Wedding Garments

I have been tormented and frustrated in my efforts to buy an outfit for the coming Saturday's family wedding. It has been a real bugbear to trawl the shops and come home with nothing. I don't want to dress like my mother's generation nor my daughter's (phrases about mutton come to mind) and even though my generation was a boom one, there seem to be no shops that cater for it. I think someone could make money creating fashion for The New Grans.
So in the end, I'm going to fall back on something I wore for another do rather a long time ago, and hope it's true what the Head of Finance says, that folks will all be looking at the Bride and not at me.
Makes me really glad that in the Kingdom the wedding garments are provided.

Summer

We have had a glorious return of summer. One evening we sat out with visitors until 10.30 pm, like being in the South of France.
It was a bit warm for walking but I want to make the most of my limbs. An older friend warned me: 'don't wait until you're seventy, because by then you might not be able to walk'. It's still surprisingly hard to down tools (garden forks and dusters) and not feel guilty as you step out, but I'm practising.
I said that when we moved here, I felt as if I had asked for a sweet and been given a whole sweetie shop. I felt overwhelmed and not a little greedy, but now I want to make sure I sample every last lollipop.

English Parish Churches

Is there any point nowadays in an English Parish Church? This is a difficult question for those of us who learned that 'church' means people and not the steeple house, as we referred to it.
And I still believe that.
And where we are, in a combined parish of nine churches whose upkeep drains all resources, and inspires constant fund-raisers, we ask ourselves the question even more.
But yesterday I went on a lone long walk and discovered two uses.



As a family historian, in villages where ancestors' homes may never be known,
you can at least see the churches where you can be sure they were for three
times in their lives.




And, inside or out, they provide a cool and restful place for the weary walker. One might even think and pray there.....

More fun at the Water House

The Aliens Land


That's why it's called The Water House




Skimming stones with Daddy

Water House meals

What else did we do at the Water House?
Well, eating, of course.



Fish and Chips by the river

Breakfast.

Picnic in the garden.

Grandchildren

The head of Finance turned out to be a most excellent Pop
for two days this week. He designed treasure hunts, imagined spaceships and built boats.
Then the boats has to be taken to the river, of course, where there were admonitions that we weren't going in the river because it was too cold. In fact it apparently wasn't too cold at all as all three sailors' clothes were quickly discarded. Great fun!