a country mouse is out to lunch

It's the September weekend here, so Little R and Daddy Mouse are off school and work for Friday and Monday. Every day is a holiday for Countrymouse, of course, according to them. The skies are blue so we head off for a wander round the village. This is "our" chestnut tree, which we visit on every village walk. Behind it is what Little R calls Lion Hill for no reason I can discern. Maybe it's lie-on hill? She does like to lie on it and also for all of us to roll down it. Yes, we are completely under her thumb.

I have my new camera! Thank you everyone who left comments. Two of you suggested the latest Fujifilm Finepix and that's what I went for. I'm really pleased with it. It really is a point and click as it makes all the adjustments automatically. We went for a posh lunch at our local (amazing) restaurant midway through our walk and I did some surreptitious snapping of what we ate. This is a salad of organic Arran beets and leaves with poached egg. The beets were so delicious it was almost like eating a peach.

Then I had roast hake, ratte potatoes, baby gem and mangetout with a brown butter emulsion.
Followed by coffee and petit fours. So calorific but so totally worth it. We called it my birthday lunch, to go with my birthday camera, even though my birthday isn't for another couple of weeks. I can't believe it is a year since I posted about our birthday girls' night on Sauchiehall Street when we were singing Abba songs and eating chocolate cakes at 1am. What is that old saying about if you change nothing you will still be doing next year what you are doing this year? Pithier than that, I'm sure, but it's ringing in my ears nonetheless. I am very happy and I love what I'm doing, but there are definitely changes I'd like to make, along the lines of doing what I love more efficiently and effectively. That's the former civil servant speaking there.

As we waddled further on our walk this far-off fisherman gave me an excuse to use the 5x optical zoom on my new camera. There are salmon and trout in this river and we saw some breaking the surface as we walked along the banks. There's also a heron who lives there, and Little R likes to say hello to it as we go past on the school run. I never see it because it's usually at a stretch of river where the road bends and the bridge narrows so I have to keep my full attention on the oncoming traffic. The pros and cons of country living!

I was lucky enough to win a giveaway prize on one of my favourite blogs, Andamento. Unfortunately I photographed it all as I unwrapped it using my old camera, which was subsequently broken by Little R pressing too hard on the screen with her thumb (trying to hold it tight as silly mummy was instructing her to do). I will take some more pictures of the lovely notebook, post-it notes and pen but there is nothing now to show of the unbelievably delicious tablet other than the extra inch on my hips.

I'm still working away on the Attic 24 Granny Stripe blanket and am thinking of stopping now at a size which would fit a single bed lengthwise rather than keeping going and doing a full length one for a double bed. It's really enormous. That would mean I could be inspired (again) by Andamento and could use the rest of my wool to do the African Flowers pattern she's using for that beautiful blanket. I would limit myself to a cushion though. I'm a bit blanketed out and I'm not getting any younger you know.