I mentioned about three weeks ago that I’m planning to buy a new clarinet – but I haven’t had a chance to do anything about it yet.  Or not much, anyway.  LT and I went into the very good music shop in Reading but, though they had a few clarinets, it clearly wasn’t somewhere to go for really good advice on them – guitars would be a different matter and so would keyboards, I believe.

My music teacher was going to ask around for advice on where to shop (clarinet isn’t actually her instrument: it’s a long story, but basically, we are friends and we agreed that I’d learn the notes and technique myself and she’d take care of the musical teaching) but we’ve had to cancel the last two lessons and I was away the week before, so I’ve been having a look myself.  It seems that the place I’m most likely to find a good choice and advice is at Howarth of London in – er, London.  If any of you out there can give me the benefit of your knowledge and experience, I’d appreciate it.  I don’t want to buy on the internet, however good the terms and free trial are, I really need to play several instruments and choose the one that suits me, and have a variety of price ranges too.

This won’t happen for a week or two yet, at least, though.  The rest of the week is very busy and, includes a very sad visit to London for a funeral.

But we are still cultivating our own garden, literally, and I have picked the second batch of peas, the first of broad beans and the last of the greenhouse potatoes for tonight’s dinner.  We have also planted the young leeks and are feeling rather pleased with ourselves.  Not so pleased with the young lad who’s helping Rose in her garden, put a forkful of weeds on the bonfire with my pitchfork and left the pitchfork stuck into them so that she didn’t notice (who would?  He’s an idiot) and it had burnt half through by the time Tim found it.  I am extremely cross about it – he has done some work for me in the past but I won’t be employing him again.  I should make it clear it is not young Stevo, whom I’ve mentioned here before.

Ro, Dora and Rufus arrived at about 11 o’clock and Ro helped shift tables onto the lawn – LT and I had moved one, and the chairs, but two more tables were a bit heavy for little Z.  It was such a lovely day that we thought that tea could be taken outside, where the children could have more fun anyway.

Saturday was a lovely day.  Ro and I made about four dozen scones and whipped cream and put out dishes of jam.  That was almost the extent of the food preparation, apart from putting out the rather splendid cake that a friend of theirs had made, and putting out bowls of savoury snacks.  Ronan was right.  Keeping it simple is a good way to go.

Dora has three brothers, one married with three daughters, and a sister who has a daughter, and all our lot turned up too.  All was happy and cheerful.  LT was introduced to everyone and – my goodness, the lovely man finds himself keeping extremely busy.  He used to have such a calm life and now it’s – well, you know me, darlings.  And so did he, from this blog, well before he even met me.  He knew what he was in for.  I’ve gained a lot of fun from his lifestyle too, I must say, but he’s the one who finds himself working jolly hard.

I digress.  It was fun and there were two or three half scones left over, that was all, so we’d made the right amount.  Young Rufus was very pleased with his presents, if a bit bewildered at the sheer number of them.  He and his parents will be at the blog party next Saturday and it’s not out of the question that we might eat outside again, but we’ll have to see what the weather is like on the day.  We will be in the teens, numerically, so it’s quite possible, but so is fitting in the big dining room.

At this point I should add, there’s always room for more, if you would like to come, whether you’ve been before or not.  It’s just relaxed and easy, whether there’s six of us or thirty.

In the evening, we went to a concert at the Aldeburgh Festival.  It was a first at Snape for LT and the weather was perfect for us to have a stroll through the reed beds, as is traditional, beforehand.  We noted that the string quartet all used iPads rather than sheet music – they had a foot pedal to change pages.  They were really rather brilliant, especially the lead violinist and we were quite bowled over by the Britten string quartet; the final piece he wrote, shortly before he died, that was premiered posthumously in December 1976.  We will be there again on Wednesday, when we are going to the opera.  Another first – I’ve been to operas there in the past, but never seen Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Today is Rufus, my youngest grandchild’s first birthday.  And here he is, riding his birthday tricycle, which looks rather like something you get in a gym.  He’s clearly very pleased with it, anyway.  We’ve got him some Duplo Lego and a rucksack – this is a cunning bit of kit that very much appeals to the child (I know because Weeza’s two had them) and they love wearing, but there is a strap that one can hold and keep the child under one’s control.  
We haven’t done a great deal today after our exertions in the early part of the week.  There will be about 24 of us for tea tomorrow, but the forecast is fine and we’re thinking to have it on the lawn.

