Most of this week has been very good but it has been overshadowed rather by the news that a close friend has bowel cancer. I hope they have caught it in time but it is very worrying nonetheless ( Read more... )

We went to Brighton for the day on Thursday and it was just the sort of day that my mother would have prescribed to get rid of a cold and "blow the cobwebs away". The wind was blowing really strongly which meant that there were actual waves, which is the way I really prefer the sea.

A picture of some foamy sea under the cut.

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We decided to take advantage of the fact that this past week was the last one where people were still legally required to wear masks on public transport and in enclosed spaces to actually go out. We were supposed to be visiting my cousin on Wednesday but as he had to call it off we thought we'd go to Brighton on the train. The train was fine, ( Read more... )

We've had a busy couple of days going to two exhibitions but I'll save the second one for another entry. Prompted by kazzy_cee's post about it and my brother saying it was "worth seeing" (this is the equivalent of a five star rave review from him) I finally managed to galvanise myself to book tickets for Tutankhamum: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh on ( Read more... )

A little bit late but here's the book meme.

What I Just Finished Reading

The Vizard Mask by Diana Norman. The absorbing story of Penitence Hurd who arrived in London from New England at the same time as the Plague. How Penitence survived the Plague to create a new life for herself in Restoration London makes for very gripping reading with some ( Read more... )

I have finally got my act together and uploaded my photos from Hever Castle so here is the promised picspam ( Read more... )

Thanks so much to everyone for all the very kind birthday good wishes. I had a really lovely day as for once the weather behaved itself (when your birthday always falls in Wimbledon fortnight that isn't usually a given *g*). For the last few years we've gone away for a couple of days around my birthday but as the rest of the family minus the dog, ( Read more... )

I've been a bad LJ-er recently and not updated for nearly two weeks. I missed the Book Meme last Wednesday and I'm going to miss it this Wednesday because I've actually been too busy to finish my current book ( Read more... )

Not really the book meme again this week as I've been very busy and so I'm still reading the same thing. Unfortunately I woke up on 1st February, looked at my enormous TBR pile and made a resolution to buy no more books in February. This was at about 8.00am, by 12.30pm I was the proud owner of the *three* new books. Admittedly I'd only bought one ( Read more... )

We decided to do something today that we have been meaning to do for years and visit the Barnes Wildfowl and Wetland Trust. It turned out to be one of London's hidden secrets, a beautifully tranquil and restful place, or it would have been if it hadn't been under the flight path to Heathrow! We are both absolutely hopeless at bird identification ( Read more... )