A long walk

Last night we had a lovely dinner out - the food was outstanding, and of course as is always the case when everyone gets together we had some very lively debate around the table. Thankfully we were in a little room tucked away from the rest of the dining area as the debate got very lively at times! Meriel has just spent the week being seconded to Alastair Jack (The Secretary of State for Scotland) as a private secretary and had a thrilling week including going into the House of Commons and seeing all the famous politicians. So at dinner the question was posed by Meriel as to  what we thought of Scotland's new gender reform bill which was extended to allow 16 year olds to acquire a gender recognition certificate (GRC) that changes their designated sex without the need for any medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and the bill also allows the time that someone has been living in their acquired gender to be reduced from 2 years to 3 months - or 6 months for 16 and 17 years olds. You can see why it is a very controversial bill and although Scotland's devolved government can make legal decisions on such matters, in terms of section 35 of the Scotland Act the UK government can prevent this new law from coming into force. A very hot topic at the moment in parliament as was evidenced by our discussion at dinner!

Today was sunny but cold. After breakfast we finally got everyone out the house for a long walk, from our house to Oxshott Heath and then on to Esher Common before coming home again. It was just under 10km and a lovely walk to blow away the cobwebs! Here is a photo of us taken by Gavin.

For lunch I made curries - a lamb curry which I made yesterday and a vegan curry (actually a South Indian sambar) made with butternut, lentils, beans and tomato. Both went down well. The young adults have all left now, it was lovely to get together this weekend to celebrate Tommy's birthday as we won't see him on Tuesday on the actual date of his birthday.

Cold weather expected next week!