8th May

Sunday was a mellow day, filled with friends and family, food and drink (too much of both), fires and sunsets. It was the seventh birthday of the daughter of some good friends, and they always manage to combine a child’s party for her with a grown-up party, and like all the occasions which mark their children’s births (they have four), it has become a fixture in our calendar. The girl’s mother, my friend, is one of those really extraordinary cooks who finds it soothing to whip up a dinner for 24 or, as on this occasion, feed about a dozen children and about fourteen adults simultaneously - different menus, moreover. They have a tiny brick and flint Victorian cottage, which looks like something out of Beatrix Potter and has no room to swing a cat, but which does have a large and astonishing garden. The predicted torrents didn’t arrive, so we glued ourselves to garden chairs and just, well, ate. Red lentil and goats cheese puree to start us off, followed by the most gorgeous ham with mango salsa, roast potatoes, salad, fantastic spicy coleslaw. The best apple and almond cake I’ve ever tasted with lashings of jersey cream. The poor children had to make do with hot dogs and pizza, chocolate birthday cake followed by more and more chocolate as the day progressed, but they bore up well. Reading over this, I know it sounds so middle-class country, so perfect, so Cath Kidston, all the things that we know aren’t true about real country living. But sometimes, just sometimes, it really is like that. Only fleetingly, of course, and always punctuated by small irritations - the child who gets stung by one of the first bees of the season (mine), the child who sobs uncontrollably at losing musical statues (mine again), the one who stripped naked and fell into a pile of nettles (at last, not mine). Nothing’s ever really glamorous, is it, when you know the hidden stories; the financial problems, the almost-break-ups, the health worries. There was plenty of baggage, as there is at every social occasion, all safely stacked up somewhere out of sight, but always there to trip you up should you stumble upon it by accident. For once I didn’t stumble, nor did anyone else; we just laughed and ate and lazily watched the children through a haze of wine and cake and sun.

We staggered home, replete and contented, and built a campfire in the garden, down by the stream. The children were up late, but were unusually calm after a frenetic day, and we were all mesmerised by the flames and the quiet, broken only by the evening songs of the birds and the crackle and hiss of the fire. K was particularly tranquil; she has come through a bit of a rough patch, lately. It’s a funny expression, that, it makes me think of the rough patch in the garden, all thorns and spikes, so maybe it’s apt, after all. Storms and dramas have always been meat and drink to my feisty and determined girl at the best of times, without the added complications of being almost four. It’s funny how you know it’s just a phase, how you’ve seen your elder ones come through similar times, and yet when you’re in the thick of it you can’t see the daylight. One of those little developmental milestones swooped down on her, however, and the roses and the sweet-scented things are peeping out now.

I’ve always loved twilight, and have always been glad that I don’t live in one of those tropical places where the darkness descends in a heartbeat. We sat in the gloaming, wrapped up warm, and watched the moths and heard a frog croak. Yet I still always miss that moment when dusk turns to proper darkness – it still catches me unawares, and surprises me every time. Bed called, along with the owls.