A Good Few Days

On Thursday, my sister and I travelled to Dorchester to meet a cousin whom we hadn't seen for over 50 years and an aunty whom (apparently) I had seen once but don't remember and my sister had never met.  The bus journey was over an hour and the mixture of emotions was a bit like going to meet the in-laws for the first time!  As neither of us could remember them, we didn't quite know what to expect.  My uncle (Dad's youngest brother) had married and moved down to Dorset probably before I was born or at least not long afterwards.  As in those days there were no motorways and few people had cars, we seldom saw him or his family.  So it was uncanny to see this man waiting at the appointed rendezvous who looked uncannily like my Uncle Frank as I remembered him.  His son looked just like him.

We had a lovely time together, went out for lunch, looked at old photographs and listened to my auntie’s anecdotes bringing our family history to life.  I'm sure we will see each other quite often from now on.

My cousin Alan, me, his wife Helen and my sister Marilyn

Aunty Betty

The next day, Friday, my son had an interview for a night shift job in the warehouse of the local Dairy Crest.  He said the interview seemed to go ok.  They did mention, however that they would preferably like someone who had a full driving licence for a car (which he doesn't) but that it wasn't essential.  They also mentioned that there were 52 people they had to interview for the one job!  So we are not holding our breath on this one.

When I was in Latvia last year I came back determined to grow more of our own food.  We already had fruit bushes and trees but I was keen to grow some green peppers.  When I realised that I could no longer do a lot of the gardening that I had done before I was a bit discouraged and disappointed but then thought that as we have a big garden with a rather large patio area, I could easily grow things in pots.  Surely that wouldn't be too stressful.  So earlier in the week I went to the garden centre near our home and ordered some bags of compost which they delivered free and on Saturday I put some seeds into small pots before repotting them later when they have grown a bit and putting outside on the patio.  Over the winter I had dried out the seeds from a couple of green peppers (thanks Jo in Latvia for telling me how to do it!) and so I planted pepper, tomato and cucumber seeds.

Today (Sunday) Diego and I had a day out with South West Coaches.  The day entailed the morning at Dart Farm.  I was expecting to see a working farm with animals etc. as many farms now-a-days open up to the public to see how they work.  However, it turned out to be a farmers’ market!  Not quite the same … … but we did have a nice coffee and homemade cake.  The afternoon was spent in Exeter, where we had a lovely dinner of roast salmon with vegetables in a lovely café just outside of the cathedral.  The weather was like a summer’s day, everyone going round without coats and some with shorts on. 

Exeter Cathedral

The lovely café where we had lunch

I have had a very pleasant few days. Thank you Lord!