Sunday

 I met my friend C for coffee and cake yesterday.  It is something to look forward to for both of us and now is a regular Saturday thing for us. We never seem to run out of things to talk about.   We are going to the adult education garden party together next Saturday.  C did not want to go on her own.  She is a little bit more shy than I am!   C and I first met at a course on film run by the education group during the early part of Covid between lockdowns.  We talked a bit at that time but didn't really get to know each other until after Covid and we were on another course and we sat next to each other.  Then we kind of got to know each other better and then the 2024 general election clinched it when I told her I had voted Conservative when we bumped into each whilst shopping!  She hugged me in Waitrose and told me about her experiences with her bookclub where she didn't dare speak of politics, and still doesn't.  What a strange nation we are these days.  It was not like this for my mother, scared or not scared of talking politics,  in fact I don't think the question of speaking of politics outside the home every arose.  It was just something at the dinner table perhaps but even then it was low key and polite. My parents had friends of all political persuasions but it didn't seem to matter to my parents or their friends, as far as I am aware.   I remember delivering a present to a school friend immediately after I had left school and going into their house for the first time and finding they had a framed picture of Ted Heath on the wall above the Aga.   I remember being transfixed looking at it and thinking that perhaps politics mattered a lot more to them than to my family and it was all a bit in your face.  I pretended not to see it but the whole time I was there I kept seeing it out of the corner of my eye. (Ted Heath was the Conservative PM in the early 1970s, a surprise choice of leader at the time and not a popular one).   I still think of the picture on the wall as strange even now over 50 years later.  Incidentally I still see that friend and she still lives in the same house.  

Yesterday continued hot and after coffee and cake I came home and cleaned some windows which is making the outlook from where I am sitting looking at the garden much more pleasant this morning.  I can see some streaks I will have to deal with though. 

Today is the last day of the Tour so no more distractions of tour writing here. It has not been the most exciting of tours with Pogacar leading all the way and the gaps quite wide but it has had its moments and after missing it all last year because of my dissertation I have enjoyed catching up with it again and remembering and learning the names, both old and new. 

PS  at 10.43 am :    How strange weather is:  although we are experiencing temperatures here of 25 to 27C  hailstones are currently bouncing down outside on the garden and banging on my window and it is almost dark.