It is not over yet but this has been one of the loveliest English summers that I can remember. So many warm, sunny days. Swallows on the wing and ripening brambles in the hedgerows. There's a hosepipe ban and reservoirs are depleting but I am not complaining. This lovely summer has gone on and on. Currently, we are on the brink of our fourth official heatwave since the start of May.
Yesterday, Shirley's extended family converged on the North Lincolnshire village of Amcotts where her Auntie Marion lives. She had created the most wonderful and wholesome buffet with home-cured ham, tender beef, fresh salad, homemade quiches, lasagne made from scratch, rice and pasta and beautiful homemade desserts including cheesecakes, fruit salad, strawberries and Bakewell tart. All so delicious.
As I said to Auntie Marion before we left... "If only all buffet meals were as special as this one." Once again she had done a sterling job of it all.
We ate and drank outside and I chased Phoebe and her half cousin Winnie under the big two hundred year old copper beech tree. Then they sat upon me - The Grandpa Bench and we laughed as though there would be no tomorrow.
Back home plums hang upon our little Victoria plum tree in rude bunches - so sweet and bounteous as butterflies dance upon the breeze and black and yellow wasps threaten unwanted inoculations.
On Friday evening, I walked up The Limb Valley - through the trees and out into the sunshine before schlepping up to "The Norfolk Arms" at Ringinglow. There I enjoyed a pint of "Stones" before the fifty minute walk home - all the way down Ringinglow Road and then left at Dobbin Hill. At least it was all downhill so I didn't need to rest once. Just kept walking. All the way down.
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