Birthday girl

I'm lucky that despite living so far away from them, I get to see my folks quite regularly. They live in south London and, as I'm often down that way on business, I stay with them once or twice a month, sometimes overnight and sometimes for a bit longer.

What is frustrating is that their grandchildren don't get to see them so often. My parents both have busy lives, anyway, but the fact that my mum is a church minister, who seems to be as busy now as she was before she retired, means that opportunities for them to make the great journey north are infrequent.

Happily, though, they came up last Thursday for the whole of the bank holiday weekend and, doubly happily, today was my mum's birthday. We had a birthday BBQ with the little ones, yesterday, and this evening we went to Avanti with all the big girls, although, admittedly, Izzy was serving us and not actual sat at the table.

It was a lovely evening. The food there is great, the girls were all on good form and, well, it was just wonderful to see everyone so happy.