I’ve done my annual stint as a judge at the home economy section at the next village’s Gardening Club show.  I prepare for it mainly by having little or no breakfast – it’s quite a challenging morning.  Today, we had courgette cake, gingerbread men, bread rolls, bakewell tart, fruit muffins, marmalade, jam, chutney, a summer drink, the men’s competition, which was a cake apparently to a recipe chosen by the Queen, which is basically sticky toffee pudding as a cake, topped with desiccated coconut.  Much as I despise desiccated coconut, I also love sticky toffee pudding and that was the hardest to judge as they were all pretty damn good.  There were also tomatoes – this was impossible, they were all lovely and tasted of tomato so we just went with our personal view of deliciousest tomato, and new-laid egg, which mostly comprises cracking an egg onto a plate and judging its freshness and loveliness.  Oh, and savoury scones.  Having sampled every single entry (except the raw eggs), we then went for lunch.

While I was doing this, LT was driving from Reading to here and he arrived, probably, about the time I was sitting down to lunch.  It’s been really good, in the last few weeks, seeing more of my next-door village friends.  We’ve known each other a long time but I haven’t got out so much in the last three or four years so I’ve lost touch a bit.

And now LT is home, so it’s all good again.