Announcements, foliage and soup.

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1. Text messages and Facebook updates indicating that a crowd of my friends have got engaged on Valentine's Day.

2. Gardeners carrying the remains of a laurel tree to a trailer look like shaggy leaf monsters.

3. The smell of chicken soup creeps through the house, quietly putting everything to rights.

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Bee, green beans and movie night.

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1. An enormous fat bumble bee at work. She is so bulky that she can knock dead blossoms out of the way as she gets right in to the new jasmine flowers. 2. Green beans squeaking in my teeth. 3. We watch The Goonies . It's fun to see it through adult eyes; and it's fun to see my daughter suddenly understanding gags and references that she's seen in other media.
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Midsummer, feeding and cakes.

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1. The shortest night and the longest day. I was up at Wellington Rocks with Anna, Paul and Jason. We couldn't see the sun through the mizzling clouds, but we had got up at 4am and were there observing the moment it came up, and that's what counts. 2. Food at The Junction Inn , Groombridge. All four lunchclub members were impressed by the quality -- although the portions were rather small. I had smoked eel with beetroot cream (Oli says that sounds like witch food, but it was delicious, and didn't taste of beetroot at all); Ed and Doug had wild mushroom risotto; and Johnny P got his face round a huge homemade burger. It had chips with it that were very good too -- I know this because I stole some. 3. Taking The Mother's homemade cakes to work. There were three -- one chocolate, one coffee and walnut and one lemon with homemade jam in the middle. There was a lot of stickiness in the office for most of the afternoon.
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As needed, forgotten cake and syrup.

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1. I promised myself I wouldn't moan and grumble about it -- but I do. And as if by magic, a very kind friend produces the required blazer (and also the next size up). 2. I'd forgotten that I'd added a tiramisu cake to the shopping order. 3. The elderberry syrup is now so thick that it coats the spoon.
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