A Lovely Afternoon.

Simple pleasures can be so enjoyable. This afternoon seven of us met at the farm for our monthly Poetry afternoon. It has been a lovely sunny still day here but the cold has been intense.

J was expecting to be without electricity intermittently all day, so was pleased to come out; W kindly fetched J and brought her, plus two other friends, round here.
At about ten minutes to two D rang up to say that she was so disappointed as her lift, I, was stuck in a snow drift and her windscreen wipers had frozen on! After another ten minutes she rang again - "Yippee! I has been pulled out of her snowdrift by a passing farmer and we are on our way!!!" So after a lot of small crises we all managed to arrive.

I had spent the morning baking mince pies and fruit biscuits for a special Christmas celebration. Yesterday I bought some star fairy lights and this morning the farmer put them up around the stove in the sitting room. I wanted them up for today - I wanted it to be a celebration - after all, I am still here aren't I, and I could so easily not have been after my sudden illness a couple of weeks ago - so lets light the fairy lights early, I say!

We had such lovely poetry as everyone had trawled through for Christmas themes and wintry themes: T'was the night before Christmas; When Icicles hang by the wall; The Journey of the Maji; we heard Betjeman, Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, and then we ended up with some real old favourites which reminded us all of our parents who all seemed to have learned poems off by heart at school. We had the green eye of the little yellow god - which my father could recite by heart (and often did - he needed nmo encouragement!).

We finished off with a cup of tea, a hot mince pie and a fruity biscuit - and everyone went off home just as it was getting dark. The farmer saw them all off the farm and made sure they got away safely.

Tonight it is destined to fall to minus twelve before rising just above freezing for a while tomorrow and for several days to come.

I think we all parted feeling better for such a lovely enjoyable afternoon, lovely company, lots of laughs, and for once pretty decent mince pies (although I say it myself).