Things that have happened

I went off the boil with this but am simmering away again.  After July momentous things happened.  Here are some of them:

- My gentle, valiant sister in law died surrounded by love. She would be enormously proud of her husband and sons who are staying true to her brave spirit and are planning a boys' road trip in America this summer.  And I am of my own husband, her younger brother, who found the courage to speak at her funeral because he loves her.
- My jack the lad brother in law went off the rails with someone too close to home.  And back on them again.
- My sensible rational brother in law is marrying someone he just met.  It's turning out to be a whole family of wild cards.
- My other sister in law gave birth to a daughter with a name like a pagan celebration and chubby cheeks that have to be tweaked all the time.  She has a binary birthday - a numerical palindrome.  Her big brother has taken to his new role with solemn love and many soft kisses.

Other things happened too...

- Nice Guy Eddie gave us two pheasants shot by Prince William - he's getting married next year too.  Prince William, not Nice Guy Eddie who has been married for a couple of hundred years.
- Lucy the sheep might or might not be pregnant by one of her sons.  Normal for Norfolk isn't a joke.
- Father Christmas fitted down the flue of the woodburner.
- My son started wearing glasses because he really needs them.
- My daughter started wearing glasses but doesn't really need them.
- People have been on holiday in our cottages and loved them.  Even the people who had no heating or hot water.  They left me a jar of duck rillettes for Christmas.
- Mr P saw John Major mooching along.  I can't imagine Edwina Currie would ever have set foot in rural Norfolk.
- We have become friends with Jim, who thought of being a lawyer but spent 10 years surfing instead and with Heather who believes in fairies and loathes The Sound of Music.
- The pumpkins we carved for Hallowe'en are still sinking into mouldering heaps along the path.
- The villagers' protest about fat traffic and skinny little lanes has temporarily halted plans to build a biogas plant.
- We had a harvest of walnuts and skirmishes with squirrels.
- We made no resolutions for 2011.

Things that might happen...

Chickens, pigs, ducks, a peacock, vegetable garden, a third cottage finished, a fourth cottage bought, and more time in London to retain sanity amid all this Good Life.