Yes, that was a long break. I’ve been plagued by this minor virus which keeps coming and going and sapping my energy. Not that you’d notice, since my energy is pretty low anyway, even on a good day. This picture is of my lovely grand-daughter Amy, who I baby-sat on Monday while Daddy tried to work upstairs. We had a lot of fun – quite tiring fun, but fun. Both children are thriving – Oliver shows signs of being a competent horse-rider after a ride on a pony recently.

I seem to have been going to hundreds of meetings recently. If it’s not the district church council, it’s the parochial one, and if it’s not the chess club, it’s Archant. The last one scores extremely heavily because of the excellent buffet, plus the opportunity to meet old friends and acquaintances. This year saw an attendance by a number of yompers. Following this, Dot and I wandered over to the Forum to look at a terrific outdoor exhibition of photographs of various parts of the world from the air. Also a giant map of the world that you could walk on. I was so disorientated by this that I allowed Dot to persuade me to buy a new jacket from Jarrolds.

What else? My NVQ trainee Kate did really well in the London Marathon, finishing in just over four hours; and sadly our friend Joyce died of oesophagal cancer – she had been in some distress over the last week. Lovely lady: she was always upbeat and self-effacing.

Last Saturday went to a session about the Enneagram, which would have been better without the questions-cum-conversation from the usual suspects, which disrupted the structure. However, I think I’m a 5 on the personality scale (this is not a score). Of course I may not be…

The skies have been largely blue, though the temperature has been a bit erratic: yesterday was very warm, but today there’s a chilly wind – even some rain at breakfast time. On Monday when I was in Caddington it was cloudy with quite a bit of light rain, but apparently in Norwich it was fine and warm.