It’s been a lovely couple of days. Our great friends Lawrie and Lynn came to stay for a night. I’d promised them a blog party and had to say it was postponed, so invited other friends round for dinner instead.

Years ago, I used to do this regularly. I say “I” because it was all led by me, the Sage enjoyed it but did nothing about the organisation. I’d suggest a ‘dinner party’ – I’m going back to the days we called it that – and work out a guest list. In the early days, there were six of us, so we had to invite two or three more couples so that the guests wouldn’t be outnumbered by family. Usually, someone couldn’t come, so I asked if they’d be free the next week? Often they were, so that needed a new guest list for a new dinner party. Balancing friends/people who might not yet know each other/making sure no one would clash took some happy thought. Usually, I ended up with three get-togethers over three or four Saturdays and could then look forward to a whole lot of return invitations.

I may come back to this, I’m just getting into my reminiscence stride. But this is about yesterday and today.

I asked a couple, A and D and a single friend, H. A single person was deliberate because it so often happens that they’re left out or an extra singleton is asked, to balance them. Also, she’s great fun and I like her a lot, as I do A and D. I knew it would go well, without effort from me.

Lynn, who’s now 83, has Alzheimer’s, sadly. She isn’t quite as well as the last time we saw her, last year. But she still does her best to join in conversations and be part of the party. Lawrie is ten years younger, they got married the same year as Russell and I did and Wink and I are going to their Golden Wedding celebration in September.

Lawrie kindly took me to get some bags of chicken feed and put them in the feed bin, with one sackful into the food hopper, so that’s saved me a lot of trouble. Today, we went out for lunch and the Ls insisted on paying. It’s been such a happy couple of days, it was lovely to see them and also such a pleasure to do the straightforwardly friendly thing of asking friends round for an evening and feeding them. I must do this much more often.