A very happy unbirthday

Mirinda just told me that it was Jane Austen’s birthday today. Fortunately, rather than just jumping in and writing that it was her birthday, I decided to check. I discovered that it was not Jane’s birthday today and won’t be until December 16. So, you can safely ignore that.

It was, however, Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen’s birthday today. She was Jane’s niece. I’d like to say we celebrated it but we didn’t.

Instead, we had the perfect English Sunday. After a sleep in, enjoyed by all three of us, it was off to Thursley for a fabulous walk around (and through at one point) the bogs.

Remarkably, there were a lot of people there this morning. We’ve never seen such numbers before. A lot of them appeared to be twitchers (not unusual in a wildlife reserve) but there were also joggers, dog walkers, horse riders, cyclists and even a bunch of ramblers.

It really was very busy. And, amazingly, it was still quite early. But, it has to be said, no-one followed us into the bog though I did see a couple of belted Galloway’s chuckling behind their electric fence.

At the end of our walk, we watched as four big dogs jumped into the lake after a ball. The fifth one stayed on the pontoon. Then there was the little Jack Russell who really wanted to go in the water but it was his first time. So his owner went in with him…just to make sure he was okay. It was a rather funny little scene.

We left the very crowded car park and headed back to the cottage so Mirinda could have her Skype-fest and hear all about Fiona’s strange new habit of singing, drinking and riding bicycles at 3am. Apparently, while she’s mastered most of it, the dismount still has her somewhat baffled.

We also heard all about Bob’s very suspicious neighbour and new found friend, George. He seems to have some sort of magical power. Whenever Bob tried to talk about him, Skype went a bit odd and cut Bob off. It happened with a consistently that leant strongly towards conspiracy. Apart from anything, George possibly murdered his wife and had two very scary dogs that may have mauled a bus load of Paraguayan tourists.

Of course, it’s all conjecture and what I’ve written may wind up being changed by George’s magical powers. So the best thing would be to just forget about it.

Following the mysterious Skyping, we went up to the Holly Bush for a rapidly becoming traditional Sunday lunch. This week we had the squid followed by the lamb. Both delicious…though the pickled cabbage had lost some it’s zing.

The rest of the day was spent, basically chilling (well, apart from Mirinda having to read a 20,000 word document in preparation for an all important meeting this week).

Days like today are one of the reasons we live here.