My big brother Pete had a birthday this week. Nothing very special - no milestones or anything, but his daughter, my niece Holly, whose birthday was the next day, organised a family BBQ weekend at her house.

The weather was great and we had a lovely sociable, boozy, lazy weekend, enjoying Holly & Oli's garden, the patio with chiminiere and great BBQ food and wine. Holly's in-laws were there, as well as brother Wil, and everyone was relaxed and cheerful.
The Hens?

The 3 hens are Oli's pride and joy, and poddled about the garden, eating the strawberries and beetroot leaves.
The mop head is Cynthia, the speckled one Phyllis and the black one Irene. They are planning on acquiring Joyce any time soon, then they'll have a full set of chicken Grandmas!

We made the most of the hot sunny long weekend and had two days out, with my school summer fair sandwiched in between.
On Friday we looked up a walk in one of our Rambles in Surrey guides, and set off from the Well House Inn in Mugswell. Apparently this appears in the Domesday Book as Magg's Well, probably short for St. Margaret's Well, as St. Margaret's church is not far away. Lovely medieval building, deserted when we set out and heaving with yuppies having Friday lunch in the pub garden when we got back. The walk was very scenic, with some meadows in full bloom as the highlights - unfortunately camera at home. We joined the yuppies and ordered late lunch when we got back, and very tasty it was, sitting in the garden by the original Magg's well.

Today we went to one of my favourite venues for a sunny day - the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum near Chichester. This is in a lovely pastoral valley, which affords a pleasant walk in its own right, but dotted en route are a series of vernacular Weald and Downland buildings, from important farmsteads down to a charcoal burner's hut in the woods.

This is Bayleaf Farmhouse, originally from Chiddingstone in Kent. It wasn't named after the aromatic culinary herb, but after the tenants, who for centuries were the bailliffs of the adjoining estate.
I enjoyed this when we first visited back in the 1980's, but it has steadily improved, with more buildings being added and hand crafted replica furnishings being sparingly added to the dwellings, to give a better impression of how they would have looked back in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today someone was demonstrating hand spinning in one house, they were cooking in the tudor kitchen, and the heavy horses were giving rides in a wain. We saw a goose and her 20 half grown goslings giving her aggro, and some Tamworth pigs were rootling in the trees.

Such a feeling of guilty anticipation as we all went home early - before 4pm!! To watch the match of course.

England 2 - Trinidad and Tobago 0.

2nd phase, here we come.

Our Edinburgh Fringe Festival Programme arrived yesterday, so we are starting to plan for our 4th annual trip, Norma (our resident Edinburgh friend) willing. It's one of the highlights of our year and will be even more so this, as we have no foreign jaunts planned and haven't seen much live theatre recently.
The circle of life in a more real sense is going on all around us as we plan our annual event. Next door, the neighbours, Vicki and Kevin, had a little daughter born in the early hours of the morning - Madison, a sister for Ben. As soon as all are fit and ready for travel, they plan to sell up and move back to Vicki's native New Zealand.
When we got home from the garden centre this morning there was a message on the ansaphone to tell us my great aunt Joy has died, aged 90. She died alone which was sad, but apparently suddenly, having been in reasonable health and in full control of her faculties, so not a bad way to go.
Meanwhile two other sets of neighbours are in the process of separating and arranging who gets the house, etc.
On our home front, I have once again become the Summer Gardener. The garden is a place which we view through the window for about 6 months of the year, but from May I venture out to do a bit of tidying, and when the weather turns warm and I like an excuse to be outside, but not liking to sit idly, I plant things and cut down and generally act like a gardener. And today is that day! So I'm off out to cut the forsythia back and plant the pelargoniums and agapanthus.

England 1 - Paraguay 0