Despite there being little sun and a quantity of intermittent rain today, bees were busy harvesting nectar from Jackie’s plants.
This afternoon I walked through Minstead to Football Green; up to and through the grounds of Minstead Lodge; down Seamans Lane and skirted Suters Cottage; to emerge from the forest on Running Hill just below Lower Drive. (Memo to self: if you venture into the open woods in sandals after a couple of days’ rain you will get your feet wet.)
Minstead Lodge’s horses were favoured with fly-sheets.
Their companion donkeys were not. Maybe they are not as plagued by the little nippers as are the larger animals.
I moved into 29 Sutherland Place in July 2007. Soon after this, a small child pointed out the camera integral to my i-Mac computer, and that this was a wizard way of taking your own picture. 
Much fun was had by Oliver and Alice in particular, and many hours were spent playing with the special effects that could be achieved, especially if you were prepared to pull funny faces. On 30th July, Heidi, Oliver, Alice, and I had a very fruitful session. I seem to have cut my chin shaving.
By 15th November 2008, Oliver had become quite proficient. 
This I discovered some time later when I found a couple of dozen mixed colour, and distorted effect pictures planted in the computer.
By December 2009, Louisa had persuaded me into Skype, and I believe I actually took picture number 23 in the ‘through the ages’ series whilst I was Skyping her.
I was certainly speaking with her on the phone.
The coriander garnish decorating Jackie’s tasty savoury rice that she served up with her delicious chicken jalfrezi, accompanied by popadoms and paratas from a little shop in New Milton, was in bloom. 
That is the result of growing the herb in pots and not using it quickly enough. It does mean we will have plenty of seeds for next year. With my meal I finished the Cotes du Rhone opened a day or so ago.
Have you ever coughed or otherwise breathed in at an awkward moment when eating, and wound up with a pea firmly lodged in a part of your respiratory system? It usually irritates somewhere between the back of your throat and your nostrils, until eventually you blow it out into your handkerchief. Well, I’ll let you know in good time whether mine of this evening is a grain of rice or indeed a pea.
Ron Sveden from Massachusetts once ate a pea that ‘went down the wrong way’. Jackie read out his story from BBC news the other day. It was in August 2010 that he was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung. He feared cancer until the doctors informed him that he had a pea plant growing inside his lung. If I should be nurturing a paddy field I will report that too.