Birthday owl!

I'm the Birthday Girl today!!!

I've got a whole pile of birthday cards,texts,emails and phone calls. I feel thoroughly spoilt and loved.So all those people that know me via here, thank you for all your lovely messages, however I got them.

My friends have came up to stay with me from Oxford. And so far I haven't been allowed to make a drink or any food today as Wendy is looking after me completely. And they took me out for lunch... yummy food and a glass of wine in the middle of the day,just the stuff of afternoons naps!

I took them to Bakewell, home of the famous tart, however the original pudding as it is known in Bakewell bears no resemblance to the cake with almond paste with icing on the top that we think of as bakewell tarts.

It's a beautiful place with a wide shallow river running through the town. So loads of people were out and about on the best day of the year so far... blue skies, warm enough for t shirts if you were a macho bloke. The ducks, cygnets and Canada geese were having an absolute feast of bread and chips being fed to them by almost everyone on the river bank.

The water is so clear in the river that you could see the many beautiful rainbow trout waiting for the bread to drop under the surface for them to nibble up.

There was an amazing sight of five owls at the end of the walk. Very weird and a bit incongruous, just like coming across the Chinese students at the end of Lud's Church last week. That wasn't the right place to see tourists and the river bank wasn't a place to see captive owls!

So the pictures are, obviously, of one of the owls, and me with Trix at my feet, this morning having a coffee before I went out with my friends, leaving Trix to sulk at being left in!

Now both friends are napping, hang on I'm the one who had the wine here!And the evening will be spent glugging back a couple of bottles of champers and some lovely food to nibble on as the mood takes us.