Today is one of my days off (Friday 23rd Oct), and instead of staying home and doing some things that need doing, I am sitting on a train, on my way to London where I am meeting my friend Leanne for lunch. Leanne lives in the back of beyond (Sleaford, Lincolnshire), but works in London. We checked our diaries and there wasn’t a weekend between now and the end of the year that we could meet up. Either she was busy or I was busy. So the only solution is meeting her in London for lunch. We were planning to come to London for the weekend anyhow this weekend, so I am merely travelling down on the train a little earlier. Tim will meet me a little later this afternoon as he’ll drive down.

And we are going to London for a reason. Of course reason number one is to visit Tim’s sister & family. But we chose this weekend as it is also the weekend for the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park. I have been wanting to go for about 7 years, but each year we’re busy! This year we had some change of plans, freeing us up and making it possible to go. I don’t really know what to expect. I wonder whether it is going to be one of those where, when it started 10 years ago, it truly was an affordable art fair, but 10 years and much publicity later, it might just be over-commercialised. Only time will tell. I know that from this year or last, they have introduced a second fair in the spring as well as one hosted in Manchester. I would imagine that the Manchester one will be much smaller. Once again, I was unable to go this year as I was in South Africa.

Other things I have been doing: I joined a book club. The first book I had to read was “A mercy” by Toni Morrison. What a load of pretentious rubbish, in my opinion. Only positive I can see is that it had only 165 pages, so I was put out of my misery quite quickly. When you read online reviews of the book, they praise it. “Poetic” and “Brilliant” they claim, but I think it is an “Emperor’s new clothes” effect. Critics don’t want to damn it, because other critics say it is so brilliant. The 3 of us who made it to book club didn’t have much good to say about the book – all of us found it very difficult to read and understand. A pointless read in my opinion.

I have also been doing some sewing. My friend, Tamsin and my sister-in-law, Jodi, are both having babies soon, so I want to make something hand-made for each of them. I am about 60% complete. Hopefully I will get it done before the babies arrive!

Of course my foraging and processing my free food has been very time-consuming.

And lastly, I have realised that I am in a rut as far as cooking goes. Tim has been doing most of the cooking recently, as he has had more time than I have had. But I decided that once a week I will make something I have never made before. Lisa would join us as a guinea pig. But hopefully this will help her too one night a week she won’t need to cook, giving her more time to study in the run up to her exams.

Of course many Friday nights are still taken up by rugby. Tim and I renewed our Sale Sharks season tickets, in spite of the fact that Sale has a rubbish team this year …

Each weekend has been booked up: bonfire night, wedding, rugby, family visits, pre-christmas visits, weekends away etc.

My life certainly is not boring!