Lila is just so clever and bright. If you say the word ‘zoolander’ to her she instantly goes into ‘supermodel’ pose. Other supermodels generally don’t wear nappies, I grant you, but mainly because they don’t eat anything whereas Lila eats everything.

We went yesterday all the way to the ‘green’ at the end of the road for the local ‘summer fayre’, or ‘summer fair’ or even summer fete. Who cares what they call it. They have it every year and to mark my 30th anniversary of living in the local area, we went. Ok, and because it was Natalie’s birthday the other day and she thought it a good place to see friends and eat things. I have no friends but will eat anything. And I’d never been before.

And as I sat back, with Lila, obvs, watching the scene, there was something almost magical about it. It was the absolute typical summer English fayre scene that is played out on village greens up and down every and all shires, every nook and cranny of my country.

There’s a church. Actually we have two, one at each end of the green. One for… errrr… Christians and the other for… other Christians who don’t like the first ones. And they provide the bookends, and the magnificence whereas everything else is really low-key and quaint. Stalls selling cakes, face-painting for kids (they refused to do me; that’s fucking AGIST!!), sellers of wines and beers, local companies trying to flog you Volvos (yes, bit odd but everyone needs corporate cash) and there was a dog show. Which was fab. Would have been if I had a dog. Which would have probably won because most of the dogs did win something. My old mate, the retired judge, came out of retirement to judge once more. Knows nothing about dogs, everything about judging. The cockapoo won ‘best of breed’ and the Retriever got 6 months for aggravated licking.

And everyone stood around, or sat on blankets on the lawn, eating, sipping wine, all dressed in summery colours and wearing silly hats, kicking balls, kids running round, it was ‘the perfect scene’. All that was really missing was rain but you can’t have everything. Though Rachie came back from Berlin for the celebrations so we had most of what we needed. And life was rosy once more.

Then I picked up the Sunday papers and learned that America and Canada are on the verge of war and North Korea will fight on America’s side. Holy shit!!

Happy Monday

A xxxx