Saturday 28th June - Tea and - cake?

After we had finished watching air displays - formation flying from the Red Arrows and a couple of crows, and acrobatics from a skylark, and flying round and round in circles by the Vulcan, we eyed up the gathering clouds, getting blacker as we watched, and decided to leave.

We drove through a series of heavy rain showers to the Cowdray Farm Cafe, an old favourite stopping point  for me from the years when I used to teach at a school in a small village beyond Midhurst.

Teatime - a bit early, maybe, but that was what we wanted.

Tea? My son chose a cream tea,

I had a flat white coffee and shared a sticky toffee pudding and cream with my daughter, who also had a hot chocolate.

Sorry, it's another "empty plate" picture - once we had tasted the first spoonful, nothing was going to interrupt the next ones until it was  a-l-l  g-o-n-e.

And as for himself - it seemed a hot chocolate, and a serving of chips was just what he wanted.

Each to their own, I say.

We called in on my parents once we were back home to drop in birthday cards. It was my father's birthday, and my brother and his son (are you keeping up with all this?) had been round for the day, bearing birthday gifts - joint present, from him and me. Books and a bottle of port to accompany them. It looks as though my father had done well - the carers who come four times a day to help my mother had brought a large creme caramel, someone else had given them a cake, and there were plenty of cards as well. They had all gone out for lunch together in my father's new wheelchair accessible car, a shiny silver Fiat.

So - in one way another, every Father got their day?