I’ve had such a sociable week, meeting up for lunches, sharing wine and stories and generally feeling happy. Saw some carol singers at the Farmers’ Market, just before the big snows came again.

John and I celebrated our 7^th anniversary yesterday. My goodness where has the time gone? We trudged through the snow which was falling in great feathers, and passed India Street, where I had a mental picture of us on our ‘happy day’.

I could just visualise Gerry, Natasha and me done up in our flimsy, silky Vietnamese ao dais, waving cheerily to the well wishers on the Tour Bus as it slowed down so that the nice people could shout to us. It was sunny, cold and crisp, and somehow we got away with wearing only satin shawls.

We got the train to Burntisland, (ever fearful of being marooned without a candle or a shovel) and had lunch with Jinti and Andy and friends. We sat around a round table in a kitchen decorated with Christmas lights and candles, eating Nigel Slater and a pie that was so lemony and decadent I wanted it never to end.

What I love are the stories people tell. On Thursday we heard of meetings with Maharajahs in India, where Derek and Dilly had gone and found the village where grandparents had once served as missionaries. Yesterday we heard of cries for help in the sea off Corfu where Jinti and Andy were asleep on their yacht. Jinti had finally been aroused from slumber and scrambled on deck to find a girl drowning near by. They got her in the dinghy and off to hospital. She was only 14 or so, and her foot was hanging off. All they could see was the severed bone. Ghastly. They think it was a suicide attempt. The father got in touch this week to say the girl is now out of intensive care, but they are not sure if she lost her foot. All these stories while I nodded and sipped fizzy wine.

I heard a lovely story this week, about a wonderful character who lived on the West Coast of Scotland, sadly dead now for many years. One night, way back when, he walked down to the jetty with a drunken poet, who was intent in ‘doing away with himself’ (again…for apparently it was quite a regular intention of his).  This man and another fellow tried to talk the drunken poet out of jumping off, but to no avail. They saw him floundering about, and our hero took pity on him and thought he should jump in after him and give him a ‘wee dram’ to send him off properly!!! Then he thought better of it, being a cold night, and said, ‘Ach he can just get on with it himself!’ Happily the poet sobered up, and managed to get to the shore, with no help from the two Samaritans at all!

More snow has fallen, and chaos reigns. I am now agitated for I have two daughters trying to get home to Edinburgh…will the airports stay open, will they make it?…I jolly well hope so…and then we can tell our own stories and catch up on all our different lives.

Happy Christmas to one and all. xxxxx