My dear friend Kathy and her family sent me a lovely present which arrived today. The timing couldn't have been better, since it is my birthday today!
The only thing is, the card says 'Happy Christmas Sophie and Keita!'
Oh, well, never mind, it eventually got here. Lovely Christmas goodies; pickled chestnust, real cocoa -not to be found here-, rocket and other seeds and my yearly Moleskine diary as well as an Afro/Caribbean cookbook and T-shirts for Keita in Swedish blue and yellow. Thank you Kathy, Dan, Oisin, Aoife, and Iarla!
I am spending my birthday in my rooms, with just the right amount of a cold for it to be too much to do anything sensible, but not enough for it to prevent me from reading and relaxing. In other words, as my dear old friend Cressida would say- and as they would say in New Orleans- 'I am having a robe day'. I am being transported far far away in time and space as I immerse myself in Antonia Fraser's excellent biography of Marie Antoinette. I wish I knew Fraser so I could discuss it with her, because I don't agree on one or two points about the French queen's Swedish lover Axel von Fersen and I would like to understand why she came to certain conclusions....