How busy is busy?

I had a busy January. I knew it would be busy from a bit out. February seems to have gone in a flurry of tidying up from January. March looks really busy because of the capital gains tax changes. April will be like February. Easter is early and I want to take a week off (which is not looking straightforward). I also always fish a couple of days in March which entails a 5+ hour journey north and back. I drove 80 miles to Perthshire to fish in a gale on Saturday and then 150 miles south for a night out on Saturday night. I enjoyed both. I got up at 7.00 to go to London this morning and have now been camped in the lounge at Euston working for three hours waiting for the sleeper. I like to fill time up, but I would sometimes like to feel in control. Some people seem to be - I tell myself its an ability to say "no" thing. I am not good at it.

Being a scruff

We went to a party on Friday night at one of the more beautiful houses we ever go to. I am not envious of their house and their beautiful things as I am a largely content person, but it does make me look at what I have and wonder if I don't quite make the best of it. There followed a week-end of attempted acquisition and getting on with neglected jobs. I have painted my front door (badly, although from a distance it does look better). I have found an alternative upholsterer to repair and re-cover a chair and a sofa the material for which we bought six months or so ago and which has languished in a corner of the dining room since then. I went over the hill to Wooler on Saturday to look for things to purchase, but it was a beautiful day and I ended up totally distracted by a hot air balloon, a photograph of which I had intended to post here, but I haven't fully mastered the taking of photographs on my phone. I have never been in a balloon, but it never looked more tempting. It really wasn't the week-end for jobs as the weather was so beautiful and half term gave a rare break from work. I think I'll just allow contentment to take back over.

Tempo

While I don't exactly wish my life away I do like to be getting on with it. Various things give the year tempo - work (to a point); my daughter's school year to a large extent (next week end is half term, half way through another school year, which is frightening); the seasons.

One of the things that I find drives on this early part of the year is the 6 Nations Rugby. I went to my first international at Murrayfield in 1976 (I was 10 and we drove the five hours from Easter Ross to go). I still remember it well. I continued to go sporadically until 1979 when I went away to school and from 1979 to 1999 or beyond I didn't miss one. I was there for Scotland's Grand Slams in 1984 and 1990, both great days, the latter in particular as the noise levels in the ground barely dropped during a fantastic and unexpected victory over the English. These were whole week-ends - not just a few hours on a Saturday. They were the rare days when we all went somewhere (even my mother whose love of rugby is not great) and were occasions, with drink and food and friends. It is different now - I only go if asked and, while I quite enjoy it, I can't pretend I wouldn't rather stay at home. I don't particularly like doing, as a business exercise, something that I always regarded as a personal pleasure.

The expectation has not however diminished - I look forward to international week-ends. If I am here and Scotland are at home I love the way the city plays host to visiting sides, crowds of men with wives with shopping bags wandering along Princes Street on Saturday morning; groups of men crowded into bars; the all pervading smell of cigar smoke - it is welcoming; hospitable; visually stunning. So this afternoon I will be in front of the telly, with a gin and tomato soup and I might even, for the authentic car park experience, cook some sausages at 11.00 and wrap them in tin foil until 1.00.

And once this afternoon's matches are over I will start to wish away the week until the next ones and so the year will move on.

Windy Golf

I have spent the last two or three weeks rushing around at work. It is often like that. When it is, it is nice just to veg at week-ends. This week-end however, in the midst of this rushing around, we have rushed around. We drove to Northumberland first thing yesterday morning; we were back here by 3.30.

I got up this morning at 7.00 and drove back again to golf. I can't get too excited about golf and the "good walk spoiled" tag in many ways hits home. However I spent a number of my childhood years on the north east coast of Scotland where everyone golfed and, during those years, I golfed every day when I was at home. As a consequence of that you'd think I'd have some residual competence. I do not. Rugby intervened between 15 and 30, and it was only when my wife started to play (golf, not rugby!) that I picked a club up again.

Today I played very badly - I need to play every day for a week to go about the game competently at all and so I rarely play well before Easter. It was however a fantastic day - the sky was clear, the sun was out, it was dry all day for the first time in ages and the wind, which blew hard throughout our round, provided at least some excuse for my poor display. When I was 13 how I played mattered; I enjoy it so much more now it doesn't.

