under another sun

A quick meeting with Keith this morning, then off by train to Mill Hill to meet Mum and Mas in the Jolly Badger. Did some work on the podcast on the way up and had a chance to think. Have set up a podcast recording with Pete next week. There is something about being on a train which is quite conducive to thinking, in the way that being on a plane with its attendant existential terror doesn't quite match -- and even tinkered briefly with a poem. Looked at the BBC weather app before I went and it said there was no rain in London. Obviously it was raining but I managed to miss it when it rained hard while we were in the Jolly Badger gnawing on ribs. Good to see Mum and Mas. Their car is due its MOT and Maheena apparently offered to wash it, but it is only the complex life forms that are establishing themselves in the paintwork that are holding it together. Mas more mobile now, and clearly much better after his fall. He wandered about talking to people off and on, but he was having fun...

Waking up fresh and cheery this morning. A slow start, then up for breakfast. Drove off to a garden centre out in the sticks and bought some herbs and succulents and some thrift and saxifrage and thyme, which later we poked into the pebbles. We are feeling increasingly happy with our little garden at the moment. However before we did this, we went to Wobblegate just outside Bolney, where they make fruit juices and cider, and have opened up a little tap room and restaurant on the farm. Had a pint of their own Eden Farm cider there, and it was bloody marvellous. Lorraine spoke to Tom, who was a go getting young guy, clearly loving what he was doing. He was going to pop into her school to talk soon too. I said I loved the cider I was drinking, and Tom said the brief had been to make a cider that tasted like alcoholic pure apple juice, and it did. The brew in small batches, and use the natural yeast on the fruit rather than add it, so each time they brew it there are subtle differences....