Thanks for your replies so far about the blog party – I’ll do an update when I’ve heard from more people.  Several have other things to do at present than keep up with blogs, reading or writing, so I’ll send a few emails around in a while.  So far, it looks like the 10th or 17th May, 7th or 14th June or 5th or 19th July, if it’s a Saturday, or the corresponding Sunday in each case and there are a couple of other Sunday options too.

The garden list I wrote has fourteen items on it.  Some are jobs I can do, some I need help with, some are certainly not for me.  For example, a little playhouse that Russell made for the children a few years ago will be turned into a new henhouse, and nest boxes have to be made for it, and I’m no carpenter.  I’m a weak and feeble woman when it comes to sawing wood, I’m quite pathetic.  And there are paving slabs to be taken up and relaid, which is beyond either of us – that is, we both have more sense than to attempt anything so strenuous.  I’m quite looking forward to getting stuck in to those I can do though, I love a project, especially when it involves energetic work.  I’ve had quite enough rest for the last couple of weeks and am ready to be busy again.  Of course, the weather may be against us.  We’ve missed most of the bad weather suffered by much of the country, which isn’t unusual for this part of the world.  We don’t usually do extremes.  I wrote a list a few months ago and there were two items not done or unfinished – one was to move all pots out of the grass – why does anyone leave stuff lying about that later has to be mown round?  Ask Al.  Ask his father.  I don’t know the answer.  That wasn’t finished because – well, I don’t know that either.  I did some of it and asked a boy who was doing some Saturday work for us to do the rest, but Russell kept taking him away from what he saw as a pointless job.  That’s down again.  Dismantling the summerhouse isn’t, but it will get done this year, if not this winter.

This time of the year is always one for funerals, isn’t it?  A memorial service today at the Cathedral and hundreds of people were there because the man who had died was well known and loved in the Norwich area.  I took a friend, who isn’t driving at present because she has cracked a couple of ribs in a fall.  Although there were hundreds of people there and the Bishop himself gave the address, it was a warm and simple service, a loving farewell.

My good friend Ally (whom I’ve not yet met) has returned to blogging after having been forced out of it by family circumstances.  She is a wonderful, stalwart person who forges through genuinely tragic events and is open and honest about the difficulties she sometimes can’t cope with.  I usually only add people to my blogroll once they’ve commented here – simply because otherwise it would be so very long – but I make an exception for her.