Photo copyright: Maggie May
Officially, England is still in a drought, even though we've had weeks of continual, slashing rain with flooding in some areas. The longest day is almost upon us and we are still waiting for some warmth.
It was very warm in March, hot even but that seems ages ago now.
I am not so good with secrets......... secrets from Harry, that is. We have always shared everything and neither of us are used to having to watch our tongues in case we let the cat out of the bag.
Last week I knew that my daughter was thinking of coming for the weekend when Harry would be celebrating his 73rd Birthday. "Don't tell Dad", she said just in case the visit didn't materialise and then he'd have been disappointed.
I hadn't realised how difficult this was going to be. I had already promised to have the granddaughters to stay and also my newly acquired step grand child, making that three girls. They were coming for the night which meant I had to make up extra beds so that I could accommodate everybody.
This meant that I had to tell a few fibs about what I was doing and before I knew it, everything was getting very involved and I was becoming an accomplished liar.
I wasn't too happy about this and as the day of the arrival approached, on Saturday, a very stormy day, things were getting quite difficult and I almost had to avoid Harry altogether in case something slipped out.
However, it was really worth it in the end, just to see Harry's face when Deb, Rick and Dean walked in to the room where he was watching TV. As they live nearly 200 miles away, Harry thought he was dreaming.
He was so happy.
We were later joined by Sam and Sandy and we opened some wine and brought in a Chinese takeaway.
The next day, we went to Clevedon, a seaside near by, for a favourite walk round the cliffs and this was only marred by rain and cold but we pressed on with it, getting quite wet by the end of the trip.
"This was my very best Birthday", Harry announced after they had all gone home and the house seemed very quiet again.
Are you any good at keeping secrets?
