I’m sending photos to Sally, of her and Helen giving the Special Plaque to the Princess Royal. Since Hotmail doesn’t really want to work with Safari any more (yes indeed, I may yet abandon Hotmail, but in my experience, when you tell someone you use a different email address they are still sometimes using the old one two years later), I’m using Firefox at present, but blimey, it’s slow. You attach a picture and, like a child with a new coloured pencil and its tongue sticking out, it continues to say, earnestly “scanning and uploading” for several minutes. And you can’t have several pictures in a queue of course. One at a time, or it cries for its mummy. And it only seems to take two pictures before it is full up and belches quietly and you have to send them before loading in another. I am almost catatonic with boredom. I just had to check the ‘sent messages’ box to see where I’m up to. Thank goodness I only took eight photos, or this would take all night.

Maybe it’s time to revert to the simplest, non-upgraded (upgraded, my arse) version. I mean, if I, the sweetest natured person since the dinosaurs stalked the earth, am a little irritated, how bad must it be?

I started well this morning, too. I tidied the kitchen and the drawing room by 10 o’clock. Friends called and stayed for an hour. I was, after that, going to take the last few photos, but it had become a bit too windy – I take them outside by natural light. I need to label the photos I have taken, which is a tedious job, so I started by reading the paper and a couple of blogs. I’ve not done a stroke of work since.

The Sage has just brought in today’s post. Two envelopes from the Inland Revenue, to remind me that my tax return is due in by the end of January 2008. Yes, give me six months and I’ll take the info to my accountant. Bit of a uselessly early reminder. A letter to say that Tough Puzzles will no longer be published. This is deeply depressing. It started in September 1983 and I have subscribed ever since. A card from El, with a packet of seeds I’d asked her to buy in Venice – bless her and Phil, they were only there for 3 days last week and she took the time and trouble. A dividend cheque for £87.85. That’s more like it. Our polling cards for the May elections.

Now, this will be fun. It’s the election for the District Council, but what is more interesting is that it’s time for the Parish Council to be re-elected and, this year, there are more candidates than places. Last time, there were too few and so no election was held and someone was co-opted afterwards. Now, I understand, one person is standing down but three more have put their names forward. We have had a Parish Council election only twice in the 21 years I’ve lived here – 20 years ago and 12 years ago (sadly, this is the sort of thing I actually remember, I know I should be ashamed of myself for being quite so specifically brainally retentive) – so I wonder if there will actually be people keen enough to canvass and lobby for my vote. I feel quite democratically powerful. After all, in a little village of 722 eligible voters, many of whom will not bother to turn out, each vote really matters.

I must give the placement of my votes some considerable thought.

I’m feeling a little tense. I have been taking photographs of the china for our website this afternoon and the camera keeps telling me that the card is full. I’ve had to put photos onto the computer and delete them from the camera with increasing frequency and this has been annoying.

Last week I took the photos for the camera. The photographic shop chappy, the nice man who set them up ready to print in the evening to give us the quickest possible service, asked me to switch my camera on to the highest possible resolution, which I did, although it was a high resolution already. When, the next day, I went in to get some other photos developed, the camera chappie (different shop, so different spelling – well, it makes sense to me) remarked that I’d got 175 pics on the camera. Funny that, only a few days later, it would only take 13. It doesn’t seem to acknowledge that I’ve deleted them. Indeed, in the end it would only take one. The battery was low, so it’s recharging at present. Bloody thing. I’ll have to reformat it. I’ve already deleted everything (including pictures of the children that I’d meant to show people and now I’ll have to print them instead) and that didn’t help.

Never mind. Nothing that a nice glass of wine and some really foul language won’t help.

It’s been a dutiful sort of day. I had huge quantities of washing to do, including a great pile of hand-washing. The ironing basket was already full, and once I bring everything in off the line, a second one will be too. Think of me this evening, a proper little Mrs Tiggywinkle. Oh hell.

I’m sitting here and he just got up from his chair to give me a hug. “All right?” he said. “Fine,” I replied, and turned, put my arms round him and kissed him.

Afterwards, he said “thank you.”

What’s that for? He’s not exactly starved of affection!

It’s been a busier day than I would have liked, but not as busy as I’d planned. So pretty well okay, really, except that I’ll have to catch up tomorrow. That’ll be okay.

We spent quite a long time sitting in Al and Dilly’s garden, first chatting with her mum and dad and later, after they’d left, drinking wine. Far better than working, although I got a lot done in an extremely warm greenhouse in the time in between.

Roast pork tonight. The Sage put it in the oven for me and sliced an onion for it to rest on. He also scrubbed some new potatoes. He will be quite sure that he has cooked dinner tonight all by himself.

Husbands. What’s not to love?

Happy Easter, darlings. Have a lovely day.

