I don’t usually have such an action packed day. It started with a French lesson at 10 am over at a friend’s house in a nearby village, with three other women. Amazingly the woman that was the weakest of our group a few months ago is now so much better than the rest of us. That is what comes of having a French lover, in fact her neighbour, it all sounds very romantic and they are so happy together, finding love in their sixties. So really she doesn’t need to come to the class anymore, but it’s a social event as well as a lesson. Back home and then to our favourite restaurant in Samatan with our Kenyan friends who are leaving for Nairobi this weekend, I sensed the husband is a bit worried about it. He is over eighty and isn’t as enthusiastic about travel as his much younger wife. Nairobi isn’t an easy place to live, with the traffic jams and crime, but they will be warm over the winter. The waiter shakes our hands when we arrive now we are regulars. As always, it was a delicious meal, salmon quiche, chicken and fresh potato crisps, and then chocolate sauce in a pancake. We went back to our friends’ house for tea afterwards and said our goodbyes; they’ll be back in March. Book club was at another friends house this evening in a remote hamlet, we’d read How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran. I think some of the older members were a bit shocked by parts of it, I suppose I was too, but some passages were so funny, she writes the kind of things that we might think but not articulate, a modern take on feminism and a much lighter read than Germaine Greer, teenage girls would love it. Driving home along windy country lanes, I realised I shouldn’t have drunk a second glass of wine, a thick mist had descended, visibility was very limited. Now back at home and the six cats are all complaining, in the interests of economy they are now only allowed tins in the morning and dried food in the evening, so they are all feeling very sorry for themselves.
1st December
I don’t usually have such an action packed day. It started with a French lesson at 10 am over at a friend’s house in a nearby village, with three other women. Amazingly the woman that was the weakest of our group a few months ago is now so much better than the rest of us. That is what comes of having a French lover, in fact her neighbour, it all sounds very romantic and they are so happy together, finding love in their sixties. So really she doesn’t need to come to the class anymore, but it’s a social event as well as a lesson. Back home and then to our favourite restaurant in Samatan with our Kenyan friends who are leaving for Nairobi this weekend, I sensed the husband is a bit worried about it. He is over eighty and isn’t as enthusiastic about travel as his much younger wife. Nairobi isn’t an easy place to live, with the traffic jams and crime, but they will be warm over the winter. The waiter shakes our hands when we arrive now we are regulars. As always, it was a delicious meal, salmon quiche, chicken and fresh potato crisps, and then chocolate sauce in a pancake. We went back to our friends’ house for tea afterwards and said our goodbyes; they’ll be back in March. Book club was at another friends house this evening in a remote hamlet, we’d read How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran. I think some of the older members were a bit shocked by parts of it, I suppose I was too, but some passages were so funny, she writes the kind of things that we might think but not articulate, a modern take on feminism and a much lighter read than Germaine Greer, teenage girls would love it. Driving home along windy country lanes, I realised I shouldn’t have drunk a second glass of wine, a thick mist had descended, visibility was very limited. Now back at home and the six cats are all complaining, in the interests of economy they are now only allowed tins in the morning and dried food in the evening, so they are all feeling very sorry for themselves.