Surprises

Two Christmas drinks parties down and I was looking forward to my third today, back in Wilby where I would reconnect with old neighbours. When Judy rang last night I thought she might want me to bring something she'd forgotten to buy. "Where were you yesterday?" she asked, her cut-glass voice making the phone sing. Odd question, I thought, but I gave her a quick resume of my activities. "Then why didn't you come to our party?" What? What? "But it's tomorrow, I'm coming tomorrow," I said thinking, oh dear, she's losing the plot. "It was today, and you were missed. Only you, and Roland and James, didn't turn up. Everyone was asking about you." I struggled to think. How could I have got this wrong? But of course it's one of the perils of changing to a new diary which doeesn't begin until 23rd December; you memorise the last few days from the old and move on to the new. Or fail to memorise them correctly in my case. I grovelled, I apologised, and Judy laughed. She's a very nice woman. "Come to lunch tomorrow then," she invited. "The dog's bed is still here waiting for you." So no more champagne for me until Friday at the very earliest. Their parties are famous for the generous quantities of the golden nectar that they used to bring back in the car by the caseload when they went skiing in France every year. David has found another source now they no longer ski, and it still flows. Perhaps there'll be an opened bottle in the fridge.

We walked in crisp sunshine this morning, the sky completely clear apart from three planes on the same trajectory presumably heading for Stansted, or Lu'on. Yesterday as we drove on the back lanes to Snape we passed a field of dazzling emerald brightness, and there in the centre in sharp contrast to the green was a cluster of white swans, a group of fourteen grazing on the new growth. It was such a surprising sight that I had to stop and stare. No camera to hand of course, but the memory is vivid in my brain.