Kindliness.

Too much going on here really. The girls are fine, I am fine, but lots of my friends are going through unimaginably difficult times right now. I'm sure they'd all appreciate your prayers.

I'd had today mentally reserved for a nice enthusiastic post about the mad hatter's tea party we'd been invited to, about how it felt driving our beastwagon into proper London (Park Lane and everything; real Scrabble London), about the kindness of all the people who had organised it, and how thankful we were to Helen House for inviting us.

You know the drill, some nice comments, a few pictures, the girls in posh frocks, oh - and jelly and ice cream apparently.

We didn't go.

Too much ice on the road, snow falling - not much but a cold, cold day. And a Mog with a cold. Not the best combination really.

So we stayed home instead, baked a mammoth Macaroni Cheese with eggs and spinach. Because I am that evil. And played games, including the Shopping List game (like bingo but with 8 items of food). And Mog surprised us all by managing to join in, memorising her lists, and shouting or sticking her tongue out when her pieces were pulled out of the box. After I'd shouted at tLP enough times to make her use words to read the picture, so Mog could hear it. But still, fun all round, and we each won once.

Not tLP makes friends with everyone. She knows everyone who lives locally; she spends a lot of time in the summer hanging around outside the front of our house chatting to passersby, and everyone takes an interest in how she's doing. She has the knack of assuming everyone wants to know all about her, and people seem to appreciate it.

Today, one of tLP's "friends" (a man with a teenage son and a newish baby and who thinks tLP is completely marvellous. We don't know his name or where he lives) turned up with a shovel and a bucket of grit. They'd walked to the nearest on street grit bin, filled up, and had decided to stop on the way back and grit our ramp, because they were worried about how we'd get in and out of the house. Not only did they spread the grit, but they hacked and chopped away at the caked on ice, getting right back to concrete before moving on.

And now I'm slightly embarrassed for the many elderly neighbours who have ungritted pathways, but it was such a simple act of kindness, and I'm so thankful. People are nice, on the whole.

Tia