they sailed away for a year and a day

The weather the weather the weather how the Irish love to harp on and on about it. So lets harp and marvel at how strangely fantastic it has been these past few days. Today was all blue skies, well really there was only the one sky but it was all blue, and we got sandwiches and olives and coffee and sat by the river for a picnic.

Mid-afternoon we had to go indoors as we had arranged a surprise sober birthday pottery painting party for Ellen. Which was rather hilarious sitting at a newspaper-covered table being shown what to do and then asked if we were okay to be left unsupervised. Sometimes being old has its funny side.

Ellen carried on the theme of birds from our last salt-clay session, actually I have more photos of that somewhere, and Elspeth did a pot of hearts for her house in Leeds and mine told the story of an Elephant going to the palace.

The day ended with a cussing of the sunshine whose praises I had been singing not long before as it had only gone and burned me a nice shade of lobster and even the maximus-stressimus Jenny had a good laugh at me, which reminded me of all the years in the college library looking out enviously at people enjoying the annual pre-exam summer weather while my pale pasty nose saw nothing more than the book in front of it. But now that I look like Rudolph, I'm not so sure which is the better of two evils...