Calm Before The...

Yesterday was wet and windy. There's a big storm whirling about over the Atlantic which should hit Britain tomorrow morning. They're calling it the St Jude's storm. (I don't know why, but isn't it picturesque!).  The forecasters say it could be as powerful as the big storm of 1987 which knocked down a million trees.

Memories of my father marching about with a chain-saw. That was when my parents bought themselves a wood-burning stove, I think.

Groovy

We took my mother to a coffee morning in the village hall. The woman hosting it was celebrating 85 years on the planet and 50 years in the pews of the parish church. There was birthday cake.

You might have expected the vicar to be there but she wasn't. I expect having charge of several churches gives you a fistful of plausible excuses for missing out on events like this.

Money was being raised for the Hospice in the Weald. We contributed bags of apples to a bring and buy stall.

Ailz got into a conversation about growing old. This conversation has a set form. One deplores one's aches and pains and says how one is still young at heart. I wanted to say," I was born old" but that would have been a conversation stopper.

One old geezer said that he didn't think he'd ever really grown up.

Because, yeah, coffee mornings in the village hall are just so rock 'n'roll.  Were there any genuinely young people there?

No.

"I don't know why I'm eating this," said my mother, waving a piece of birthday cake around.