I've been watching Wimbledon as usual, and can't help but notice the difference in style between Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova, and the Williams sisters.
Not the tennis; I am a great admirer of all their play, but what's with this underwear as outerwear trend?
There's Serena with a flimsy halter neck dress revealing far too much of her industrial strength bra, while the lesser endowed Venus seems to have popped her bra on over the top of her vest for the sole purpose of using it to wipe her face with between shots.
It may be fashion, but give me Maria Sharapova and her frilly dress and Roger Federer with his snappy jacket and long pants any day.
Oh dear, am I getting old?

I wonder if anyone has ever considered carrying out a scientific study of the migratory habits of the ballpoint pen?
This thought came to me as I noticed that the pen I picked up to fill in the crossword in the newspaper today is a decorative one I'd never seen in my life before. I don't suppose Ed would have puchased it, as it has blue ink which he despises; so how it found its way onto the coffee table in our living room is a mystery to me.
Similarly, as I regularly lose my pen and search for another in my handbag, it's like the ebb and flow of a tide - sometimes I have bundles of the things, ranging from plain Bics, through personalised ones (usually proclaiming "Sally Justice" as their owner - she gets sent lots of promotional stuff), to cheap advertisers' giveaways; whilst at other times I can do no better than a stubby pencil as all the pens have disappeared completely.
I think someone should invent a ring system, similar to the one used on birds' legs, so we can follow these migratory implements. Who knows, we may discover seasonal habits, and flocks of ballpoints going South for the Winter. I think we should be told!

Running with the Hash is a strange thing - for various reasons! - one of which is that the worse the weather the more compelled to turn out we are, on the grounds that some poor Hare has been out already to set the trail in bad conditions and it would be such a pity for them to have to go round again getting wetter and colder, for the sake of a paltry couple of runners.
Consequently, a good crowd turned up for Desperate Dan's trail at Brockham Green this morning.
As is often the case, we got the best weather of the day during the run, and although I wouldn't go so far as to say we weren't wet, at least we didn't get a deluge, so we were able to admire some lovely views of green corn ripening from the Greensand Way and of some beautiful residences around the plusher environs of Dorking.
The misty hills reminded me of the Lake District (not long now till our trip to the American Great Lakes!) and some friendly cows reminded me of Lincolnshire.
Possibly the best part of the route though was a sip stop with Bloody Marys to warm us up, after which most of us abandoned the marked trail in favour of a footpath headed towards the familiar spire of the church on the Green whence we'd come.
Unfortunately this meant that we had to wait quite a while for the Hare, who was diligently bringing up the rear of the few who had insisted on going the whole way, and we suffered the deluge that had been threatening all morning.
We sheltered under the branches of a spreading chestnut tree in traditional style; this proving far too drippy, we further sheltered under a collection of umbrellas - Uncle Fester's bookie's brolly housed a good half dozen!
We waited a while, then decided to reconvene in the pub for the circle - the very friendly Royal Oak whose hosts didn't seem to mind our tuneless singing.
So a fine wet outing was had by all.

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices an attractive woman waving at him. She says hello. He's rather taken aback because he can't place where he knows her from. So he says, "Do you know me?" to which she replies, "I think you're the father of one of my children."

Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, "My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I made love to on the pool table with all my buddies watching while your partner whipped my butt with wet celery???"

She looks into his eyes and says calmly, "No, I'm your son's teacher."

I had a similar experience once, from the other point of view. I was greeted by a vaguely familiar looking young chap whilst out with my husband, and gave a cheery greeting back. "Who was that?" asked hubby. "I can't remember his name" I replied, "But he's the father of one of my children..." Cue funny looks from folk nearby!

Not a great film, but a great afternoon's entertainment!
Johnny Depp was brilliant again as a fistful of Jack Sparrows (and Keith Richards as his Dad!!); Orlando Bloom looks more gorgeous than ever and Keira Knightly does it again, too. Naomi Harris's show stealing performance in Dead Man's Chest was possibly why she got a bigger part as Tia Dalma/Calypso this time out, and rose to the occasion with another good turn.
If you haven't been yet, remember to stay till the bitter end of the credits, for a 10 year flash forward!

