Albeit dry, today’s weather consisted of unrelenting Stygian gloom.
We set out sometime after 3.00 p.m. which might as well have been dusk, and drove around for a short time before visiting Mum at Woodpeckers.
Ponies are now sporting shaggy winter coats.
One of these, intent perhaps on leaving some of its hibernal (not hibernate, WP) hair on the barbed wire penning it in its South Sway Lane field, with a fearsome whinny gave me the evil eye.
Shetland ponies near Brockenhurst attracted a corvine entourage.
I disembarked at Longslade to photograph the landscape.
Jackie photographed me playing chicken with the traffic,
then walking along the verge
to make the second landscape shot.
This was her version of it.
Mum seemed over her chest infection, as she spoke about
the Teddy she had made for Adam when he was small. This had emerged during Francis’s assistance in Elizabeth’s clear out.
This evening we dined on the Culinary Queen’s chicken and vegetable soup thick enough to stand your spoon in followed by lean baked ham; creamy mashed potato; piquant cauliflower cheese, and al dente broccoli, Brussels sprouts and carrots with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Garnacha Syrah.