I had said I’d work in the shop today, but I’d expected to leave at 1 pm. In the event, Al was getting on very well with Squiffany’s climbing frame and I decided to stay on, so that he, the Sage and Jamie could get it finished. Al’s in-laws are coming for lunch tomorrow so, naturally, he wants it finished for them to see.

As it’s a holiday weekend and surely people would be all planned and prepared for Easter Sunday lunch, he had been going to shut up shop at 3, but I was busy sorting things out and it was an hour later when I finally started to bring everything in. Of course, that was the signal for customers to scurry apologetically around the corner “Am I too late?” “Of course not, if there’s anything you can’t get at, ask and I’ll move things.”

Only another 3 customers, but I took a good £15, which was fair enough and, more importantly, they weren’t disappointed – no, really, I am that caring and lovely a person (hmm).

But, by the time I waddled back to my car – my joints have not worked right for the last 6 months since Squiffany inveigled me into her play tunnel and I crawled through it 3 times – and came home and went to admire the climbing frame and went to get my camera and spent a long time unsuccessfully searching for it (later, it turned out that the Sage had put it in the dining room) and played with Pugsley while Dilly cooked tea for him and his sister, it was after 5.30 and I still had flowers to arrange in the church.

And by the time I had done that, it was nearly 7 o’clock and I still had dinner to cook (the Sage was still busy with bantams, weight-pulling was not an issue at all) and so I needed a little something. With rare prescience, I’d put a bottle of pink Cava in the fridge at 5 o’clock.

I should have made it two bottles really.

You Are a Seeker Soul

You are on a quest for knowledge and life challenges. You love to be curious and ask a ton of questions. Since you know so much, you make for an interesting conversationalist. Mentally alert, you can outwit almost anyone (and have fun doing it!). Very introspective, you can be silently critical of others. And your quiet nature makes it difficult for people to get to know you. You see yourself as a philosopher, and you take everything philosophically. Your main talent is expressing and communicating ideas. Souls you are most compatible with: Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul

I’n not at all sure how I gave that impression.

You’re an Expert Kisser

You’re a kissing pro, but it’s all about quality and not quantity You’ve perfected your kissing technique and can knock anyone’s socks off And you’re adaptable, giving each partner what they crave When it comes down to it, your kisses are truly unforgettable

Er, each partner? Pfft, whatever…

We walked over the bridge. Time was, there would have been rows of trawlers moored in the dock over on the left.

We went in these gates, for we are members.

Inside, the Pr1ncess R0yal was paying a visit.

She was given a piece of new L0westoft P0rcelain, made here – http://www.lowestoftporcelain.co.uk/ -* and decorated by Helen, the blonde girl on the left. Sally is in the middle.

Pr1ncess Anne was very charming, chatting to Helen and Sally for several minutes when two would have sufficed for the strictest politeness.

Dilly had brought the children, though they stayed outside. Someone gave them flags. Squiffany was impressed. “Hello Pr1ncess!” she called, several times. The sun was shining on the children playing in the new fountain. You can see police vehicles in the background, but security was extremely low-key and there was a cheerily relaxed atmosphere.

Neptune looked on benignly. Or Poseidon, if you prefer.

As we walked back, I snapped the Sage’s former workplace, where he used to be a partner. It was an auction house for many years, but has for some time been a night club.

After that, we went to visit one of the people I like best in the world. I hardly know him in fact, he was briefly my Latin teacher, but that does not deter my affection at all. I took Latin at O Level (as we oldies call it) and whimsically decided, after two years in the 6th Form, to take a couple of extra A Levels; Latin and French. My school could not accommodate me, so I spent a year at the recently-comprehensived former Grammar School. A couple of years afterwards he left teaching to become an antiquarian book dealer. Now well into his 80s, he is still as lovely a man as he ever was. I asked if he still had the incunabula he showed me a few years. He had not, but he had a page of one, from 1480. These are the first printed books and magical to hold. In their way, almost more wonderful than hand-written books, for each individual letter was hand-set in the printing press – it must have been more work than writing. I will, one day, own one. If it uses all the money I have.

I remember things that Mr Lamb said, 35 years ago. Once, he said of the Roman writer Horace “I’ve always liked Horace. People say you have to be middle-aged to appreciate him, but then I think I was born middle-aged.” Now, imagine an 18-year-old who had always felt slightly out of kilter with her contemporaries, and then imagine her sudden realisation that she would, one day, grow into her true self and the sense of relieved ‘at-homeness’ that this gave her.

Once, there was nowhere for us to have a lesson. After trying a couple of classrooms and the library, he asked if anyone had a car. I had, so we piled into his and mine and drove off to his house. His sitting-room was gorgeous. Lined with bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound books, with a shabby old leather chesterfield. I adored it. Today, I reminisced about that day and he remembered it.

*Excuse me not making the link for you, but I don’t want them to see me. They did, regrettably, spell the Sage’s name wrong.