Still no word from Pepys

A glorious, sunny day, and we're currently driving from Lewes to Thaxted. We're listening to Marina and the Diamonds, have just seen two magpies (good news) an enormous hot air balloon is drifting through the Eastern sky and a wonderful sunset is plainly on the cards. Life is good. 

Sadly, we've run out of windscreen wash in the car, and have just had a very entertaining episode, which involved my attempting to squirt a bottle of mineral water onto the windscreen through a side window as the car hurtled up the A23 at 70mph. I didn't realise that the wind would simply blow what I was squirting back into the car. I am now soaking wet!

The day started in Regent's Park, where we met Raily, Iain, Tiny Jeanie-Rae and my godson, Will, who is turning into an adorable young man. I felt extremely guilty to be handing him a Christmas present, and acknowledging that I was seeing him for the first time this year. There are people in my life that I don't see nearly enough, and one of my half-year resolutions is to put an end to this unsatisfactory state of affairs. 

We drove to Lewes through the centre of town and regretted our decision at every red traffic light. After an hour, we discovered to our horror that we'd only travelled ten miles. When you live at 12 o'clock in London, getting to six o'clock in anything other than real time is almost impossible! 

The trip to Lewes was to attend Meriel and Roy's housewarming party. They're currently living in a beautiful house in the rolling chalky hills on the outskirts of the town. It was a barbecue, so we all ate rather too much food. Meriel and Roy are both vegetarian and I noticed that a large  number of the other guests were making a beeline for the veggie options. I suggested to Meriel that there might be a rather high percentage of vegetarians at the party, to which she responded "not really. Only about 50%!" Umm... I'd call that a fairly high percentage! 

350 years ago, and there was still no news from Pepys, who was stranded in a rural black hole. What was his problem? No Internet connection? I like to imagine him pathetically wandering around the village of Brampton in search of pretty ladies, decent wine and intelligent conversation, whilst secretly wondering how long he'd need to stay before packing his bags and vanishing would be considered anything less than rude!