Trees

I don't have room to plant many trees. It doesn't stop me doing so from time to time. Strangely on New Year's day both a friend we had staying (who I suppose at least has the excuse of having started, but not finished, a forestry degree) and my brother, who came for lunch, expressed a desire to plant some trees. It is a desire I too have been secretly harbouring against the day when I have the space to do so. I half considered clubbing together, buying a field and just planting the things randomly when we had the time and money. If this is a mid-life crisis I suspect it is a harmless, in fact even mildly entertaining, one - there is to my strange mind something quite funny about three mad old chaps planting trees in an otherwise empty field.

My office has for some months been engaged in a programme of confiscating waste paper bins, preferring us instead to put our rubbish in a variety of strategically placed re-cycling bins. It is not the concept that bothers me - it is the fact that we believe we should have someone spend their time thinking about this stuff when there seems to me so much else to do. I have no problem with recycling - the majority of our household waste is paper (we read a lot) and bottles (we don't hold back on the drink front) and we pretty religiously manage to put it in the appropriate box for collection. It doesn't mean we don't have bins about the place. On Friday the office bins in my department got a reprieve. I will try to put my stuff in the re-cycling bins. To salve my conscience (and more importantly because I enjoyed doing so) I planted a tree this morning to offset my wastefulness. In my view much better environmentally, economically and for my sense of humour.

Liquid

My daughter has come home from school today with a homework instruction to create a list of liquids and volumes. After her bath we are going to my (substantial) drinks cupboard. Am I a bad parent?

New Year Gloom

For some reason I have started this year in a gloom. I shouldn't feel like this. We had a good New Year, with friends on Hogmanay and fantastic village fireworks at midnight, and a house full on New Year's Day. My father was then in hospital for tests, which, if it hadn't been for the fact that they were generally good, would have been a reason for gloom, and so ought instead to be a reason for celebration, and I am pleased. They now seem to be plotting a trip to Australia. I think they should go on a freighter from Berwick which one can apparently do and would be an adventure. If I had time (and they do, although my mother is not a sailor) I'd definitely do it that way.

To say its not like me would not be entirely true as I'm inclined towards aggravation, although usually my mood is more positive. Work was busy in November and December and, while I managed to do Christmas things (including our daughter's school's really lovely carol concert) , it was generally in a rush. Then Christmas came and everyone seemed to disappear off the face of the earth so the last couple of weeks have been quiet. I know (and have known for the last two weeks) that they'll all be back tomorrow desperate to make progress. One of my team returns from a secondment and it will be good to have him back to provide an extra pair of hands. We have managed without him, but I think it may have been more of a struggle that we think.

I have just dismantled two lots of Christmas decorations, never the most cheerful job and we have spent the last hour tidying our daughter's room. She has so much "stuff" and it is so plastic. To be fair she's not a greedy child - her note to Father Christmas ended "It doesn't matter if I don't get it all." - but she seems to accumulate huge numbers of dollies, animals, paper, paints etc. etc. We are relatively doting I suspect, and I hope we provide more than just the material. I do however feel a strange (self imposed) pressure to provide and provide. For her first Christmas, knowing years of plastic things lay ahead, I bought an original illustration from "Noddy Goes to the Fair" and found a reasonable copy of the book. It (the picture that is) moulders away on the wall behind her blackboard. Presumably years of providing Christmas cheques lie somewhere between now and when I can next impose my taste on her!

I usually read John Macnab when I'm in this fettle - it is the ultimate comfort read - but I suggested it as my book group book for December and, even for me, to read it again now is too soon. We banished the television from our bedroom last year, but its only gone as far as the spare room, so I think we'll go there and watch Foyle's War - I'm not sure it'll cheer us up, but at least its proper Sunday night TV.

I promise to brighten up soon - not to be grumpy is one of my New Year's resolutions!

Boast Letter

We never send a boast letter with our Christmas cards but, while rude about the ones we receive, do like to hear peoples' news. So:-

"Dear All

I can hardly believe another year has gone by. It seems like yesterday when I sat down to give you last year's news from the ON household. What a busy year it has been! [Why do people write this twaddle]

The year started, as have the last few, in Northumberland with friends and we celebrated our fortieth birthdays in January with a fantastic party in the Signet Library in Edinburgh. Most of you were there. It was a huge privilege to be able to eat, drink and dance with so many of our friends and family in such a superb setting. It was a highlight not only of this year, but of the last 40.

