Prickly

After posting a blip of 'thistly looking plants' (only to have them develop into what are very clearly teasels), we now have proper thistles popping up all over. (In a 'be careful what you wish for' way, most of them are in amongst my leeks.) These ones are outside the veg garden, and have been left in peace to grow. And I will confess a tiny moment of homesickness, though that soon vanished when a quick check on recent blips confirmed rubbish weather 'back home'.

Today was a morning of admin and some work at the MBH. In the afternoon Mr B, inevitably, headed off in the convertible to buy more enormous lengths of wood (why are we always one short - however well we've planned the job, and even if we buy an extra one to start with?) I dropped Katherine off at a friend's house, then headed into town for a rather unexpectedly lovely hour or so running errands with Conor. Then back to the friend's house for a drink, which turned into two bottles of very delightful champagne and an endless stream of delicious nibbles. The lady of the house is Danish and (it therefore seems logical to me) speaks perfect English. Her husband, despite claiming not to have spoken English since '86, seemed to me to speak it pretty well too. As Mr B and I both need French practice, we did a mix of languages, which seemed to work well for all.

Our kids rather let the side down with disputes that our hosts kindly passed off as 'oh, all siblings are like that' though I didn't notice their kids thumping each other so much...

We wobbled home after that for a quick dinner and a well needed early night.