There’s a lovely red sunset tonight.  The west-facing window is opposite me as I type.  We have a row of Scotch pines by the road and the evening sun looks very effective through them.

We lost one of them in the strong wind a few weeks ago, but luckily it fell inwards, towards the field.  Since, I’ve noticed that the leaves on the north side of the trees are sparser than usual.  The tree has been cut up and is drying out for a year or two.

I’ve been looking up food mixers – I offered an evening out to each of my children for their birthday last year, but only one of the three got around to taking me up on it.  The other two thought it was a great idea in theory, but they didn’t book and tend to fall asleep mid-evening anyway – so I said to Weeza the other day that I owe her a double present.  And the food mixer was what she suggested.  I bought a new Kenwood about three and a half years ago, it was the traditional mixer but came with a blender, food processor and all the whisking and slicing accessories.  I thought that the same thing would suit her nicely.  But they don’t seem to make it any longer.  You can buy them, but at quite a high extra price on top of about what I spent for the whole shebang.  There is a machine that includes all the attachments, but it’s less expensive, so I don’t know if it’s not as powerful or is smaller or what.  I don’t think we can buy it without seeing it, and I’m a bit peeved that they seem to have dropped a very good product.

I wrote that last night and it somehow passed me by that I hadn’t finished and posted it.  What happened was what LT realised he’d have to go back to Reading, which hadn’t been planned until after Easter.  Discussing that put other stuff out of my mind.  So he’s down there eating Waitrose lasagne and I’m here eating scallops and home-cured bacon (yup, we agreed my dinner has the edge) and we had a half-hour chat on the phone to help our hearts grow fonder.