Day 148 - Dog Food and Ice Cream

A glorious day that started out all overcast. J knew. She saw it. She said 'it's going to be a sunny one today' and it was. Sunnier and sunnier. My cheeks are glowing evidence of that, from morning and afternoon sun getting ever richer. 


A massive fix of little people today. Thoughtful, superlash Felix (Rimmel got nothing on that boy) and smiley Jamie (a baby with the most pleasing precarious walking that ever was seen). Breakfast was a treat. Lots of elbow-angled plastic spoons, table-bashing, a bit of high-pitched noise-making in the end. Clothes, car and a drive out to pretty bits of Sussex, around winding, hedge-lined bends and through tall woods. We came out at one end of the Bluebell Railway, an immaculately-kept station where steam trains went through. I grew up in a town where a steam train ran (Keighley, all the way up to Oxenhope). It featured in The Railway Children, that line, and I think I thought it was the only one in Britain, or even the world. I haven't been back for years, so I don't know the upkeep of it now. 

Today's was beautifully preserved. The walls were covered with old placards advertising pens, cigarettes, cocoa (grateful, warming) and dog food (build up your dog with Spratts). It had a shop, a cafe, a 'carriage shop' for proper enthusiasts, full of very exact train facts in books. It had waiting rooms and toilets, a workshop where new carriages are built or old ones refurbished. And staff... lots of important-looking stationmaster types in pristine uniforms, and orange-clad, oil-besmirched volunteers, loping proudly along the tracks, equally pristine in their own way and seeming terribly proud. And we saw so many trains! Steam trains chugging and puffing, different ones nearly every time and each one packed, it seems. Children waving from the trains and from the tracks. Adults too. By the end of the day, even to the children it was slightly old hat - and yet slightly not. We may well chant 'Not again!' when the next train comes past, but we all craned a little bit to see it. Watching steam train smoke puff past has a special charm, and a smell that brings back movie-worthy nostalgia for things we may or may not ever have lived.

We done a picnic. Two, in fact. And a walk, with a buggy, depsite all kinds of mud and stiles, we went for a very pleasing explore around the area. And it was beautiful. Gently, warmly beautiful. I am touched by how much these parents love their children, and how pleasingly they go about with them. I am inspired by these lovely friends doing their lives, by their happy babies and their ways. I am grateful to have them.

No wait at all for a train, and no rush either. Quiet neighbours and a good book, lent, advised, enjoyed. A chance meeting with lovely Pamela, Rob and Finn all wide-eyed and smiley. I was just wide-eyed, still a bit spaced from the sun and not making too much sense, but what a nice surprise. And then up to Leicester Square for a dose of Kate, a foolish ice cream and a good chat. Thank you for the book, and for borrowing mine, for my own good! I feel blessed with good people around me, full of ice cream and very sleepy.