Mrs N's birthday

This time last year Mrs N celebrated her birthday in the Lake District with an afternoon tea at the Inn on the Lake. This year we celebrated at home.

We were hoping to get out for the day to the gardens at Great Dixter House in East Sussex - a well known garden listed amongst the 50 best gardens to visit in England. In the event a band of wet, windy weather passed over Kent mid morning to early afternoon meaning that a visit to the garden would have not been a pleasant outing.

In the event we had a quiet but pleasant day showing Marion around Maidstone, calling it at Pop's for lunch. Although Marion has been to Bearsted several times she's never ventured into the town centre so we spent a couple of hours showing off the delights of the town and having a little moan about the bad stuff too.

By the time we'd finished our tour it was home for tea and cake, Susan managed to blow out all the candles without slobbering all over the cake - so we were able to enjoy a large slab of very rich but extremely tasty chocolate cake. We had only a short time to get over the cake before it was time to go out for the celebration meal at the Oak on the Green where we all had scampi and chips.