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We were both reprieved from gardening duties this morning by the rain.
I scanned a few more colour slides from 1981/2.
Here Sam enjoys swinging in a hammock at the Drapers’ home in Meldreth near Royston in Cambridgeshire. This was August 1981.
In December that year we had a rare heavy fall of snow in Gracedale Road, Furzedown, South London. Matthew and Becky made the best of it. That was probably the only time in their childhoods that it was possible to create such a magnificent snowman.
Another Cambridgeshire venue was the home of Nigel and Judy Pearson at Pastures farmhouse in Caxton. At a Christmas party there, Sam tucked into his first pheasant. I remember biting a piece of shot. This was also the first time I had sampled such fare.
In September 1982 we spent a couple of weeks at the Vachettes’ chateau at Fontaine in Normandy.
This is the garden in which Jessica basks in a deckchair with Arnoux, Marie-Helene, and the Vachette parents. As can be seen by the colour of the grass this was a very hot autumn.
Lying at Jessica’s feet
is Louisa in her carrycot;
while Sam enjoys the toys she will soon grow into.
This afternoon the sun shone, not only here in Downton, but also in Wimbledon where a tense Gentlemen’s Final took place. I watched it on television.
I will not reveal the winner, but his wife looks on.
Afterwards I wandered around the garden, doing some sporadic dead-heading, whilst Jackie watered some more hanging baskets
containing petunias, mimuluses and lobelia.
She also slaked the the thirst of this urn containing petunias, trailing geraniums, and bidens, with penstemons at the side,
suspended in the Rose Garden.
The hydrangea at the corner of Elizabeth’s Bed is thriving;
as are the lilies and clematises in the New Bed;
and the hebes are coming into bloom.
This evening we dined on Mister Chatty Man’s Hordle Chinese Take Away. Jackie drank a blend of Hoegaarden and Bavaria non-alcoholic beer, while I consumed more of the Carignan Vieilles Vignes.