Thanks very much for the birthday greetings or card or present (you know who you are!).
I went to stay with Dad for my birthday. I had wanted to go walking in Scotland but the weather was forecasted to be awful (and indeed it was). Anyway I discovered some lovely walks around Wimblington in the fens. One day I saw a kingfisher for the second time ever, the first was in Glasgow city centre in 1998 around about my 50th birthday, will there be another one for my 70th? they are such a beautiful shiny turquoise colour.
And that set the tone for the whole holiday: big open blue skies, lots of sun, water, stubble fields, clamps of onions and sugar beet, fluffy clouds, sunbathing on the banks of Vermuden's Drain (picture above, click on a picture to see it properly), enormous haystacks (there one is! look, down below, holding this post up!) and playing and practising the whistle as I walked along. It all made for a perfect five days. The only downside was my mother – she doesn’t know who I am and hardly knows who Dad is. He is getting old too - and it is probably unsafe for him to drive any more.
Ruth got me a special American Parks "Every Whistle" for my birthday – it has a volume control and works very well with quite a pleasant tone. So now my early morning practise sessions don’t involve a walk up to the Beacon. That may not be such a good thing - I really need the exercise.
Earlier, in September, I went over to Ireland for a weekend to help Ceppy. While there Ceppy’s expert jam making sister Eithne took me to the Strokestown Show where she was the “Jam, Marmalade, Honey, Eggs and Butter judge”. She introduced me as a jam connoisseur from England there to help her – what fun tasting 32 odd pots of jam and marmalade! On that sweet note I shall end.
