A friend and I went to Cawdor Castle which was hosting a 'Living Food' event, by which I think it meant local and organic where possible. It was like a big Farmer's Market. There were none of the crafts my friend had promised, unless jam-making counts. Once again I forgot my camera but probably would only have captured people with their mouths full of pork pie or beef burger and hands full of biodegradeable 'glasses' (made from corn starch) holding local ale. There was also a local distillery offering taster tots of whisky. I'm not a beer drinker but my friend is and she is converting me. These smelled wonderful and tasted deliciously smooth, not at all gassy. Sadly I had to leave the whisky untasted because I was the only driver. It would have gone down so well as a chaser too.

For the first time I tasted wild venison carpaccio. I ate a whole pack when I got home. The advantage of living on one's own is freedom for total greed with no sharing.

Slightly better photos of daughter's chapbook. Info for interested parties about to break into the creative writing world: these publishers publish work they like well enough absolutely for free (happily that included Sophie's)

No, it isn't a delicious lemon jelly with bits of fruit in, it's an orgone generator, 4" high, full of copper coils and crystals, and sits behind me in the shop. I think I feel a tiny bit more libidinous...

One year the lakes at Tervuren, just outside Brussels, froze over so deeply that people could skate and some idiot drove a Mini onto one of them. I think the son was still a babe in arms so just his sisters slithered on with me.

I'll bet my son isn't going to be glad I found this photo!!

He has changd a lot and doesn't wear scarves any more. He was about eleven, it was a Robin Hood phase with bows and arrows made of hazel, and neckerchiefs for the band of merry men.

Silence is golden.

The great Victorian agnostic Thomas Huxley in one of the last things that he wrote before he died asked "Is it not better to keep silence about matters which speech is incompetent to express; to be content with revolving in the deeps of the mind the infinite possibilities of the unknown?"

I agree wholeheartedly, but I don't think I can promise to shut up,

Something old, something new.

In the space of 36 hours I’ve sampled the best technology the NHS can provide hereabouts, and one of the oldest treatments in the world, possibly dating back to the Stone Age. The modern machine was a bone density scanner. Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry or DEXA to its friends. That was painless and unfreaky, a nice nice lady put me through it, and it was free. The only thing it will do however is tell me if I’m crumbling, which I expect I am since I ‘ve lost 2” in height somewhere along the road.

The acupuncture was, on the other hand, the most painful thing that has happened to me for a long time and I had to pay for it. I have a high pain threshold. I’m proud of the fact that I don’t yell or cry out in extremis. In the face of my shearers I am dumb. Usually. Today I yelled, and loud. Needles in my ankles sent really agonising tremors through other bits of my feet shooting down to several toes, making me think of tasers and Guatanamo Bay. Then there was a smell of burning and something hot clamped itself to my abdomen where it went on burning for much longer than I liked.

I do feel better though.