Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day today and after nearly 30 years together we don't do cards and presents - probably because for the 27 years John was in the Navy we spent so much of the time apart.  So his present to me was the sentiment in the picture to the left and my present to him was to have lovely fresh sheets on the bed ready for tonight - Fresh Hay (or Clean Straw as my friend calls it) - John's idea of heaven!!!

We were quite late getting up this morning as a result of our early morning walk home from the Veasey's - such a good time so thanks very much - good job I put a reminder in the phone that John was going down to John Read's this morning to sort out some wood otherwise we could have slept on blissfully unaware!!!

Whilst John was out I did a bit of gardening - it was a lovely fine morning and everything is beginning to wake up to the fact that spring is here.  I thought I would take a photograph of the pool area because hopefully our new tiles will arrive in Paphos this week and once John is back from celebrating his Mum's 70th birthday the workmen will come to make good the bodge job that was done previously and create us a beautiful pool area - that is the plan but then that was the plan previously when we had Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid on site.

We were eating down at Mum and Dad's today with Sheila and Klaus.  About once a month we all take it in turns to entertain on a Sunday and Mum had chosen today and had decided to go to town - with a beautifully decorated table and little gifts for us all.

We always have a nice lunch when the six of us get together and Dad and Klaus can generally find something to chat about - probably helpful that they were both engineers!  Anyway today we had the grapefruit started that Mum and Dad make together - Dad removes all the pith from the segments of the fruit and then arranges them like a flower on the plate with other bits of fruit as the stem etc.  We then had salmon en croute with some new potatoes and some hot coleslaw and then a peach cheesecake/mousse creation which was very nice.

Frederico was suitably unimpressed by the goings on - exhausted by his nightly excursions to the female cats in the area he was sleeping off his activities in the conservatory with his back to the proceedings!!!

Mum and Dad are looking well - they always do once the worst of the Winter is over and now we are having more regular sunshine they are able to sit outside a little more which they love.  They will soon have Jane and John over (staying up the road) but this will mean more company and a bit more entertaining as they are here for a month which will include Jane's 70th birthday celebration which is currently under wraps as Jane reads the blog and it is a secret.

Sheila and I had a gift which was a beautiful little bowl and the compost and corms of 9 crocuses (croci???) which immediately led to a competition between Sheila and I as to who will grow the best display.  Sheila's corms were already shooting and I appear to have one duffer so I am at a disadvantage before we start - still GAME ON Sheila - photos to follow of progress!!

On our return from Mum and Dad's John donned his England Rugby T-Shirt and settled down to watch England play Italy and comprehensively beat them in the end England are top of the six Nations league table at the moment even though they have not been playing that well.

We opted for an early night - the fresh hay was calling...