Excuses, excuses…

Just popping up my head briefly to say hi, and sincere apologies for an almost inexcusable silence. If I just mention a trip to London, theatre trip, taking my sister from South Africa on a tourist trip of London on the top of an double decker bus, the London Eye and a trip up the river, brand new iPad which arrived today, working on a mobile friendly version of our website which our wonderful web man Jeremy Brough is developing for us, entertaining some very dear distant cousins to lunch and finally a very preoccupied day involving two trips to Bakewell for (unconnected) meetings today, one on the morning and one in the afternoon it might help paint the picture.
Honesty also suggests I should add that the wonderful June-like weather also comes into the equation. We went down to London at the beginning of last week warmly clad in all winter woollies to swelter as the heatwave struck and here we are a week later, still enjoying the most heavenly weather in clothes one often doesn’t get much chance to enjoy comfortably even in mid-summer. We have sat in the really hot sunshine and had meals outside, as have our guests who are getting browner and more relaxed by the day which is lovely to see.

It is late but I wanted just to make contact today because tomorrow is going to be just as busy,. We have an early start  with a trip to the Cheddar Gorge (delli in Ashbourne) 8.30am to pick up lots of wonderful freshly baked bread by Peter of the Dining Room for the last village Lenten Lunch of 2012 which we are hosting at 12.30 tomorrow. If you are reading this in Parwich tonight (Wednesday) night, do come!

I’ve made two enormous tureens of soup and a Bakewell Tart and bought some nice cheeses,  catering for anything from five to 35 and we will not know how many until they arrive or not!

Finally, a couple of fun photos including a goldfinch which is eating the kernel from inside the pine cone from a tree near the Tom’s Barn garden but here he has just dropped the whole thing. We have to thank one of our guests for pointing out what the birds were doing, as we hadn’t noticed ourselves being so intent on watching all the birdly goings on in front of the house.