The first few months of the year saw builders in this house and we are now firmly moved in to (and have messed up) the really quite good space they have created in our attic. The small child has moved up there and, at least for a while, kept many of her toys there. While the project had its bad days (twice flooding our downstairs neighbour who was really pretty stoical throughout; the constant complaints from next door about the noise - a bit much - we didn't once mention theirs when they did it; nights with buckets to catch the drips from the light fittings as the rain poured through the (admittedly) enormous hole in the roof) we quite miss the Bobs as they were christened.

We remain very busy at work although change is afoot. Mrs ON has served notice of retiral from her firm and, while she expects to continue to do some work for them, intends to have more time with the small child at least for the meantime. This gives us the ability to consider a house move and we are currently looking for a new house for 2008, probably in North Northumberland so I will become a commuter. I am strangely relishing the prospect of starting my working day a little earlier on the train and trying to bring some sort of regularity to my evening hours, which this year have been frequently out of control. This all seems like considerable upheaval after 10 years of very stable living, but at the same time life should not stand still and many people cope with far greater, far less self imposed, change. 2008 will therefore be exciting. Work has been its usual mix of company and commercial work, although the opportunity to work with my private client colleagues on a significant (and very last minute) heritage purchase of a house and its furniture collections was a highlight of the working year.

We are not wide travellers these days. We did however have a good Easter week in Belford (hot and sunny) and returned (being the creatures of habit we are) to Sardinia in the summer. We went to London in October to admire our good friends' new baby and hope to see them again next week for New Year.

Away from work we continue to try and spend as many week-ends as possible in Belford. We missed a lot in the early part of the year because of the building works here, but since April we have been a lot. We continue to enjoy the beaches and countryside. I have golfed sporadically and fished a few days on the Kyle of Sutherland rivers, the Ettrick and the Tummel; we continue to garden away; and have added to the already many pictures about the place. I have limited the feeding of my D Y Cameron habit to one etching and, just this week, a really nice drawing - I feel very virtuous at having resisted a fantastic oil of Iona Abbey seen in London in October. Again because of the building works we didn't see many people here in the early part of the year but have, since the summer, eaten and drunk too much with at least some of you and have been fortunate to have been away for week-ends with some of you. We remain involved with a number of organisations away from work including CHAS, Queen Street Gardens, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and the Muir Maxwell Trust.

The small child continues to love school. One of the serious downsides of a move is the need to move her. She has persisted, mostly with enjoyment, with the piano and riding lessons and has many friends, through school, but also more widely through Brownies and ballet. She is on the whole great fun and a general life enhancer.

Christmas sees us as godparents, tomorrow, to my brother's daughter. We will all be there bar my youngest brother who has emigrated to Australia - holiday opportunity there. They arrived a month ago and have settled down quickly. Otherwise our families change some, but not greatly. We will see them over the next fortnight and are looking forward to it.

Roll out the goose and a decent bottle of burgundy. Have a very happy Christmas one and all and all the very best for 2008.

Lots of love

ON"

Pass me a bucket!

Festive cheer

It is my office party on Friday night. I am not going. My non-attendance is not as a result of being a miserable old curmudgeon, although I am, but as a consequence of being invited in June when Christmas is completely beyond my contemplation. I would happily compromise on venue (indeed I would be happy to revert to the days when it was a drunken standing up affair in the office) not to have to think about it until at least October. It is now a casualty of two too full diaries.

This city (when it is not raining the way it is this evening) looks fantastic at this time of year. The lights in the trees in Princes Street Gardens are understated but beautiful. They somehow enhance, rather than overshadow, the slightly more garish lights of the big wheel and "Winter Wonderland". We wandered through the gardens on Sunday having been to the superb Joan Eardley exhibition at the RSA in busy crowds of people at the German (-ish) Market. It was dry and cold and the sun had set, leaving odd bits of light behind. It was soon enough to contemplate things festive.

Confused again

I have had a strange Sunday night. It is very unusual for us to go out on Sundays - sheer force of habit - we sharpen our pencils and polish our shoes for the week ahead in this house. Tonight we have been to two things. First we went to a book launch. It was very interesting. It was at Valvonna & Croalla, by any standards an institution; John Bellany illustrated the book (he is one of my favourite artists - I can't really afford his work, but have a watercolour and a screen print); he spoke (indeed read, but got away with it, because he is genuinely a great man); Philip Contini of V&C sang at 10 minutes notice, beautifully; someone read the poems - I'm sorry I can't remember her name - she read at another book launch we went to recently so its unforgivable that I can't remember who she is - my wife will know because her Granny revered Scottish actresses - I can only remember Elaine C Smith. It was a very Scottish evening in a literary and artistic kind of way.

