Extreme Knitting Redhead: A 'strawberry tea' on a rather wet day

Saturday, June 30, 2007

A 'strawberry tea' on a rather wet day

The weather has been vile for the past few days, with parts of the country on flood alert. In June, how ridiculous is that?! The local fund-raisers had been working hard to raise money for our beautiful village church and had organised a 'strawberry tea' and a visit to a local garden. When I was out for my morning run I saw Jo, one of the chief organisers, who had made the wise decision to move the event indoors to the church itself - very sensible.

Mike and I dressed for the occasion as we wanted to have a look round the garden. As we were a bit early, we had a go on the swings beforehand. Check out my multicoloured poncho! It made everybody smile on what was a very wet and grey day and it kept me dry to boot.

Not many people braved the garden visit so we more or less had it to ourselves. Then we headed off to the church to claim our scones, strawberries and cup of tea. Yummy. We chatted with lots of villagers we knew, including Gordon our vicar. This is me with Micky, one of our lovely neighbours.

In the foreground are Don and Grace, our elderly neighbours who we visited the day before my birthday. It was lovely to see that they'd managed to make the journey to be part of the event.

We were entertained by a jazz trio who were very good and their music was not overpowering and suited the situation well. The stained glass windows in the church are beautiful. I tried to photograph some of the others but they didn't turn out well.

What really made me chuckle was when one of my neighbours came bounding over to see me. Carol and her husband Peter live in Kenya during the winter months and then come back to England for the summer. Back in April, she turned on the television to watch the London Marathon and the first thing she saw was my interview with Jonathan Edwards. She couldn't believe her eyes!

One very exciting thing that happened this morning was that a Turtle Dove landed on our patio. I've heard it's beautiful purring song in one of the fields but I've never seen it before. It's on the RSPB's Red Alert register which means that it's numbers have declined dramatically in recent years so we felt privileged to have seen one.

1 comment:

Linda said...: What a lovely church! Can we donate to the preservation fund?

Also, love the gloves.

Linda in Oregon; July 13, 2007 at 5:45:00 PM PDT

Post a Comment

Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.