One Friday Sue and I had a date night. We met in Dorking to catch an early showing of new movie Mother’s Pride, a quintessentially gentle English story (beer, family friction, and disco Morris). It was a lovely film playing at the cinema at the Dorking Halls. As we left, we noticed that the German comic Henning Wehn was playing and on the spur of the moment we bought the last tickets. After a bite to eat at a restaurant across the road, we returned to the halls and was very amused by Henning’s performance.
As part of a group present, we headed out to see a play called Miles which was having its final night at the Southwark Playhouse. Sue and I travelled with Deb to meet Jamie at the Mercato Metropolitano food market across the road from the theatre. Here he introduced us to his girlfriend Georgia, who comes from Italy and who he met about ten months before. She seemed lovely but we only had a short time to spend with her as we could not get her a ticket to the show. The play was a musical two hander about the jazz musician Miles Davis. The venue was small, and the show was intense.
One day early in March we got a sad call from Susan who was at the hospice to tell us that Ian had passed away. Even though it had been expected it was a very difficult and emotional conversation. Later in the month the funeral was streamed online and was a humanist ceremony and concentrated on Susan and friends talking about Ian’s past and the impact he had on so many people around him.
There was a short warm spell, and we visited the RHS Wisley gardens for our annual spring flower experience. It was a delightful day and there was a lovely riot of floral colours. It brings a feeling of hope to see the changing seasons.
Mother’s Day was celebrated at Barbara’s with some tidying up in her garden and a lovely roast dinner with family.
With our time away earlier in the year, the wild garlic season came upon us as a bit of a surprise, but we headed down to the grove nearby where we picked our fill for dinner and future dishes.
As spring seemed to be around the corner, we spent some time tidying the garden. I needed to borrow Howard’s jet washer as our lacked the necessary power, and at the end it revealed that some of the new render on the patio seemed to have been damaged by frost and cracked off. We must do some further investigation to determine the best way to fix the problem as this is a recurring problem.
On a bright weekend Sue and I went for a walk to Denbies Vinyard where we bought a bottle of wine to have with lunch. Our walk back was up and over Ranmore Common, a long and more strenuous route home, where we glad to get in and put our feet up.