And then it’ll be just a week to the blog party.  There are a couple of people who said they hope to come but haven’t confirmed, so I’ll get in touch with them, but otherwise, if you haven’t said yet, then you’ll be most welcome, whether you’ve been here before or not, just please let me know and I’ll send you the address.  And there’s still a spare room or two, if you’d like to stay over.

We had a treat this evening; the first bottle of our wine from the local vineyard.  It was exceptionally good.  I bought LT membership of their wine club, which includes a dozen bottles, six of which (three each of two varieties) are only available to members.  We are also offered tours of the vineyard, but we haven’t had time to take them up on that yet.  Once the party is over, we’ll have a bit of spare time.

The porch is cleared and cleaned and is positively echoey with emptiness.  And the latest skip has been filled with the last lot of total junk from the big barn.

If you are one of those people who keeps everything that might possibly have a little bit of life in it, please ask yourself what you’re doing it for?  Let it go, darlings, let it go.  Among the things I hauled out (and then Rose and others shifted round to and into the skip) were two oil-filled electric radiators that might have been put in there when my mother-in-law moved into the annexe in 1985 – that is, if not then, it was earlier.  Why were they not disposed of?  I don’t know.   There was also a radiant and a convection electric fire, probably put there at the same time, but they’ve never been used since and they’d been long forgotten about.  There had been no need to keep them if they weren’t to be used and, through decades of neglect, they’d become unusable anyway.   I found a bag full of old clothes, some of them mine but some were my mother’s, obviously intended for a charity shop, but they never got there.   I suspect a certain amount of lethargy was involved – easier to store than arrange for disposal, but this can’t have been the situation in every case.

Never mind, it’s done and I think that’s the last skip we’ll need.  There’s a lot more to be sorted out, but much of that is wooden, destined to be used (stored for possible future use, that is!), sawn up for burning indoors or put on a bonfire.  But not yet, we will catch up with everyday life for a bit.  And we’ve got a First Birthday party to get ready for on Saturday and a Blog Party the next weekend.

Many thanks to Lovely Tim, Roses, Lawrence and Boy for all their help.  Rose and I ache today, don’t know if the men do, but their work is hugely appreciated.

This afternoon, we’ve been dismantling the indoor tortoise run.  If you’ve visited here in the past two and a half years, you’ll know that an eight foot by four foot section of the porch was taken over by it.  Indeed, my friend Jamie and I were just starting to construct it on the day that Russell died.  I went upstairs to see if he was getting up when we stopped for a coffee break, which he was, and minutes later he died on my lap.

But the tortoises were going to have to come indoors for the autumn and so, a week or so later, we had no option but to finish the job.  When I got Eloise cat, we had to make a cover for it, as it was just too tempting for a cat, both to lie under the sun lamps and – I’m sorry to say – to use as a litter tray.  We constructed it so that it would be possible to unscrew the structure during the summer, but it was actually just too much effort to rebuild it and I left it in place, just replacing topsoil.  Now, it’s gone and we have barrowed away about fifteen square yards of earth and gravel (which I’d put there in some of the plastic trays that Alex used to have strawberry punnets delivered in because, at the time, I thought about taking it out again) and, tomorrow, we’ll finish cleaning the whole room and rearrange furniture.  Porch isn’t really the word for it and nor is conservatory – my mother-in-law used to call it the sun room and that’s as good a name as any, but the back porch was removed when we built on the room that’s now the study, and I’ve got to have somewhere to keep my wellies.

