Four full days and a walk in the woods

These are the sights I saw on my half hour walk last week, when it seemed a really spring like day. I make no excuse for including two photos of the crocuses in my garden.

A little further on, in my neighbour's garden a delightful display of snowdrops, to rival those at Wisley Gardens. I counted my own. 16 to date, but there'll be more next year.

Along the way, in a sheltered spot, some early daffodils.

I pass the little brook on my way to see the shetland pony, who lives happily in a field sometimes with a sheep for company.

After a quiet weekend, I've had a busy few days. Goldenford meeting occupied Monday morning and in the evening, I went with Irene and Joe to a filmed performance of Aida in Guildford. The two heroines were rather mature and matronly in appearance (I thought one of them was Dawn French at first) and the hero looked somewhat cross-eyed (partly as a result of his eye makeup) and villainous, but the music and sets were great, and surprisingly, after a while, I began to suspend disbelief. The second act was the best, full of triumphal music and well-known tunes.

On Tuesday, I managed the start of a short story for Writers' News, which I read out in the evening at Guildford Writers' Circle. Yesterday, the OH and I went to meet family from Kent at Haslemere for a perforance of Martha, a German opera, performed by Opera South. First we met up at the Winterton Arms for a tea, specially prepared by them for us. Lots of sandwiches, scones and cake. I managed to ignore the scones and cream, but indulged in the lemon drizzle cake. The opera was light, but fun and pleasant. To my surprise I won a collection of five CDs in their raffle, which brings my car collection to six.

And today, I've been to Guildford to meet up with my Surrey Graduate friends at the Guildford Institute for a veggie lunch. I was extremely strong minded and ignored the pecan crunchie meringue pie. Afterwards in a browse around Guildford, I found that Waterstone's, North Street, had got in copies of Tainted Tree; I went to the High Street branch to tell them that, and they said they were also ordering copies. (Copies of my novella, A Bottle of Plonk, were also on the shelves.) The fifth library copy has now arrived at Horsley Library, so Surrey people can read TT without problems. So a satisfactory day and week all round.