All this relaxing in the sun is very enjoyable but it doesn’t get much work done.  I did manage a bit – business emails mostly, including the booking of meetings  with my business partner and with my accountant for next week – but all I did this afternoon was make lemonade and yoghurt.  Which latter must be potted up and put in the fridge.  I’ll do it now while I think of it – excuse me for five minutes, please.

Right, that’s done.  The last time I made it, I had just one pint of silver top (ie whole) milk spare and it had too much whey and had to have some drained off.  A pint of whole milk plus the top third of another pint is ideal, just the right consistency, and that’s what I used today.  It exactly fills two pound honey jars.  So that’s LT’s breakfast yoghurt dealt with for another week.

The lemonade, I hadn’t made for some years, though it used to be a regular thing.  Very easy, a Good Housekeeping recipe.  I first made it for a WI competition that was being judged by professionals and it scored 19/20.  Simply, you thinly peel a lemon – I use a potato peeler – and put it with 2 oz sugar in a jug, add boiling water to half a pint, cover and leave to cool, add the squeezed juice and strain.  That’s it.  You dilute it a bit, not a great deal.  For modern tastes, I think next time I’ll put in a little less sugar.

Zoe and Mike – long-time blog friends, whom some of you will know – are coming to stay tomorrow for the night.  They’re really staying with Rose, but she doesn’t have a spare bedroom.  It’s all very convenient and friendly.  We respect each other’s privacy but drop in, borrow, give and lend, help each other out and it just works without having to worry about it.  If one of us is away (in my case I mean two of course, but you know what I mean), the other looks after cats and chickens and we all look out for each other but give space too.

Talking of space, Wince the gardener has a drone which he flies from the front field.  To say thank you, he took a photo of the house the other day and gave copies to each of us.  It doesn’t show the veg garden or even the Wall, but it does show the sprawl of the house.  I’ll scan and post it sometime.  I describe bits of the house sometimes and, if you haven’t been here, it’s hard to explain.  It’s a much-altered Tudor house with modern extensions and it rambles almost as much as I do.  Tim says I over-explain and he’s right.  But when I don’t, no one has a clue what I’m talking about.  I strive to be brief and I become obscure, as Horace put it a couple of thousand years ago.  I like Horace.  My Latin teacher said, it’s said that you have to be middle-aged before you appreciate Horace, but I think I was born middle-aged.  The teenage Z had a sudden moment of clarity.  I was born middle-aged too.  It was immensely comforting to start to understand myself.