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Village life

Ah, village life. Our big night out on Saturday was to the village hall at the invite of  our neighbours for an evening of wine tasting and cheese. I will admit that when I asked I didn't enquire too closely as to the details - it was ages ago for a start. The fact that some of our friends locally had also been asked and were up for it was enough so I said yes and left it at that. Of course when Glenn asked about the detail all I could tell him was that it wine tasting, started at 7:45 and we should probably eat before hand to be on the safe side...

So we arrived at the allotted hour (dead on, me thinking it wasn't something you turned up early for, which caused some heated debate as Glenn still likes to be early), to find ourselves standing quietly outside a room of septuagenarians wondering whether we were in the right place. Turns out the wine tasting was tagged onto the end of the East Woodhay Society AGM and we were catching the end of some very long speeches - thank goodness we weren't early! Once this finished we were allowed in and we took our seats for  a wine quiz - slightly different to expected. As ever with these things you had the very serious (not us) to the very serious drinkers (some of us), and everything in between. What could have been a bit dry was a very funny evening as the 2 old boys overseeing proceedings got rapidly squiffy and started to fall over the flip chart scoreboard and each other. The chap taking our answers was about 10 years older than anyone else in the room and almost completely deaf, which didn't make the process easy or quick. He also kept calling us 'the youngsters on Table 2', which we did like! Needless to say we didn't win, but had a good time and it's nice to support the local events.

Today was the school fayre so more local fleecing of all small change and most notes. What was lovely was to see both the girls immediately find their friends and head off to buy as much tat as they could get away with. I'd like to think that this at least tested their maths skills with handing over money and getting change, but they smashed through their allotted money so quickly I'm not sure there was any change. Zsara and I parked ourselves in the middle, drank tea, admired tat and chatted - perfect. Izzy spent a good 15 minutes drawing a sizable audience as she wiggled and waggled a loose tooth, with the calls for "pull it out" growing louider and louder. After a final tug (I couldn't watch) she managed to take it out - another baby tooth gone, there'll be none left soon. Then home, walking dogs, Sunday roast before hair washes (yes, it is a requirement on a Sunday as I'm not always convinced it gets done otherwise), SCD and bedtime - I like Sundays.

Next weekend is Abi's birthday and while on the one hand she wants to know what she's getting, on the other hand when asked she said she like "something practical... a bucket maybe?"! After the success of last weekend she is more focused on going back to Park Cottage to see the horses and ride again. This weekend's riding didn't hit the spot after having the freedom of a full afternoon's hack, and Izzy is losing interest as well as we head into winter. I think we may be shifting to a less frequent but more intense set of riding activities elesewhere for a while.

Back to work tomorrow, How quickly that seems to come round - but just 5 weeks until we break for Lapland and Christmas, so much to look forward to. We managed to carve out a few hours yesterday and Glenn and I headed off to do some Christmas shopping so I'm ahead of myself - long may it last!

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