A busy few days

It’s been a busy few days. The home help eventually arrived on Wednesday at 2pm, effectively stopping us from doing anything in the afternoon. While she was here, Linda, our regular home help, arrived with her family in tow. We’d agreed to let her have a rosemary bush that was growing in the back garden. She’s starting up a herb garden in her garden. She was also hoping for some woodchip to layer the ground under the children’s trampoline. She duly took a few bagsful.

Thursday was my birthday, the big six oh. We decided to go down to the large garden centre at Barton Grange, near Preston, to look at some of the garden ornaments there. We came back with a box of herbs for the front garden, a large pot to put a house plant in and some ideas for our new garden.

In the evening we went out for an excellent meal at our usual Chinese restaurant, Ricky’s.

Since then most of the time has been spent recovering from all the activity and phoning friends & family to thank them for cards & good wishes. We’re off to the golf club this afternoon for a final celebration with Eric & Doreen. They’d missed us on Friday as Eric had had to go to Preston hospital & so was late back. Doreen rang in the evening & arranged a meet-up for today.

The highlight of my birthday is undoubtedly the painting the Fox bought. We noticed it in the library a while ago. Each time we’ve visited since we’ve stopped to admire the painting. Finally the Fox decided to buy it. On Saturday he got it up on our bedroom wall.

It’s a lovely picture, entitled something like “Safe Harbour”. It’s a joyous painting. It’s dominated by an arc that seems to protect the river harbour below with its sail boats & houses. Within the arch the light is luminous. It glows out all white & yellow. Outside is dark, more reddy purple. The odd gull flies overhead. It’s an amateur work done by a retired professional newspaper/magazine cartoonist we gather from the librarian. And there is something of the cartoonist’s art in the ink drawing of the ships & buildings. Clearly he is using his retirement to burst into colour and this one pleases us.