Dad is still in hospital, he’s hoping to be discharged in time for his birthday on the 5^th.  I spoke to Hilary last night, she says he’s much better, off the antibiotic drip and complaining about the hospital food.  A good sign.  Fingers crossed he can come home.  She said the girls had knitted Grandad a scarf for his birthday.  They couldn’t agree on the colour, each has done one end, leaving her to try joining them together.  She sent a photo, there is one red end and one green end but they are not the same width! Hilary has had to cobble the two ends together.  Grandad will have a choice of colours is the girls’ rationale.

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This month we are collecting books for the Book Bank.  Children’s books are the most popular.  We put a box out at the beginning of the week with a poster in bright bold colours asking for good quality books, especially children’s.  So far we have one bible, three maths text books, a scribbled on colouring in book, 13 copies of the same WWII novel and a first aid manual.  Clearly my publicity efforts have failed.  Beth offered to do some ‘hard core’ social media.  I have no idea what that means but whatever she did worked. We now have a box full of children’s picture books, YA novels, a complete set of Beatrix Potter, which I’m commandeering for the library, and completely blank colouring in books.  Result.

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In a moment of utter madness last week, I asked Derek, my rescuer last December when I slipped on the ice after Carols on The Green, whether he would like to come round for pancakes on Shrove Tuesday evening.  Before you could say eggs and milk he’d accepted the invitation.  Hilary and Mum excel at cooking, regularly outdoing each other with complex dishes.  I gave up trying to master cooking long ago.  I spent last night studying St Delia for tips on pancake making and pancake tossing.  I even checked out YouTube videos watching numerous so called experts telling me how easy it was, just a flick of the wrist. What have I let myself in for?

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I swear that cat of mine can smell cream at 20 paces.  Derek brought a punnet of strawberries and a large pot of extra thick double cream to go with the pancakes.  Even though the batter was a bit lumpy the pancake tossing went reasonably well, three totally successful, one complete miss and an unspecified number of near catches.  Derek has made a friend for life, letting Charles Dickens lick the cream off the lid of the pot.

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For ‘World Poetry Day’ we are planning a poetry reading at the library with the local writers’ group.  Tabatha runs the group and is always looking for ways to promote their work.  I wasn’t looking forward to negotiating a late opening night with the cleaning team who come in after the library closes, but Tabatha tipped me off that one of the poetry group was the son of the supervisor, so no problem there.  I’m not the greatest fan of poetry at the best of times.  I know as a librarian I’m supposed to ‘LOVE’ all things literary, but I don’t.  When the group came a few years ago we didn’t have a large audience and some even left before the end!  I hope the man who reads the long, tedious poems about the sea has a short one or better still, doesn’t come at all.

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The sea poem man came, he has progressed beyond the sea to the shore.  To be more accurate, sand.  Just Sand.  No castles, shells, pebbles just yellow, white, grey sand.  There is only so much you can say about Sand.  One young woman, who is studying creative writing at Lancaster University Tabatha told me, was outstanding.  Her skilful use of words and delicate sense of rhythm were masterful.  She read, or to be more accurate, performed 2 poems.  One about ‘Time’- moving back and forth crossing dimensions.  The 2^nd was a humorous narrative verse about the friendship between a monkey and an elephant.  She has gone a long way to converting me.  I still prefer novels but now I have more of an appreciation of poetry.

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Last night, ate the few remaining strawberries with the last scraping of cream.  I had to banish Charles Dickens out of the kitchen as he was being such a pest.  I wish Derek hadn’t given him the cream lid to lick, he now has expectations.

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Perhaps ten years isn’t so much of an age gap after all.