I’ve just returned from a week end during which I went to a party thrown by my son and his wife whose fifth wedding anniversary it is.

It is very pleasant, and that pleasant feel does not diminish over time, when you know you’ve got the whole day to make a three-hour journey and you can do what you like and loosen up the purse strings a bit so we went to the lavender farm at a Falkland which is somewhat Northeast of Radstock.

Françoise wanted to buy a 10 milliliter bottle of lavender essence for which the price was £10. The manager almost apologized for the increase in costs but said that the gas heating cost of production used to cost £50 and now the cost is £180. We had coffee outside and I talked to a what I thought was quite a well-educated woman with her two children and I said her children are irrepressible and was amazed that she had not heard of that word.

We decided to go via Avebury  because I loved the stones there (see my numerous reports on that place) but found that the public car park was absolutely full and because the places owned by the National Trust parking is only available to blue ticket holders and National Trust members. We decided to move on to our favorite restaurant, La Strada, in Broad Hinton which I can recommend to anybody if you want to really good and well served Italian meal. Although we visited them last two years ago the owner remembered my first name which I thought was a feat of memory.

I arrived at the house of my host for the weekend, John, and we had a nice pasta dish and chatted together and passed the time.   On Friday night there was a big storm with magnificent exhibitions of lightning and thunder. My friend was cooking some of his famous chicken wings so on the Saturday we didn’t do much except hang around and chat which was exactly what I needed. Off to the party where I met about 50 of the people that I had known for a long time.

Sometimes the memories fade with old friends and conversation has to be forced but there are always one or two Soulmates where you meet and take up where you left off as if no time had passed. I Confess to eating too much food at the celebratory barbecue. I think I sampled about five cakes but alcohol was not much in evidence so we just had what we needed. The World Cup was on so during the afternoon we watched England play, I forget who it was with, but we won two one after being one goal down so everyone was suitably delirious.

We finally returned to our temporary lodgings about 9 pm. Sunday, a friend, Paul, took us all for breakfast at a village called Cropredy. This Village is a few centuries old and very picturesque .  I noticed that the men were obviously very successful and walked around as if they had nothing to prove. There is no question that inner confidence affects your gait. Nearby, there was a canal on the route from Birmingham to Oxford.

We spent the day again chatting, walking around, having animated discussions and so to bed. We had scrambled eggs on toast in the morning  and off we went taking the cross country route via the roll-right stones across to bath via Cirencester and then down home.

The experience was immeasurably better than going via the M4 the horrible motorway where everybody’s in the hurry and on a weekday there are lots of lorries that don’t make the journey any more comfortable.