More friends

Otto and Mirjam catching up with emails
'Golden Rain', overlooking Nürburgring Drive, as I call it. Boy racers seem to regard it as their testing ground especially at anti-social hours of the night. The speed limit is meant to be 30 mph.


We've had our friends, Otto, Mirjam and Anne, staying with us over the weekend. They're from Holland and we met them last year for the first time at New Wine in Somerset, when it rained rather a lot. They came in the middle of the week and sat right in front of us, because Anne, like me, was in a wheelchair. She has had one leg amputated after having bone cancer. She is 17 and has acute special needs, but we got on very well. She loves worship music and even having a prosthesis doesn't stop her dancing. We are delighted because in September they are coming to study in Bristol for a term, so we should see more of them.

We learned from them that the Dutch for Laburnum is Golden Rain, which is rather apt. At the moment, there is a couple of amorous pigeons trying to nest in our laburnum, who have been making a bit of an exhibition of themselves. I think they may have been raided this morning in the early hours, as there was a great hullabaloo in the garden about 4.30. Birds alarm calls all over the place, the dog barking, the whole house woken. In the morning there were strands of laburnum on the grass, signs, I imagine, of a treetop struggle, and today there's no sign of them on their nest.... It's a harsh world out there.