Back In Framlingham

It's over a week since the last blog. I think that's the longest gap I've had since I started writing this over three years ago. If you read the last post you'll realise that we were in a near WIFI free zone at the caravan so blogging was difficult to say the least. 

As always it was lovely to see Sarah and Duncan and the children. The kids are growing so quickly.

It's difficult to believe that six months have passed since little Melody arrived on the scene. She's developing fast and has a great sense of fun. 

We kept ourselves busy in St Andrews helping Sarah as much as we could. She's running Yoga classes for babies and toddlers and it's very hard work with two children in tow so we did our best to look after them while she taught  her classes. We don't know how she manages when she has no help on hand - it's hard work - probably harder than the secondary school Maths teaching she did before the children were born. But she loves it and there's a lot to be said for loving your work.

Now that we're back in Framlingham for four weeks we want to cram as much into the month as we can. The weather is fine so yesterday we walked along the Fisherman's path from Snape Maltings to Aldeburgh for a couple of hours. The scenery around Snape is quite wild and spectacular wetland - a bird lovers paradise.  This morning I dusted off the bikes and we're all set for our first cycle ride of the year. It's a perfect cycling day and I'm looking forward to it. 

It's promises to be a full month. Tomorrow we've got the latest production for FADS (Framlingham Amateur Dramatics) and we've booked for an opera evening at nearby Crows Hall (although that's in May) as well as The Vikings at The British Museum and King Lear at the National and we're hoping to try and get tickets for Mozart at Snape. Throw in a couple of visits to Rochester, a trip to Southport to pick up my mum for a visit and time will be at a premium. I am hoping to get out with the metal detector too.

After my brief courtship with eBay I'm still waiting for payment for two of the things I sold and I've heard nothing from one of the buyers (the other promises to pay this week). I've not got much left to sell on eBay now (I said that I was going to be more selective) although I did find time to go to the auction in St Andrews while we were there and bought this fabulous naive Brazilian gouache by the important naive artist Isabel De Jesus. Isabel's work is highly prized by collectors of naive art and her gallery tells me that they would be asking around US $1800 for this. My only worry is that eBay buyers won't appreciate this and it could sell for a pittance and I don't want that to happen.

Time for the bike ride now. Let's see how fit we are.