More Country Views

I suspect that Shamus the cat is cannily aware that he is about to be sent off to his cat hotel for a stay there whilst his family are in France. (We leave this afternoon to spend the week with Diane's parents near Montpellier.) I was the first down this morning, and on his somewhat noisy insistence treated him to a bowlful of the food I found on the laundry porch. He promptly rewarded me with a huge, foul-smelling throw-up on the carpet while I was trying to settle down to my morning meditation. I mopped up as best I could, and tried to open the French doors to the garden, to let out some of the offensive smell; but alas, the doors are locked, besides being bolted, with some fiendish device that clearly requires a special key which I was unable to find. I have taken refuge in the kitchen...



I'm wondering how much more of this beautiful English countryside you can take before yawning furiously and sneaking off to Daily Kos? I hope a little more. We drove out yesterday to the Ivinghoe Beacon, a high point in the Hertfordshire hills where you can see foe miles around. These hilltops were actually used, some centuries before the Internet, as a fast way to pass on news by lighting bonfires. Not sure how folks knew how to interpret the message in the fire, but that--to the best of my recollection--is how news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada was spread.





(Joe's feeling the breeze. There was a stiff, cold wind at the summit. It felt a bit like Scott at the South Pole.)



Here's the family at a stile on the way back down...



... and Georgia, making a smiley face in the dirt in a recently ploughed field...



... and here's where we stopped for a picnic, by this fantastic climbing tree..



We stopped in the little town of Harpenden on the way home, with a visit to various stores to buy gifts for the children. It's always hard, at the distance we live, to know what to give them for Christmas and birthdays, so we have this annual ritual when we visit.

Matthew cooked up an excellent dinner. And here's the gang before bedtime...