Then we went to a party for the Muir Maxwell Trust which is a charity which raises funds to relieve suffering from childhood epilepsy. It was held in a really smart venue in central Edinburgh. The last time I was there is sold good beer. Tonight there was champagne, canapes and celebs. There was a persistent photographer - we are not photogenic! It was a very nice party, but very different from the book launch in almost every way.

I suspect neither event is me really. We had fish and chips for supper and felt better.

Selling the family silver?

One of the limited privileges of working in my office is that we have some good pictures. They are not all ours (one or two are borrowed) but most of them are. I and one of my partners form the Art Committee. I went to the Edinburgh College of Art Alumni Centenary Exhibition last week. Many of the artists in our collection were represented. I vowed to try and appreciate our pictures a bit more. On Friday we sold two (not borrowed ones)!

We have an emerging philosophy of buying work with some relevance to the work we do by Scottish artists, or from Scottish galleries, with whom we have a connection. We have a very small budget, hence the sales. It is the first time in a long time we've sold anything and it feels great. They were good little pictures, but if we are going to try and move the collection on there is no choice but to sell things that don't sit within it or simply act as wallpaper. For so many people what we have is irrelevant. We are keen to acquire some things that people notice - whether they like them or not is irrelevant. What matters is that the working environment for staff and clients is enhanced, even if only by having something to talk about. This week having sold we have the opportunity and the budget to buy something. The money is burning a hole in my pocket.

Happy Holidays

I did say the visits would be occasional! For some reason holiday times seem to become overwhelmingly hectic and getting to a computer accordingly difficult. Half term in this house finished last Tuesday. We came home just in time for our daughter to go to Brownies on Tuesday evening- she goes to Brownies: we go to the pub, returning for her an hour later to breath beer fumes over Brown Owl. It is an established pattern.

The week before we go away is always all consuming work-wise notwithstanding the fact that one is now never truly away in the sense that emails follow everywhere. We need real deadlines (flights to catch; distance between us and the office) or we just stay put.

This time we had a deadline, in that we had friends for lunch and Alwinton Show on the Saturday, but no distance so we ended up back in Edinburgh on Sunday, collecting our daughter on the way to the London train on Monday morning. We had a great time in London - the parks looked beautiful in their autumn colours, the sun shone and we pottered about in a thoroughly touristy manner - Sound of Music: Terracotta Warriors; Tower of London; Hamleys. We remembered while we were there that we had friends coming to stay on the Thursday. It was great to see them - their son fell in the sea (but had spare clothes); we golfed in almost isolation on a fantastic sunny afternoon; we ate too much good food; drank too much Co-op Beaujolais and generally caught up with people of whom we see too little. Its strange how life changes without any sort of plan so that people you used to see three times a week you see three times a year. They went home on Saturday after lunch leaving us alone until our return home on Tuesday.

We ran straight back to Northumberland on Friday night. We have had our house there now for exactly four years - I know that because I saw Johnny Wilkinson kick his World Cup winning drop goal in Ikea as we sought (and managed) to acquire the entire contents of a house in under an hour. My bank phoned on the following Monday to ask if someone had stolen my credit card! We had many hopes for it and have not been disappointed. One was that our daughter would spend at least some of her time on the beach. She emerged on to the beach at Cheswick this morning, with her picnic on her back and her trousers rolled up and just pottered along consumed by her own thoughts - makes it worthwhile in itself.

Living better

I had a whole day in the fresh air yesterday. I don't fish many days a year, but on Friday spent a day on the Ettrick. Fishing conditions were not great with low water and bright sunshine, but the countryside looked fantastic in the warm autumn sunshine and, were it not for the fact that I am instilled with a sense of fishing duty ("You'll catch nothing without your fly I the water"), I would have been happy sleeping under a tree. I went with a friend and client, we took a lot of food (6 pies in 6 hours), a bottle of red and a few pounds for beer. We stopped at the pub for an hour in the afternoon (too bright to fish we told ourselves) and chatted idly with a fishing party from Yorkshire. Were it not for the fact that I seem to have bent the undercarriage of my car driving across a field (I should have known better fishing, like golf, being a walking, carrying game) it would have been a near perfect day.

