Family things

The girls (and I) had a long day yesterday. Up at silly o'clock in the morning, in order to be at a small village 4 hours' away by 11AM. But worth it; we were attending a service to celebrate a 60th wedding anniversary. My Great Aunt and Great Uncle, their local parish church, a whole clan gathering and a really jolly nice day.

Anyone an Archers fan? I can't decide whether the Anniversarians are Brian and Jenny (without the infidelity) or Peggy and Jack (without the Alzheimers). Either way, held in great regard, important to the family, the church and the community, and been in the area for generations. Oh, and farming farming farming!

Growing up, my grandmother and her siblings lived in a village just a few miles from where we went yesterday. When the service had finished, we were chatting in the church, and a stained glass window was pointed out to us. This window had been donated in memory of my great great grandfather. On chatting to my grandmother and admiring the window, she pointed out a screen in the corner of the church, which had a cluster of adult angels on in, playing musical instruments. Apparently, my great great grandmother was the model for the violin- (or was it a lute-?) playing angel. So Little Fish got to admire (from a suitably safe distance) a painting of her great great great grandmother. An unexpected bonus to the day.

Back to the village hall for lunch (I'm sure proper Archers/Aldridges would have managed to book Grey Gables but this did us very nicely thank you!), and to admire old posters from village and church fetes of days gone by. The fetes in the 1950s looked like fun; amongst the entertainments offered were portrait paintings, donkey rides, and "horrible experiences in the vicarage attics"! The mind boggles.

An older poster has also got me thinking. The poster for 1897 boasted "Pig Pelting" as one of the main attractions. Sadly, although there were guests who could remember the "horrible experiences" (and they turn out to have been a creepy tour of the attics to scare small children), no one present at our lunch in 2008 was around for the 1897 fete, and a quick google has let me down too. Anyone care to enlighten me?

A very nice day, lovely lunch - local vegetables, local beef, family and friends to share it with. Little Fish scored double helpings by noticing that Grannie and Grandad's table was being fed before ours, so she beetled off to steal carrots and potatoes share their bounty before coming back to mug me for a share of my own meal generously reduce the amount of food available to me and thus help me with my healthy eating. Mog was of course with us too, but unfortunately having a very twitchy day. Apart from the odd sideswipe at passing guests to show off her pretty dress and shoes, she slept most of the day, so missed out. She can't have been well - she even slept through the offer of chocolate cake!

We heaved ourselves up from the tables in time to creak our way to the van and home again. Had to stop half way home since despite having had two tables' worth of food, Little Fish is a creature of habit, and her habit of eating an evening meal was not going to be broken for such minor inconveniences as having enjoyed a 3 hour lunch. Thank goodness she now eats cheese sandwiches; it does make driving and feeding her much simpler. Mog snoozed the whole way home, rolled into bed and slept all night too. I could get used to that.

I'm so sorry no pictures; I forgot my camera and have been kicking myself about it all day. One day I shall go back and display the greats for all the world to see.

Today I took my camera with me when we went out, and was prepared to take dozens of pictures of the most beautiful bluebell wood I've seen in a long time. But Little Fish has been playing, and the battery was completely flat. This, of course, meant that I would for the first time see a peacock actually displaying his tailfeathers, rotating repeatedly to show the world his display, shaking his fan to attract the peahen (and being nearly decapitated by other visitors playing frisbee but I suspect that would not have been so photo-worthy). It's the first time, for that matter, that I've seen four peacocks squabbling over a peahen, and the first time I've watched a peacock choke on a lump of bread (not our bread) - Mum and I did debate how you'd give mouth to mouth to a large blue bird, but thankfully he managed to clear it by himself. Big birds doing weird things and appearing to be completely tame; this did not do anything to convince Little Fish that birds are harmless little scared things that will run away if you go near them. Mog was highly amused though.

So amused in fact that she's been laughing about it all evening and has only in the last 10 minutes consented to go to bed. I'm hoping that keeping her up will stop the habit she's developed of waking at 2AM. I'm also hoping that the neighbours might stop drilling holes in the wall some time fairly soon.

Must go and find the battery charger
Tia