At least, we trust they’re temporary.
(But that has nothing to do with this beautiful dove, in St. Dunstan’s Church Mayfield, where my lovely goddaughter, Nicola, was married last week…)
We have been gadding about the country recently, rather charmingly distracted from real life – real life including some tedious things like trying to bring some order into our new house where we find we still have more possessions than places to stow them.
It also includes distracting me from more pleasurable things like keeping in blog touch.
This meant that I hadn’t realised the marionfsblog had once again gone disappeared from view. Technical know how sadly lacking…
Sorry about that. Two lengthy ‘online chats’ with the web ‘hosts’ (laborious typed messages with great gaps between question and answer) with people whose English is not fluent, leave me feeling rather ignorant, and not at all confident that the problem has been solved permanently but for the moment all appears to be reasonably okay, if horribly slow! Hold thumbs…
I have been wanting to post a link, which I will next time, to my cousin James Jackson’s blog post where he reproduces the letters that his father, my Uncle Bobby, wrote to his parents from the front during World War One. They are deeply moving, in the way that he makes light of the conditions, always anxious to reassure his parents – whose letters to him we do not have but we know that they kept him constantly supplied with warm clothes and cake.
Meanwhile, we have attended two weddings in six days, and now we have to wait nearly three months for the next one. Which is just as well because it still leaves time (I hope!) to find a suitable garment for Sam and Nick’s big day in December.
Just to catch you up, quickly…
We enjoyed a lovely family party at John’s brother and sister-in-law’s house in London at the start of our tour of the south, and celebrated Ruthie’s birthday with a delicious Turkish meal the day after.
Then we had a very happy time staying with Chris and Sadie Cragg and their three children, and also had a delightful evening with Tim and Pippa and their two.
We zipped here, there and everywhere catching up with old friends, including Alice Mason, who many of you know and remember. (She used to live in Ringmore, in south Devon, and for nearly forty years had helped my parents and very much became part of life at Barnford, their home.)
Alice will be 101 on November the 12th, and is still wonderfully bright-eyed and alert, remembering and asking after everyone. Her sight and hearing are not very good, but she still sometimes plays the keyboard for Sunday services at the home. Here she is well-cared for and happy, very near several generations of her family. It was such a pleasure to see her.
We ended our trip with the most perfect wedding in East Sussex of znicola, one of my goddaughters. A beautiful country church (complete with church mouse), the reception in a marquee in her parents’ garden, a live band and nonstop lively dancing on a somewhat sloping dance floor, lovely food and wine.
Old codgers like us went to her parents’ wedding, a year or two ago…
And now we have returned to yet more wedding celebrations, closer to home this time. A wedding in Parwich church and reception and dancing at Tissington Hall… a wonderfully warm and happy occasion. This afternoon we attend their garden party at Orchard Farm, because it is the couple who bought Orchard Farm from us in January 2015, and are now running Tom’s and Douglas’s Barns
