1 September: a friend’s 50th birthday party. That meant a Saturday in Somerset, with those lovely lumpy hills and the freshness and golden air of early autumn.
It meant a wander around town and a trip to an ironmongery where I nearly bought a coffee grinder.
It meant chopping a mountain of cabbage and carrots and talking of nothing of any real consequence. (Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Internet friends aren’t real friends.)
It meant making a blueberry pie out of a book of Finnish recipes.
(And, when it all got a bit much, I went and lay on the lawn for half an hour and looked at the sky, and that was very good and something that I should do more often.)
It meant strawberries and cream. It meant sitting up late with wine and laughing discreetly about things that weren’t meant to be in-jokes but which had somehow ended up that way.
It was a good day.
Kathleen Jowitt 