He hasn't changed much, has he? A large version of this picture of my Dad had pride of place in his mother's front room. She loved to tell people that her sweet little boy was busy pooing in his nappy as the photographer was taking the picture, and the smile is one of satisfaction over a job well done!

We've had another official visitor to observe our Nursery - our local Early Years Advisor, who has been brought in to help our Foundation Stage form a new policy.
He spent the afternoon with us on Thursday, watching the children outside play in the icecream parlour, dig in the mud and sand and otherwise play outdoors, and make real icecream, play simple board games and (my contribution) paint their own pictures inspired by the work of Van Gogh and make "birthday cakes" with playdough and straws indoors.
At the end of the session he thanked us for a lovely afternoon and his report has come back full of praise. He says all that Foundation Stage 2 have to do is continue where we leave off and all will be fine.

It is sometimes difficult to accommodate both the wishes of the deceased and the comfort of the bereaved. We didn't succeed with Ed's Dad. He wanted to be off wandering the Yorkshire Moors, but Edna had never gone with him on his long walks, didn't care for walking or wild scenery and furthermore didn't drive.
So although we were careful to scatter his ashes very close to a carpark with a teashop, she couldn't ever visit on her own on a whim, which would have brought her comfort, like the many widows who visit their husbands' graves on a daily basis for the first few months of bereavement.
So Edna elected to be scattered at New Brighton, close to the city of Liverpool and river Mersey she loved, and within an easy visit by public transport, she reasoned - quite forgetting that none of her children live anywhere near Liverpool nowadays, but hey.

It was a sociable occasion when we scattered her, as not only did all the children go, but we took her brother Billy's ashes at the same time: he'd died a couple of years previously, and Auntie Glad couldn't quite bring herself to part with him, so he'd sat on her windowsill waiting for someone to drop him in the Mersey. Which we duly did.
It was nice to revisit New Brighton on a beautiful sunny day with the wind making wonderful cloud patterns in the sky, but neither Ed nor I felt any sense of Edna being there, apart from in our happy memories of her, of course.

The next day we drove to Caergwrle in North Wales to visit Auntie Edna's ashes.
This is a pretty but very small beauty spot, with excellent distant views, but in an otherwise fairly unprepossessing village on the edge of the truly great bits of Wales.
We think the reason that Auntie Edna was so fond of the place, and requested it for her final rest, was that it had been a place she had come to on the train as a child from the slums of Liverpool, maybe with a Sunday School trip or with family and it was the first pretty countryside she had ever seen.
She never had much money, as a single mother bringing up her youngest brother as well as her son, so she didn't ever travel in her adult life to places that would have supplanted Caergwrle in her favours.

Ed remembers being taken by her there when he was very small. She told him they were going to climb a mountain, and to him the small hill seemed like a mountain, with views of the world from the top.
So we revisited her there and enjoyed the views and the memories.

We decided that as we were meeting up for a family funeral to see Auntie Glad off, we'd also go and visit a few other memorial sites.
Ed's Dad died in 1994. He had been a keen walker in his younger days - or bog-hopper rather, as his speciality was completing the Lyke Wake Walk. This was the old route taken by the Vikings when one of their number died, to ensure them a burial at sea, leading from Osmotherley in the Yorkshire moors to the coast. George finished it a couple of times, and assisted others in the attempt several times more. He wanted his ashes to go off wandering there, too.
As his widow didn't walk, the requirement was that the ashes should be scattered from close by a convenient car park, which in due course they were.
Except we couldn't quite remember which one!
We met up in Helmsley first and had a look round the castle there. It was looking particularly beautiful beacause of the flowers blooming profusely amongst the stonework. In the picture above are Marion, Jenny and Georgia, clambering about the gatehouse.
We did, of course, find the scatter site, where, just like the first time, it was blowing a gale and we took refuge in the lee of the tea shop, like the first time.
Here we are there, having paid our windswept respects to George's memory on the edge of the escarpment. I'm the invisible one behind the camera.