Each year, Little Sister and I exchange some sort of Christmas decoration. This year I wired together a few of my bits of tidal treasure to make her a little tree to hang on the wall.
More from before: living into “Semi-retirement” and beyond…
When it rains …
Look for the rainbow …
More from before : a dip into the archives for more “Flora, Fauna” and “Merryweather“
The winds have died down slightly but the tides are still quite high leaving behind them masses of treasure along the seaweed line on the beach.
More from before: living into “Semi-retirement” and beyond…
After skipping the tinsel and baubles last year in favour of some less traditional “Christmas decorating” I thought I would add a few seasonal finishing touches to the room this year.
Cosy …
More “Fixings and finishings” on the new house.
I had a friend in school, she had rabbits, my friend moved away and the years moved on, but we kept in touch, sometimes through long long letters and other times through just a Christmas card each year, but through the magic of modern technology we met up again in cyberspace and I invited her to visit me at the seaside… to my amazement she came.
We chatted, we drank coffee, we talked and we ate cake, and we caught up on over twenty years of life which had passed since we had last seen each other in person. And yes, you guessed … She once again has rabbits.
A long time ago, in a land far away … my friend, the Rabbit Lady, was in the same secondary school as me. Happy thoughts from my school years were few and far between, but the majority of the ones I do have hidden away in the old grey cells were shared with this friend and we dredged them up from the depths this weekend.
It would appear my choice of colours was predictable even then, have you ever played a game called Mastermind where one player chooses a set of four coloured pegs and a second player works out the colours and what positions they are in by following a complicated scoring system. The rabbit lady smiled at the decorating in my room now and recalled how easy it was to predict which colours I had chosen in my game of mastermind all those years ago.
Do you remember the songs from the movie Grease hitting the charts and swamping the radio channels ? “You’re the one that I want” “Hopelessly devoted to you”. This was one of the first films I was allowed to go to the cinema to watch without my parents. We went as a group of friends from school, neither of us could remember how many times we saw the film, but even I can remember belting out the songs at the top of our voices at break time in school.
I remember feeling old when my daughters were singing the songs during the re-release of the film for its 20th anniversary. Its really scary to think that it’s had its 40th anniversary this year.
While my Rabbit Lady friend was visiting, we did the usual (and not so usual) visitor things, we walked along the prom and we watched the Christmas lights being switched on. We ate out (partly because I never did learn to cook and partly because our Nautico Lounge has a vegan menu for Rabbit Lady to choose from. We fed the swans, it was a particularly high tide and the excited swans bobbed in the water making waves to get our feet wet. We stopped for coffee and the most delicious toasted banana bread at the “Coffee Saloon“, another new coffee stop to add to my “Coffee and Cakes” page. We ate ice cream from “Boho Gelato“, a double scoop each, but it’s OK because under visitor’s rules, “Holiday calories” don’t count for me either.
We talked pretty much non-stop, so much so that our silence was deafening when we ate our ice-creams. I have to admit to being a little nervous at meeting up after such a long time, these things can go so horribly wrong, but I needn’t have worried at all, within hours of my Rabbit Lady arriving we were cheerfully drinking coffee, and comparing notes on the menopause. After a thoroughly enjoyable weekend I waved her off on her journey home with promises to do it all again, a lot sooner this time.
More from before: a variety of “visitors and visitees” .
For some reason I’ve walked past the Coffee Saloon many, many times. It’s been recommended to me plenty but I’ve not gotten round to going in yet. Today it just happened to be in the right place at the right time so I paid it a visit.
I was there with a friend, a blast from my school days and we were heading from the lake to the Pavilion when the weather closed in on us so we decided to stop for coffee there and then… What a pleasant surprise.
Perfectly sized coffee cups held decaf latte for me and soya latte for my friend, then the banana bread gave us a vegan option cake to go with it. Warm banana bread was offered, and very welcomly accepted, being the perfect accompaniment to our coffee as the grey cloud passed by and the sun came back out.
A requested photo of the inside before we left was accompanied with a smile from behind the counter.
I’ll definitely be going back, at sometime, and if you get the chance, I’m more than happy to suggest you give it a try for yourself.
More from before : “Coffee & Cakes” from here, there and anywhere.
