a rest in the wild country

Mr me and I have returned today from a week in Northumberland with his family - ie his mum and dad, sister and sister's boyfriend. Fortunately I get on very well with the Me's (as they could be called), so except for a nasty cold at the beginning of the week, when I wasn't much company, we had a fun time together. Generally I am very relaxed with them and there's not much I feel I can't say in front of them.

Feel relaxed and chilled out now, but tired, as it seems to have been a surprisingly active week. There were leisure facilities on site, so we swam, trampolined and played tennis, as well as walking, playing beach cricket and horse-riding. All a bit drastic for me! But the peace of the setting and the general desertedness of the county have made me relaxed anyway.


We pottered around castles, wandered among rhodedendrons, marvelled at the steam rising like mist from the nearly empty beach, drank Lindesfarne mead and ate fish and chips by the sea. The horse-riding was very exciting too, as I've never done that before.



One of the best pleasures for me was the bookshop mr me took me to this morning before we came back. It is called Barter Books, it's in Alnwick and it occupies the whole of a redundant Victorian railway station. Apparently it's one of the largest second-hand bookshops in Europe. It has a minature train that travels around the top of the bookcases. It has loads of beautiful old books, folios and early editions. It has tea, coffee and chocolate for 25p a cup and lots of places to sit and enjoy it. I could have spent a week there quite happily. I bought - two tiny old volumes - 2 parts of translations of the story of the Holy Grail from the Morte d'Arthur ( I recently re-read "The Once and Future King", so I'm interested), Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer, Life isn't all ha ha hee hee by Meera Syal, A Passage to India by E M Forster and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. All for less than £20! I have that rich luxurious feeling I always have when I have several new books lined up.

oh, that kind of an evening!

It's the kind of a warm hazy summer evening where it seems almost a desecration not to be in the countryside. The kind of an evening where I long to be lying under a hedgerow by a river, watching the first stars come out and hearing the silence behind the splashing of the water and the gentle song of the birds. It's the kind of an evening when my eyes get misty and I think about a long time ago.

Exciting things about my birthday weekend

• mr me made me a programme (yes, an actual printed programme on pretty paper) of the things we were doing on my birthday. These were all fun things that I like to do.
  

• He bought me exciting breakfast in bed and red roses

• I got very large amounts of birthday money. Grandparents seem to give out more and more money as they get older.

• With this money I got a lovely silver and freshwater pearl necklace and a black wrap dress

• I wore these to go out to Sous Le Nez En Ville, which is a resturant I have heard about ever since moving to Yorkshire, but never been to before (it was as good as they said it was), and then to dance to live soul music at the Wardrobe.

• 5 friends saved my life by helping me prepare food for my barbeque when I was not feeling well enough to do it myself.

• About 30 friends came, bringing much food, and children, and now my garden feels like a proper garden that has been christened.

When I was 25...

Most years around the time of my birthday, I like to record all the new experiences I've had that year. There are normally more than you expect there to be. Well it was my birthday on Saturday, so here goes.

This year I...

...bought my first house

...had my first sick note

...lived in someone's spare room for the first time

...found my first white hairs

...called my first ambulance

...broke my first bone

...started to love gardening

...ran my first GP surgery

...made my first really close friend from another culture

...bought my first wedding hat

...started my first blog!