Baby animals, church encounters and a brief spring clean

Lord H feeling a bit low today, as am I a little, so the two of us are depressed together. Marital harmony. It's a wonderful thing. So we've been quiet, but not completely silent, which is nice. A slow start to our morning too.

We decided not to go shopping for a new casual jacket for Lord H, as he wasn't really feeling up to it, and visited Burpham Court Farm to look at the baby animals instead. There weren't many people around, which was a complete surprise, but very pleasant. Though I did get rather irritated by the Neanderthal Woman on the till who took ten minutes (at least!) to sell us a ticket. But I couldn't be arsed to (a) get cross or (b) be witty, so I just stared at her blankly until she finally gave in and sold us an admission sticker. Ye gods though, no wonder there weren't many people around. There've probably been loads, but none of them could be bothered to wait for N.W. to get her act together.

Anyway, it was nice wandering round and seeing the baby llama, the lambs (different varieties and ages), calves, ducklings, chicks and goslings. I took loads of photos, which have come out surprisingly well, for me. That is, there is actually something vaguely recognisable as an animal (or bird) in most of them, rather than just a lot of grass and the odd hoof, which is my normal level of expertise.

Came home via the Great God Waitrose, where we have stocked up on Chinese for this evening, sushi for lunch (I love sushi - could eat it every day), beer, cider and the paper. Everything you could need for a weekend indeed. The paper was full of stuff about eBay, so I have told Irene (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/blacks.house/), as it might come in handy for Goldenford's (http://www.goldenford.co.uk) forthcoming book, if only as a useful contact point. Heck they might even review it - you never know.

Lord H dropped me off at home and then went to St Peter's to return a box of the stuff from the vestry which we've had for a while. He thought this would be a good time to do it when nobody was around, as we are after all, and if truth be told, in the final stages of leaving the church and we don't really want the contact. Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately depending on your viewpoint - the lay reader was there and asked Lord H if he was still okay to do next week's serving duties. He took the opportunity to say he wasn't and that he wanted to come off the rota, as well as giving back the vestry items. Apparently, the lay reader took this badly and got rather upset, so poor Lord H thought it best to just go. Which I think was probably the wisest move - though I do wish with all my heart that I'd gone with him, as I'm better able to cope with female tears, being a hard-nosed bitch when push comes to shove. It also would, I think, have been fairer to me to take some of the confrontation too, as I'm the one who began the process of leaving first. But it was obviously not meant to be that way. Though I think Lord H is glad that he had the chance to say his piece face to face rather than by email - for him it's a more honest way. Being me, however, I do admit to a rather bitter-tasting anger that somebody cried when hearing the news that my husband is leaving St Peter's, when no-one seemed to give a badger's arse (sorry, Bryony - your phrase I know, but it's a great one) when I left. They were probably laughing. Buggers!

At home, we finished off the rest of the cleaning, and then indulged in a spot of spring cleaning also. God, we must both be depressed, as this is something we never do. But it's cheered me up a little at least (which just proves that Grandma was right after all, dammit - hard work is a cure for all ills, though to be fair I've taken a happiness pill as well ...). I've packed up all my teapots (I used to collect these, sad to say) and put them in boxes so we have lots of lovely room to put books on the shelves instead. Instead of on the floor, where books usually go. Hurrah! While all that was going on, Lord H has cleared out the hall cupboard and we've created three binbags of rubbish, and we've then put the teapots in the cupboard so they're out of the way. Not only that, but Lord H has rearranged the cupboard so we have a boot section, a cleaning section, a domestics section and a food section. Rather than just chucking everything in higgledy-piggledy as was our wont. He also expressed interest in rearranging our DVD collection into Director and Year of Production, but I have dissuaded him on the grounds of marital sanity. Or any other sanity indeed. There's a limit to how sad even we can be in one day after all ...

Oh, and I've had another email from a member of the university gang, asking for a quick response to something I've already sorted out (though they don't know that). Frankly, bearing in mind that my emails are so rarely answered or even responded to, I'm not going to bother. So I've ... um ... deleted it. Ha! It's nice to be the one on the other end of a non-response this time, I have to say. As you can see, the older I get, the more of a cynical bitch I am turning into. Hell, I always knew it would happen ...

I've also scribbled some more of The Gifting down and hope to type it up later. Which just goes to show that I may not be able to sell the buggers but, bloody hell, I can still write 'em. And there's an evening of TV to look forward to, including "Dr Who", so it's not all sad faces and plain biscuits. Thank God.

Oh, and Jackie (http://freespace.virgin.net/jackie.luben/) has kindly added her review of A Dangerous Man (http://www.flamebooks.com) onto Amazon, which you can find here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dangerous-Man-Anne-Brooke/dp/0954594568/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/202-0915331-5590251?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177779615&sr=8-1. Thanks so much, Jackie - much appreciated!

Today's nice things:

1. Baby animals
2. The Amazon review
3. TV.

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com