Thursday.

Yesterday we drove motored over to Bury  Saint Edmund's  to meet up  with  our (very) long term friends Alan  and Barbara. Barbara and Ann  were next door neighbours from birth (yes, really) in the  Norfolk  fens. Their fathers farmed adjacent farms.  Barbara and Alan married late in 1962, Ann  and I married early in 1963  - Beggar!!!! this machine has switched itself over to  writing in italics. Well, it will have to carry on doing  so until it can switch itself back to normal  service as I  don't know how to.  I rather suspect the machine does  know  how  to, but  it  isn't going  to tell me. Back to Barbara and Alan. When Alan retired  about fifteen  years  ago, they bought  a very nice mobile  home. Barbara had kept the village shop until then, but  they closed it, and turned it into part of their English home -  the idea being that they would spend all  winter in the mobile home exploring  the  warmer Southern Countries in Europe, then coming  home  to  East Anglia for the summer period.  They have been doing this  ever since, and we've been meeting up with them every year since then usually just  before they  head south again for  the   winter (I've an idea I've  told  you  all this before but bear with me). They take loads of photies  every winter, which Barbara turns into a winter travelogue/journal - and very  interesting  they  are  too. We had our annual lunch   in  Bury  Saint  Edmund's and  discussed Barbara and Alan's problem :- which is what to do with  the immediate future? WE are all four approaching the  four score years mark at much the same rate - and they both begin to  feel that driving several thousand miles South and back every winter on the wrong side of  the  road could become a suspicion wearing  at our age. I had   something of the the same decision to make  about a year ago about whether to retire from business or not, but my decision was  solved by my  Doctor very  strongly advising me to retire (and as he was very firmly  backed  up by Ann on  this  one,   the two of  them made my  mind up for  me).  In the end Barbara and Allan decided (pro tem) to make another journey  South this coming winter, which means we'll meet up as usual next year (as my late grandmother used to say "If spared"), and have the same discussion again then. Or as we more modern youngsters put it "God Willing".

P.s.  Now  I  must try and  beat this machine into resuming normal service, as opposed to itallics.