SUPER SUNDAY

When I got out to go to the bathroom at 5.23 this morning, I saw that the fields opposite our friends’ house were shrouded in mist, and with the tree standing in the middle, it looked rather ethereal and atmospheric so I did what all good Blippers would do - got my phone, so that I could take a photograph - see top left of my collage.  

I did sleep for about another hour then after having breakfast with Avril and Mark, he and Mr. HCB decided they would go out for a quick walk before church.  So that I wouldn’t hamper them, because I knew they would walk much faster than I would (and anyway, I thought it would be good for them to be able to chat “man to man” without a woman interrupting joining in), they strode off across the road along a public footpath through the fields and between the dykes, to the river.

I set off about five minutes later at a much more leisurely pace, just meandering along, and anyway, I wanted to take more photographs.  The sky was a beautiful bright blue and contrasted well with the dark brown furrows in the soil, which Avril told me later, contained potatoes, so with the rain and sun, they should soon be sprouting.  

As I wandered along, I stopped to take quite a lot of photographs, close-ups of dandelions, oil seed rape flowers and when I turned, I saw two cyclists in the distance - which shows how flat this area is - in fact, I saw many other cyclists too, and wasn’t surprised, as it was such a beautiful morning.

On our way to their church yesterday, when Mark had to start filling the baptismal pool, I had noticed a lovely house with wisteria growing all over the front, so he very kindly stopped this morning to let me take a photograph of that.  When I looked over the wall, I was amazed to see how beautiful the front garden was, and you can see this in the bottom right of my collage.

As I walked back, I noticed that the fields directly in front of me had obviously contained row upon row of daffodils - most of which were now gone, but there were one or two little narcissus left - see my extra collage.  

The last photograph shows the baptismal pool and the wonderful arrangement of flowers - it was a great service with inspirational testimonies from all three of those being baptised - and I was particularly touched by the fact that the youngest person, Jenny, was in fact, being baptised by her father and one of the other deacons in the church.  After the service there was a “Bring & Share” lunch - and as with most churches, there was enough delicious food to feed the 5,000! 

I decided to put in an extra collage and this shows a little insect on one of the oil seed rape flowers - we weren’t sure what this was, but could have been some sort of grasshopper or a cricket - one of the dykes, and of course, Lincolnshire is famous for these, the tree in my first collage, taken from the path along which I walked, the narcissus and a lovely dandelion head with droplets of dew.  

All these were taken this morning, but just for fun, I had to show a photograph of Avril, cleaning out the baptismal pool with a dustpan and brush - but I’m sure you will forgive me that it was taken last night.  Mind you, she got out quite quickly when Mark told her he was about to turn on the tap!

All in all, a wonderful weekend with special friends - many lovely memories made, and of course, lots of photographs taken - and as I had knitted almost two pairs of fingerless gloves, I was able to give one pair as a gift to Avril.  It took us rather longer to get home that we thought - we decided to go the way that Avril’s father suggested and apparently, when her mother used to navigate, they came to Swindon the “pretty way” but Mrs. Satnav got very confused when there were new roundabouts, and took us rather a long way round, or as I told Avril, “by a more circuitous route”!  

We are now safely home and I would like to thank everyone for their kind comments, stars and hearts for the last couple of days and I apologise for not responding, but hopefully, will be back to normal, whatever that might be, very soon.

“What I like about photographs 
     is that they capture a moment 
          that’s gone forever, 
               impossible to reproduce.” 
Karl Lagerfeld