Saturday 15th March
At home on Saturday to entertain Suzanne, Miles and Fiona and Mark. They all arrived at 7:30 on the dot. Maggi had layed out nibbles including a guacamole dip she had made.
We chatted for awhile and then sat near the telly to watch the start of France v Scotland. Early in the day England had absolutely smashed the Welsh team in Cardiff and if Scotland could overcome the French then England could become the 6 Nations Champions 2025. To begin with Scotland’s performance looked promising but as the game progressed the French grew stronger and eventually ran out 35-16 winners. Still English supporters had the joy of England winning quite comprehensively 14-68 running 10 tries, quite astonishing.
We all sat down for our meal. Maggi cooked one of her staples, fish pie from Rick Stein’s Secret France cookbook. As usual it all went down well and Maggi received lots of compliments. To finish off Maggi had created a lemon tart using the lemons we had brought back from our garden in France.
The conversation jogged along easily with plenty of chatter. I noticed that both Suzanne and Miles are very healthy drinkers while at the same time Mark and Fiona are both non-drinkers. I thought it odd that Mark brought along 2 cans of Guiness zero but when I told him I had some non-alcoholic beers he put his bak in the bag. After drinking two of the brew dog zeros he started drinking water. At the end of the night Mark put his hand back in the bag and said he may as well take his Guiness zeros back with him. What was I meant to reply?
They all left past 11:30, over 4 hours after they had arrived, which as the host and hostess we should be proud that everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Sunday 16th March
Fiona, Mark, Helen and Matt and the pair of us had set this date aside to discuss our trip to Naples in October in order to work out an itinerary that we could all agree to. We took the train over to Northwood and walked to the Riley’s house. Mark drove to our meeting point at the gatehouse of the Shardoloes estate. Helen and Matt arrived shortly afterwards in Helen’s new electric car.
We had a pleasant two hour walk basically all around the estate and then back down to Little Missenden. We visited the parish church dedicated to St John the Baptist. The central part of the church dates back over 1000 years to 975 ad and there is evidence of red Roman bricks indicating that the site was occupied much earlier.
I noticed a small black button on one of the pews. We presses the button and this lit up some of the wall paintings.
Suddenly the place came alive and you could start to imagine what this place must have looked like more than 800 years ago with bright colours and images that the local congregation would have understood and probably the parish priest would have based his sermons on. When I entered I noticed the warmth in the place and wondered how much it must cost to keep up this small local chapel. When we left I donated £5, which is really unusual for me.
We walked on back to where we had parked our cars and then drove to Amersham where we had booked for lunch at the Griffin for 4:30. The meal was fine but not as good as when we had recently been with Jane and Ray, so I was a little disappointed. Mark was kind enough to drive us all the way home so we didn’t need to catch the train at Northwood.
The other disappointment of the day was not being able to watch Arsenal beat Chelsea 1-0