Tomorrow I am going to Kelso Races, another favourite day out, again in the fresh air, although I fear in the rain. If I am feeling really determined to live better I will golf first - Goswick at 7.00, Parents for coffee, Kelso at 12.00. Its tight but do-able schedule.

Living badly

I seem to go through periods of living badly - too much work and too much work related eating and drinking. The next week or two (in fact three if you count half term week which follows them) look like being more sensible. The latest bout of excess ended on Friday. It has involved some late nights in the office; some dashing around the country both north and south; a lot of lunch; and in one week dinners on consecutive mid-week nights. Its not exactly going down a mine or walking the streets of Bazra (and I am grateful for both) but it takes its toll in its own way. I always, at the end of a period like that, feel less like doing it ever again.

Friday night was however only work related in the vaguest sense. I am a member of a small dining club. It is connected with the WS Society of which I am a member. It exists (the club; not the Society) for the sole purpose of having an annual dinner in the Signet Library. The Library is a beautiful building with one of the most stunning Georgian interiors in Edinburgh (and hence Britain and the World). My wife and I had a joint fortieth birthday party there in January which was fantastic and it was a huge privilege to have so many of our friends together in such a superb setting. The club uses one of the Library's smaller rooms and Friday night was its 30th dinner. The room is beautiful, lit by candles only, with the Society's silver in use; our guest was a distinguished, interesting and controversial retired member of parliament - he spoke with conviction and stimulated conversation; the chairman (elected annually to chair the dinner) was one of the founder members and was able to produce the letter he and three colleagues wrote inviting the original members to join; the food was first class and the claret (which the club buys ahead using a wine levy on members) incomparable to what I usually drink. It was a great occasion and a suitable way to mark 30 years of the club. Saturday I was hungover again!

Week-ends away

I have just returned from Northumberland to a wet (for the first time in the best part of a month) Edinburgh. It is probably wet in Northumberland too by now. Since May (when our builders went away) we have been in Northumberland at lot at week-ends. This is not unusual - we just seemed to be there much less in the early part of this year. Our week-ends there have a familiar pattern - we leave here on Friday evening if we can; drive down the A1 (never failing to be stunned by the view down the coast to Lindisfarne and Bamburgh Castles from just north of Berwick); arrive, light the fire, eat chips and drink wine; take our small child to her riding lesson; go to the beach; read a lot of rubbish in the papers; occasionaly golf (badly); visit something; go back to the beach; read a lot of rubbish in more papers; come home usually on the other road, sometimes dropping in on family somewhere on the way. We often (although less lately) have friends to stay and enjoy showing them beaches and castles.

This week-end we have walked on the beach at Bamburgh. We went to Thropton Show. We walked today at Cheswick, where there were no signs of the many golf balls I accidentally fire over the dunes from nearby Goswick. The weather has had a tinge of autumn about it; the trees are turning and the hedgerows fantastic. The views south to Lindisfarne and beyond this morning were spectacular with the wind whipping the tops off the waves and the sky marbled (almost as beautifully as some of the marbled eggs in the Thropton industrial section). We are aware that living like this has a certain degree of unreality about it - it is almost like being on holiday every week-end or two. Except its not. It is a part of how we lead our life. It takes a bit of effort. We have proper homes in both places, both equally full of our stuff and each comfortable enough to be lived in properly. We are in Edinburgh most of the time, but do much of our living in Northumberland. I can't quite decide whether its the best of both worlds or a compromise. I'm not sure I have a compromising nature. Oh hell - confused again.

Garden Plenty

It has been a poor summer in our garden. It has been a bit neglected. We were stuck here in the earlier part of the year as we had work done on our house and since then have been making up for lost time away. The garden has had to do its own thing in a not very easy summer. It is a good spring and early summer garden, but usually struggles its way through July and August. This year it has remained green (with an occasional flower) until now. Veg has not done; annual flowers have not done; the grass has grown but not with its usual vigour. Today however it yielded a surprisingly large harvest of plums and damsons (which it usually does only every second year). Accordingly we have been in chutney and damson gin production. My granny lived (indeed was born and brought up in) the Lyth Valley and both damsons and sloes (that other great gin flavourer) were plentiful in her house. I was surprised to find damsons growing in our garden, but will be happy to be able to toast their existence in a few month's time!

