Return to happier times

We had a rather serious start to last week with my Mother's funeral taking place on Monday. We were delighted to see so many friends and family at the service at Fleet Methodist Church and we felt a very strong sense of community there: it is easy to see why it was such an important part of Mum's life in Fleet. Overall, we felt it went well and that we had done all we could to give Mum the send-off she deserved.

It was good to get back to happier times at the weekend, though. We went back up to the Fleet area on Friday and had a brief but very pleasant stay with Claire and Darren (good curry, shame about the cards!). On Saturday, we were back at the Brown household in Fleet to help celebrate Irene's 90th birthday with a family barbeque. We spent Saturday night with Jo and Steve before going up to Abingdon for a lunchtime party in Andrew and Emma Coker's beautiful garden. It was great to see everyone again in happy circumstances - the weather was kind to us throughout and Digger had lots of friends to play with (it took him 2 days to recover!). All-in-all, a good time was had by all.