Paul Johnston

Daphne and I celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary yesterday with a trip to Gravetye Manor in East Sussex, near East Grinstead.

It's a place we love to go to on special occasions, wonderfully tranquil with excellent service, food and wine. The gardens are lovely even after the kind of weather we have been having. Yesterday afternoon it stopped raining at last and we could sit in the garden over coffee after lunch and enjoy the view and the mixture of sounds provided by woodpidgeons and the distant whistle of the occasional steam engine on the nearby Bluebell Line preserved railway. Very evocative of 'Miss Marple'. Very English!

Daphne and I took a cruise in the Mediterranean on the QE2, hence the inactivity for a couple of weeks. This picture was taken from the top of a hill in Barcelona, one of our ports of call. I decided not to try long distance blogging. We are rather upset that the ship has been sold to Dubai just at the point where we have been able to make her acquaintance from the inside. However we have booked a couple more sails on her before she goes to (probably) her final resting place. She's the most travelled ship in world history and, I believe, the last ship of her size to be built in Britain - the QM2 and the new Queen Victoria being built elsewhere.

I can't help recalling that we are still an island surrounded entirely by sea and that the abitiy to build ships is one that we should foster rather than discard. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned........ 

As we enter the last week of Advent, let me take this opportunity to wish all who read this a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous year in 2007

This morning the first parakeet appeared in the red hawthorn in our garden since the spring.

It must be time to put the peanut feeder out again. As the picture shows they are very keen on them.

Some people think them a nuisance but I think they make a colourful change from pigeons and starlings and they don't seem to frighten off the smaller birds like various types of finch.

Unlike the starlings they don't compete for the same food as the smaller birds.