in Ditchling, everyone is revelling in the Spring sunshine and B Wiggins and I have been sitting out the back, me reading a weighty tome lent by a Dumbrellite neighbour called Lamentations by CJ Sansom,about dastardly Tudor goings on which is an absolute page turner. Wiggins is on constant alert on squirrel patrol. He would be horrified if he caught one.

I decided I would get a more grown up mobile instead of the £5 Nokia I have had since they were first invented, but what a palaver!    It turned out that somehow I had given the wrong date of birth on the original deal and D and I have been on the phone for hours and hours trying to sort it out. At one point they asked for my birth certificate. I have heard that those cheap phones are used by drug dealers so perhaps they think I am an eighty five year old arch criminal. I may give up the whole thing and continue with my battered old one with big cracks across the screen.  

Mothering Day Outing

I have never been a great fan of Mothering Sunday. I have a mental picture of every other mother in the land  being taken out for slap up lunches by adoring children and this has never happened to me. This is in no way a criticism of my lovely family as I don`t suppose I would enjoy if it did.  However this year daughter J, son in law D, and I, plus their three daughters went to London for the day. Also  two dogs, Jumble and B. Wiggins .  Surprisingly we found three eateries that tolerated dogs (one unwittingly, they just hid under the table)   We walked for miles along by the Thames, saw Ghandi`s new statue in Parliament Square, also the Grayson Perry stuff in the National Portrait Gallery and all in all we had a lovely day out. 

We did our show at the Brighton Museum on Thursday. Brother P pointed out that in my last blog I said I expected some toodlers to come and hear us (instead of toddlers) Well maybe they did as there was quite a good audience  even if they were just seizing the chance of a nice sit down for an hour. One of the participants on the course did a belly dance in  full eastern costume instead of reading a poem, so that was an added interest.     

I saw the film, Boyhood the other day. It lasted nearly three hours, but I did not fall asleep which is the acid test for me.  It was a good film and fascinating to watch the life unfolding for that boy all through his childhood, and the others in the cast too.    Tonight I am going to a Mozart Opera in a barn just up the lane. There is never a dull moment in Ditchling.

a voice from the past...

I had a strange experience the night before last. I woke up sometime in the small hours and couldn`t get back to sleep so I turned on the radio on 4ex which often broadcasts programmes from the past.. To my surprise I heard my dear daughter Julia`s voice on a discussion show with Matthew Parish and Giles Coren and others. It was called The Great British Public and it was funny and interesting. Julia died nearly ten years ago so I suppose it was recorded in about 2004 and I had never heard it before.

I have just been to stay with old friend J and I went by train.   It stopped at seventeen stations between Brighton and Bradford on Avon and took nearly three hours,but Bradley Wiggins slept soundly the whole way and I read my book (Nora Webster, by on of my favourite authors Colm Tobin)  We had a lovely time there with wonderful dog walks in the Avon Valley . I went with J to her pottery class in the Village Hall and made some very wobbly pots and went to Meeting at Bradford and met A plus new baby, who had been at my Nursery School at the Meeting House in Winchester over thirty years ago!      

I have been having dire computer and printer problems but I have noticed a glazed look coming over family`s faces at the mention of them so I have found a bloke to sort it out but have been waiting all morning for him to turn up. I want to print up my work from the Museum Tales Course I have been doing at the Brighton Museum. We are doing our performance next week but there will not be a large audience I suspect,. just a few puzzled mums with toodlers in buggies and some of our friends and relations.  I have loved the course and I am sad that it is nearly over. That museum feels like home.