balloons – derrickjknight

“I Buy Dat”

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The weight of traffic through Lyndhurst and on the A27 meant that the journey to Upper Dicker on the way to Poppy’s birthday celebration took 4 hours in contrast to the normal two and a half that the return trip occupied. Fortunately we left home early enough to spend the afternoon there.

When we arrived our granddaughter was occupied with coloured chalks drawing on the paving stones in the garden.

Jackie and I had brought her a couple of ballerina dresses. She liked them both,

but it was the deep red one that she proudly chose to wear on this occasion.

She is very fond of her food, and now needs little assistance, here rendered by Tess, to unwrap a biscuit. She thought her hat complemented that of her mother.

Plenty of balloons testified to the festive occasion.

Becky and Ian gave her a helium filled one that was a great hit. Tess inconspicuously prepared a splendid spread of grilled steaks and various tasty salads. Mat was in charge of beverages, and thought it a good wheeze to offer me a local beer named Old Man brewed by the Long Man Brewery. I enjoyed it.

Poppy’s aunt and uncle also gave her a suitably decorated mirror which she gave several nose prints.

Another of their presents was a battery-operated bubble machine.

She soon got the hang of operating this.

Soon, a sleep was in order, until

Tess’s delicious birthday cake was produced.

Although the birthday girl was persuaded to blow out one candle herself, she needed Ian’s assistance because she was far more interested in prising of the M & Ms and popping them into her mouth.

Matthew told us the story of the blue hat. He and Poppy had visited a charity shop in Emsworth with Becky a few days ago. Spotting the hat, Becky had placed it within Poppy’s line of sight. Her niece grabbed it and tottered off with it to the changing room, from which emanated “I like dat. I buy dat”. Out she came. Her Dad gave her the necessary dosh. Over to the counter she trotted, slapped the money on the wooden surface and said “I buy dat, lady”

Jackie and I needed no further food or drink, other than water, this evening.

Face Painting

Jackie is a little better today, and managed to insert in the softened ground by the new roses labels she had made yesterday.

On another wet, still humid, overcast day I ambled down to Roger’s footpath and back. A pair of intrepid ramblers togged up from the boot of their car and set off ahead of me. I wondered whether they were wearing the Gore Tex featured yesterday.

Even the bees had stayed at home in their hives.

Somehow, St John’s wort sparkled along the back drive.I scanned more photographic prints from the 1985 garden fete where Sam ate his apple whilst watching a Punch and Judy show. Because of the amount of retouching required this took much of the day, which it certainly brightened up.

Jessica’s cousin, the local vet, was in charge of balloons. He seemed to have run out of hands to ensure they did not blow away

like the bubbles Jessica, Louisa, and Sam watched.

Soon the track for the running race was roped across the grass,

and a little boy eavesdropped on Louisa’s coaching session.

Her Mum led her to the start line, and

soon she was off in pursuit

of her brother and another lad. As a long distance runner, I learned that if you cannot talk you are going too fast. The opposite, of course, is true of sprinting, but no-one seems to have mentioned that to these two boys.

The Punch and Judy show, as it always would, enraptured all the children;

one of whom, as her emotions fluctuated, became excited enough to make her mascara run. The little chap behind her wasn’t exactly happy. Perhaps Mr Punch was becoming violent. The girl was one of a number who had subjected themselves to the art of the beautician before the show:

Sam’s turn came later:

Mr Pink provided fish and chips for Jackie and me this evening. I drank the bottle of Hepworth’s Prospect Ale that Ian had given me yesterday. It proved to be the perfect accompaniment.

Ruby

Slowly, mist dispersed from the garden as we drank our morning coffee.

Jackie drove us to The First gallery for midday where we joined the party celebrating the fortieth year of the artwork exhibitions at the home of Margery and Paul. This was a very happy occasion with friends gathered by this mother and son over a lifetime. We are pleased to be counted members of this honoured group.

In keeping with the theme there was a ruby coloured beetroot soup with a number of other ingredients. The ingenious Paul had devised a method of topping the soup with a creamy 40. This was done with sterilised garden wire dipped into the mixture and laid on rather like the shamrock sprayed onto the head of a pint of Guinness by dextrous bar staff. I was fortunate enough to be presented with a perfect specimen, but they didn’t all come out like that. One young woman decided that hers, also including a lentil version looked like the female symbol which she invited me to photograph.

We had all been invited to bring an inflated red balloon. On arrival we were informed that there would be a prize for the last person to hold an unburst one. The secret was to keep yours out of the way of broach pins and forks, toasting or otherwise. Leo, the youngest member of the group clung to his two until the very end.

Margery had made a splendid selection of small snacks and a superb chocolate sponge cake which formed the centrepiece of the desserts table which was soon emptied. She made the first half cut across and directed Paul to complete it. He was, after all, part of the partnership and moreover had decorated it. We toasted the pair with Champagne heavily laced with cranberry juice. One guest was keen to help our hostess protect her balloon. Elizabeth, in the foreground of this picture, didn’t have a red balloon, so she painted the legend: ‘I AM RED HONEST’ on hers.

Leo was very quiet throughout, but the conversation at one point did turn to methods of preventing small babies from disturbing parents’ slumber. When Jackie told us a story about one of the elderly ladies she had cared for thirty years ago, a tongue twister competition ensued. This client’s childhood would have gone back to the end of the nineteenth century when her mother had the perfect antidote to nighttime tears. She would make a ‘tea’ with a ‘penn’orth of poppy heads from the apothecary’. Quite a lot of spluttering accompanied somewhat inebriated efforts to repeat this.

It was quite close to sunset as the party broke up and we all went home. Driving due West into a magnificent sunset Jackie turned off the M27 taking the Fawley road, in an effort to get me into the forest before the sun disappeared. She didn’t quite manage that, but, as so often, the shots were more attractive with clouds lit from below. The pools on the heathland near Debden Purlieu, the Beaulieu River, and Hatchet Pond all added their reflective charm to the views. This was perhaps the perfect close to a ruby day.

By the time Jackie dropped me at Milford on Sea so that I could walk home via the cliff top and Shorefield, darkness had set in, but there was just enough light reflecting off The Solent for me to catch a bit more of sundown along the coast. As I walked up the dimly lit Downton Lane I removed my black waterproof coat and carried it so that the headlights of oncoming traffic could gleam on my buff sports jacket.

After the spread laid on at The First, a small bowl of Jackie’s chicken jalfrezi and egg fried rice accompanied by the last of the Cotes du Rhone Villages (red, of course) wine sufficed for our evening sustenance.