Rings round Cambridge

My brother P and I went to Cambridge to see grand daughter G and also to collect her accumulated possessions for the last year in College.  These included large boxes of heavy law books as well as kettles, a collander, saucepans, fairy lights, in fact everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. B.Wiggins and I barely fitted into my microscopic Micra on the way home on the dreaded M.25.   Actually, the motorway was no problem, it was the ring road round Cambridge that defeated us. There are NO road signs so we drove round and round in increasing desperation and then went off in the wrong direction!  But it was a lovely outing and I enjoyed my time away with brother P.
It was the London to Brighton bike race at the weekend and Ditchling came to a standstill with all roads closed to everything but bikes whizzing through   Poignant for me as I have finally decided that my biking days are over. I feel too wobbly, so will sell my lovely Minty, after a lifetime of riding everywhere from the streets of London, to the Winchester water meadows and epic rides in Cumbria and Yorkshire.  .The hills round here are too much for me and besides I now have to go walkies with B. Wiggins and I don`t think he would take kindly to riding in the basket.
I am off to Cornwall on Sunday for a week with friend B and her dog Charlie. As for moving, who knows? I had an interview yesterday with a stern faced solicitor and I signed things but still no date yet. Son C is helping me through all this.  .I don`t know what I would do without him.
Off  to the Infants today. I am trying to compile a little book of `poems` from the children. Most popular subjects: My Cat, My Bike, Football and Spaghetti. 

Midsummer Nights Dream in the afternoon.

I went to the Globe Theatre yesterday with my Monday music group, and we all had a Good Day Out. It was a bit odd seeing MSND as a matinee and I missed the lights and magic of it on the bare stage of the Globe. But it was a wonderful production and beautifully acted. We were on the fourth tier and I quailed at the sight of all the stairs but a kind girl offered to take me up in the lift which involved going backstage and seeing half naked actors dashing about, and bits of scenery and props, so I enjoyed all that. She insisted on taking me up and down in the interval too!
I took B.Wiggins up in the train and and met grand daughter M in the refectory of Southwark Cathedral where they positively welcome dogs. I handed him over to her and she took him over the wobbly bridge and for a walk around St Pauls and then they settled down in a pub with a sofa while she worked on her laptop and he snuggled up. So he had a good day too.
I am just about to brave the M.25 and go for a visit to brother P in Hatfield. It is a wild and windy day, the summer seems to be over.    It has all gone quiet again on the moving front. The solicitor has gone on holiday apparently.   I keep making lists of Things to Do, but no prospect of doing them .

View from a Room In Bloomsbury

I have been gadding up to London all the Bank Holiday weekend though perhaps gadding is not the right word for Britain Yearly Meeting, the annual get together of the Quakers at Friends House in the Euston Road.
I stayed at an hotel in Tavistock Square that was overrun with Quakers which must have been odd for the other people staying there,-all those bearded sandalled men and sensibly shod women.  My room on the eighth floor overlooked the green leafy square and walking  to Friends House several times a day was a delight. In the middle is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi who studied law at UCL (where grandaughter M has just graduated)  and there are memorials to Mothers for Peace, a cherry tree in memory of Hiroshima victims, a memorial to Conscientious Objectors.  There are benches commemorating musicians and artists, a bust of Virginia Woolf, and a plaque to Charles Dickens. Every walk across that square was a voyage of discovery.
It is quite an Experience to be in the midst of up to a thousand Quakers sitting in silence in the large Meeting Room at Friends House  Though of course it was not all silence and there was lots of talk and discussion too as well as meeting up with many old friends.    Every year we have the Swarthmore lecture on Saturday night which I was looking forward to but I was hampered by not having my hearing aids. They mysteriously disappeared just before I left. I suspect B.Wiggins who may have either chewed then up and swallowed them or he has hidden them which he has done before with my spectacles.  
He is on an expedition along the South Downs Way with daughter J and grand daughters M and T plus other dogs, horses and friends They are doing the bit from Brighton to Eastbourne. He must be walking his little legs off and it is pouring with rain today too. But I am driving to Battle later to bring him home. It seems very quiet here in Ditchling without him.