The new chickens are eating a lot, so they must be reasonably happy, though they keep treading earth into their water bowl.  This is just what chickens do, they are daft birds.  Russell used to change their water bowls several times a day, which doesn’t really seem to make much sense (he had endless patience and didn’t mind: I am patient but more practical) but when he wasn’t well enough and I started caring for the cooks, I went and bought a couple of drinkers so that the water stayed clean.  It’s no good in a coop though, there’s not enough room  and they manage to dirty the water whatever it’s in.  I grew early potatoes in two bags in the greenhouse, which was very successful and we’ve had all the potatoes we wanted for several weeks.  I emptied out the first bag today, taking the last few potatoes in it for a lunchtime salad, and picked up several slugs hiding underneath.  I left the woodlice as I’m fond of them, but took the slugs for a treat for the chickens.  The remaining original bantam tried a peck and was rather disconcerted (I’ve no idea why, they all used to love them) and the others wouldn’t go near.  So I gave them to the newcomers, who also looked nonplussed.  I expect they’ll have worked it out.  They’ll get used to my ways – they polished off the remains of last night’s cheese soufflé, anyway.

I really should get around to posting pictures, but the internet is lamentably slow tonight, even more than usual, and I just can’t face it.  I’m thinking of using my old Blogger blog for photos, with a link from here, because it’s much quicker to load a number of them over there.

The new bantams are rather oversized for bantams, quite a bit bigger than any we’ve ever had and huge compared to the Seramas.  They’re in their own coop in the big run, I’ll give them a few days to feel at home.  The bigger of the two, who is brown, had her beak open and looked a bit stressed, but she’s eating and drinking so it can’t be that bad.  The other one, who is black, seemed quite composed.  They’re four months old, so not laying yet.

I went out to feed the chickens this morning and only two, the tiny black one and the cockerel, came to greet me.  The other Serama was in her box, where she usually is, and the last remaining of our old bantams was in a coop.  So I fed them and went to feed the chickens.  And then I went back, taking a dish of water ready for the newcomers, and some greens for the ones there, and three came to greet me.  So I looked in the coop and Mona, who’d been sitting, and Jet had laid eggs.  Mona was evidently recovering from her efforts when I’d been there a few minutes previously.  We had the eggs for breakfast, poached as I always do with truly new-laid eggs but no others.

I’ve been awake since 6 and am ready for bed.  So sorry not to be jolly evening company, but I can hardly stay awake.  Shameful, innit?

We arrived back in Norfolk yesterday, but I wasn’t here for long.  Weeza and family had spent the week on Corfu and I’d arranged to pick them up from Norwich airport, drive them back to their house and stay overnight.  And that’s what happened, only two and a half hours late.  Storms over southern England meant that their plane didn’t take off on time, lost its slot and had to wait.

However, they finally emerged from the airport at about quarter past eleven and the holiday itself had been a great success.  So had mine and Tim’s. He showed me a lot more of the lovely Pembrokeshire scenery, we walked a lot – and such a pleasure that is; to be able to do so.  When my consultant asked me, as they do, what I hoped for from my operation (I suppose it’s to gauge whether one’s expectations are realistic), I said that I wanted to walk without noticing each step.  And I reached that within a few weeks, but how I actively enjoy and appreciate the simple function of walking.

Not having had a lot of sleep last night, I don’t feel inclined to stay up much longer tonight.  We’ve done more gardening, started to fill the skip that was delivered yesterday (yes, another – I know!!) and walked down to the former Otter Trust to see its reincarnation as a Wetlife Centre and rare breed centre.  Still walking, you see.  Once you get into the way of noticing how far you walk, it becomes a bit of an obsession, if only for a week or two (10,329 steps by 22.11 this evening).

Tomorrow, we’re picking up two more chickens from a friend.  We’re quite excited.