Social Weekend

Saturday Lunchtime

'Winter Warmers' at the Village Hall. The inclusiveness of Swallow's social events tends to come as quite a surprise to newcomers to the village, and this is one of the nicer ideas when several people make their own favourite soups (I chose Sue's leek and potato - very nice) and everyone can turn up and have a good chat over a hot lunch with the neighbours they don't always get to see. Of course, Swallow is a good size for this: at 150ish population it is perfectly possible to know everyone in the village, but it is large enough to support a village hall. I had a good chat with Dot (who lived in Swallow until she moved into a retirement home in Market Rasen), with Kathy, Kath, Bob and Margaret (who have just moved into one of the new houses), and Bob and Margaret (who have been here about eight years). Introducing these two couples to each other was almost as much fun as introducing Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hill to Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hill at a music festival a few years ago - I know, 'little things please little minds'.

Saturday Evening

A Supper Party at Carolyn's; she served tapas style food which tends to be too seasoned for my taste, but I avoided the chillis and nothing was eye-wateringly hot. A combination of Lent and driving meant that I was on fruit juice all evening, but all the other guests live in Thoresway and had walked: nobody got drunk, but several were at the stage where they believe they are wittier than they actually are, and their opinions are somewhat more incontavertably true than is the case.

Lent also meant that I had to refuse an absolutely delicious looking and smelling orange and almond pudding. Another of the guests also refused it; apparently he never eats pudding which is a shocking waste as his sister is a celebrity TV chef whose puddings (among other things) are to die for! Their mother is an equally talented cook, and Joe is seriously considering asking them to adopt him! My little sister is not a good cook, but I notice that - as well as those provided by nature - Joe has made sure that all the aunts he has chosen to adopt are distinctly better than average cooks, but this would be the first time he has chosen any on those grounds alone.

Sunday Lunch

Maureen's seventieth birthday, and her daughters gave a birthday luncheon for twenty-five of her closest family members and friends. I didn't actually know that I fitted into either category since Issy and Becky are my friends rather than their mother, but I'm flattered to be included.

We were seated at a long table in the drawing room (which is twice the size of the dining room) and moved round between courses so that everyone would have a turn near the birthday girl. Here she is cutting the cake, and with her daughters and grandchildren (not a great photo, but the only one with all the faces visible - compare the children with their younger selves in my first blog over two years ago - they have so grown up in that time.)

In all the musical chairs I found myself regularly opposite Linda and next to her husband David, neither of whom I had ever met before but with both of whom I had a very interesting conversation about the arts in Grimsby. Next to Linda was Peggy who seems to know all the people who used to teach me and all my distant cousins in Cleethorpes going right back to her days as an infant member of the same Sunday School class as my father. I was also next but one to Nigel who back in the late 1970s was going out with Glen's cousin Mandy before he married Maureen's sister Bobby, and has been a friend of Glen's ever since those days - so we did a bit of catching up there too.

Another very pleasant social occasion.

Monday Evening

Swallow Bookworms: We had been reading "Unnatural Murder" by Anne Somerset. Nobody had managed to finish it, so apart from expressing a dislike of the style, content and sheer bulk of the book there wasn't much to say. My main grouse was that you start a paragraph reading about Fred Bloggs and by the end of it he has become the Duke of Clutterbuck with three intervening titles in 150 or so words of text: as a book to study it may work well enough, but for light reading having to keep track of a cast of hundreds each of whom is referred to by at least three names is too much like hard work.

Our next book is the biography of John Peel which I gather started as an autobiography and was finished after his death by his wife. I'm not very keen on showbiz biographies in the first place and, not being a Radio 1 fan, I had never really heard of the subject before his death. I am told that he also had a Radio 4 programme, but it was on Saturday, and I only know radio programmes on weekdays between 8.30 and 9.15 and 3.15 and 4.00 when I am driving. It is Lincolnshire Libraries book of the month for March, and Radio Lincolnshire wants someone from Swallow Bookworms to talk about it on air. A few were shy, two will be on holiday, and the rest (like me) felt that they should know more about the man than just the one book to be able to add anything of interest to the discussion. In the end we elected Veronica to the task although she knows as little of John Peel as I, because she has a certain amount of radio experience, and she was the one who received the original request.