Thursday 19th June - a day with friends

 I have been looking forward to today for weeks, months even.

We had breakfast with my cousin, in her gorgeous courtyard garden. She had set out a table with breads, warm croissants, fruit, jams, butter, cheese, cereal, milk, fruit juice, with tea or coffee to drink. 

We caught up on news, and she gave me a couple of books belonging to our grandmother which I'm looking forward to spending time with;

The combined prayer book and hymns is falling apart from use, and full of bookmarks and cards. The other is one of her many books about theology. 

I was charmed to see she had strengthened the dust jacket of the book by gluing it to a piece of Christmas wrapping paper. That does seem to imply that she valued that book.

I also made the acquaintance of the Rambling Rector, a rose that I had met in many novels, but didn't actually know. I have very warned that it is extremely enthusiastic, and very thorny. She cut me some pieces as it is supposed to be very easy to root. It was looking very limp by the time we got back. I trimmed there's and stuck them in water and it soon revived.

We could only stay for an hour or so because we had arranged to meet university friends for lunch at a pub an hour's drive away.

Again, a lovely meeting with people we haven't seen for years but were very close to at university. So much to catch up on. How we've changed, but are essentially the same as we were 50 years ago...

They had found us a cool shady spot in the outside area. Perfect on such a gloriously sunny day.

We talked and talked and talked... 'do you remember that time when...?' and 'whatever happened to...?' and so on.

This is from Carole King's album 'Tapestry', part of the soundtrack of our lives back then.