Down in the Woods Today

When I went down to the woods today........ It was cold enough to freeze the bits off a brass monkey and the bits of me not encased in clothing, namely my trigger finger and my face.

Sunny it was and windless, with the fallen leaves crunchy underfoot. These rather moth eaten mushrooms, the byproduct of days of wet weather were nestling at the foot of a tree, and provided me with a quick blip, enabling me to escape the cold to the warmth of the bookshop cum tea house.

I slept in this morning after an unexpected night of socialising with thirty hand picked cyclists celebrating the 80th birthday of one of the cycling club.

If ever there was an advertisement for cycling as an exercise to prolong healthy life, then this was it. The lady in question,if not on her bike cycling , is off walking. We are not talking about cycling or walking to the shops, we are talking about 40-60 miles on the bike and 10 miles on foot.
It puts a lot of us to shame.

It turned out to be a wonderful evening, meeting up again with 'weel kent' faces with whom I have shared many a hill and downhill.
We kissed and hugged, drank too much, ate cheese and pâté and enjoyed the octogenarian's birthday cake.

His Lordship, somewhat of a self-styled misogynist by nature, declined the invitation thinking it would be a ladies' only get together, but he was sadly wrong as all his cycling buddies from the past were present and he could have talked about cranks and gears and carbon frames till he was blue in the face.; or even if the potatoes were good this year and had they planted their bulbs and winter pansies yet, the sort of thing men of a certain age talk about.

His loss, I'm afraid as he spent the evening behind his Door.