Tuesday 28th January

It had been so very lovely to catch up with Alex and Paul and to be able to see where they are now living because when we worked together initially they rented a lovely coach house opposite our house in Fennel Way - the lovely coach house is sadly no longer there as it was demolished to make way for a new housing estate.  After living there they bought a lovely old terraced hamstone house in the beautiful and historic town of Montacute which is famous for being used in period films like Sense and Sensibility, The Libertine and Wolf Hall.

They said that living in a traditional chocolate box village in rural Somerset seemed wonderful to begin with but then the lack of facilities made it feel stifling and they said they began to feel old before their time which I can fully understand so they span everything on its head and bought a modern town house overlooking the Severn Estuary in a huge man-made development in Portishead near Bristol.  Having been there I can absolutely understand why - they have everything on their doorstep, a fabulous outlook and a marina in walking distance.

Their house is an oasis of calm and order - part of me aspires to having an uncluttered existence but that ain't never going to happen as John and I cannot agree when it comes to getting rid of things and so many of our 'things' are memories of places and people from our past.

I have, however, resolved to be a bit more orderly than I have been particularly as our house is small and lacking in storage so clean lines and clutter free would be nice.  That being the case, today was dedicated to clearing and cleaning starting with the kitchen cupboards and saying goodbye to items with a best before date of the last century!!

It was a relatively successful operation and I did get rid of some rather dodgy looking half used jars and ancient tins and I have clean tidy and manageable shelves now.  It is a start but it was exhausting particularly as in order to reach the highest shelves I have to stand on the work surface!!

I had hoped to do some gardening but the weather forecast was correct and it rained so that will have to wait.  The one plus about being busy with the kitchen was that I got a bit of a work out and there was no time to get cold because believe me the temperatures here are miserable and indoors even more so!!