My day has been dominated by a memorial service for my dear friend Chris. She worked along side me for seventeen years in the office at my last school where she looked after me and covered my back. A talented lady who could speak several languages. We had a lot of fun in the office and  laughed and on occasions cried together. I read at the service Ivor Gurney’s poem The Songs I Had which had a special resonance to both of us.

I am back to birdwatching with young people at Wick Court tomorrow. I did top up the bird food at Wick Court this morning there and managed to see a bullfinch (a lovely bird). My first storytelling of 2025 is also at the farm on Thursday.

Currently in deepest Devon looking after our delightful granddaughter Ellen. Probably a good thing we are not in Gloucestershire today with the flooding. We hear Frampton was almost cut off with the roads all flooded!!!! We are back later today! We actually missed the snow and rain on saturday as we travelled down ahead of it coming in.

We had an enjoyable visit to Exeter Museum yesterday. Provincial museums are wonderful places and are all very different!

We were looking after Jake a charismatic little dog. It meant I was up for sunrise this morning. A few photos below from my walk.

A hectic couple of days for The Story Traveller (nothing to do with storytelling!) We had a super couple of days with our Bishop’s Cleeve family and seeing in the New Year with them. My two grandsons Owen and Robin are great fun to be with – Owen is 4 and directs us into some very idiosyncratic imaginary games!

After helping them over breakfast we dashed back to Frampton so I could go off to football. Despite a good performance by the Mighty Hatters we were unable to convert our chances so fell to a sucker punch late on. Beginning to worry now!

A beautiful frosty day and had an enjoyable walk with Jake the Jack Russell we are looking after for a day or so.

Off to play a quiz match later.