Show Time

This is the first day at the week-end when I have woken in our bed in Edinburgh since late June. While I love being away at week-ends, it is good to be here. It is a beautiful morning newly light at 6.30; from my windows I look out across tree tops that remain green in late August; and here at least this city is quiet, save for the pounding footsteps of Sunday morning joggers. Not far from here (comfortable walking distance) festival goers in rented flats, hostels and hotels will be pulling bedclothes over their heads, cursing the amount they drank last night, yet planning at the same time their itinerary for the day. In three or four hours time they will be on the streets, clogging the pavements in a colourful, culture seeking mass. I like the fact that they are here and enjoy this city, but I love it when they go home. The first week in September is often sunny, but cooler, the visitors have gone and the city returns to its normal, workmanlike (perhaps even dour) self. While all this is culture is fine that it truly this city at its best.

We went on Friday night to stay with friends in their cottage in Glenshee. It is in a great spot with superb northerly views towards the higher hills at the north end of the glen. As has been our habit over the last few years we went to the local highland games and (sadly FMD depleted) agricultural show. We went to another highland games earlier in the year as we were in the area and were bearing a vague invitation to the chieftain's tent where we were looked after splendidly. The chieftain (while perhaps at first glimpse looking like a caricature of a highland laird) is probably the most impressive individual I have ever met, charming and with a sharpness of mind that belies his 87 years and with records as a sportsman, academic, soldier and businessman, coupled with an involvement in the communities he inhabits in Scotland and London, which, while most importantly (although I suspect not to him) amazing achievements, say much about this supposedly busy generation's relative lack of contribution. We enjoyed both games, and in this miserable summer the sun, quite properly, shone on both of them. It is the Glendale Show on Monday. We had planned to take the day off (no bank holiday here) and go, but work has intervened. I hope the sun shines on it. We are working hard on retaining flowers and encouraging any form of vegetable growth, in what has been a poor growing summer in our garden, for our village show at the end of September. Last year we had our most competative friend staying. We are not sure we can handle the pressure to perform this year.

Plain consumption

I don't think I am extravagant. I hate shopping and swore a couple of years ago not to buy anything material that wasn't either (or preferably both) second hand or capable of lasting for at least my lifetime and preferably some of the next generation's. This seems to be an expensive approach to retail and I don't always manage it - it is not a shopping philosophy which for example lends itself to the acquisition of boxer shorts.

I am however susceptible to pictures. I bought a Northumberland seascape on holiday which now hangs here to remind me where I would rather be and, a week or two ago, succumbed to a picture of fox hounds with which (even although I don't yet have my hands on it) I am absurdly pleased. I have told myself repeatedly ever since that this is the last picture I will buy. I need no more pictures. I am going instead to buy a sensible, grown up house in which to put them. I appreciate that with houses come walls and, with walls, come pictures, but I will resist (and indeed be too skint to do otherwise!)

Time consumption

The week-end before last we went to stay with my parents and brothers and sundry others, invited for a day or two, at a lodge in Perthshire. We did something similar last year when, among other things, we played golf for a stone collected from the beach as a trophy worthy of our limited efforts. This year the stone has been mounted on a wooden plinth surrounded by a carefully engraved silver band - we didn't really rise to the occasion in golfing terms. Among the party were various children - my own and my nephew and nieces. When our daughter was born my mother commented that there was little which consumed time like babies, not in the sense that looking after them kept you busy (which of course it does), but in the sense that one can occupy hours simply guddling about with them. Its fair to say we guddled about a bit with toys, monster chases along corridors and general entertainment of, and peace keeping among, the under 10s. Sadly one day they will beat us and carry off the stone!

Last week end I wandered along the beach searching for cowries - it is an equally time consuming (although considerably more useless) activity. I had assumed it was a private obsession until I read an article about others equally pointlessly engaged in The Telegraph a year or two ago. My granny always had a small glass of them on a telephone shelf in her hall. She never seemed to have more than half a dozen and we would occasionally go to the beach with her to look for more. We were delighted at the week-end with a haul of twenty four. Our daughter gets cross if the scores are unequal and so in the interests of a quite life we share.

Writing

I am conscious that for many people blogging is a writing thing. I write (or at least draft) a lot - pages and pages of technical documents; long letters of advice; emails; notes; reports. I do it all day (and sometime all night) long. None of it has any literary merit! I enjoy the writing on the blogs I read - it is funny; moving; thoughtful; entertaining; informative. People frequently take care to select a subject and write about it in a way which will make the reader want to read it - not always but mostly. Last week I had to write a letter to a friend whose child had died suddenly overnight - how do you find anything sensible to say?