On the longest day, we’ve had the longest day. We’ve been on a 200 mile round trip to meet up with DM's family to celebrate his Dad’s 80th birthday. We chose a venue roughly equidistant between their home and ours so we could all travel there and back in a day but in the event, they all stayed locally. DM's sister (Linda) tasked him with finding a venue and my beautiful, odd, crazy husband took great pleasure in finding a pub called the White Hart to have lunch in. Why is that so perverse? Because the entire family (apart from us) are gooners and he just thought it’d be fun to make them go to a pub with the same name as the home ground of their great rivals, the Super Spurs!

The celebratory party was twelve-strong and aside from being half-an-hour late arriving, it was a great success. Here is he, blowing out the candles on the cake made by his daughter and served in the garden of the pub after we’d eaten our lunch. The sun shone on us all and I think everyone there had a terrific time. It was great organisation by DM and LH! Happy birthday Maurice. Sorry your face isn't quite sharp - you moved too quickly!

A funny thing happened on the way into the pub. We parked in a bay that had no markings on it to suggest we had to pay for parking but just to be sure, I asked a passer-by. He asked me if we were going to the same wedding as he was. I replied that no, we were going to celebrate an 80th birthday to which he replied “I’ll bet you have a much better day than me”. It left me wondering – was it the jilted ex of the bride? Could he have been the father of the bride and his precious girl was marrying someone he disapproved of? Might it have been a shotgun wedding? We’ll never know, it was just one of those sentences that was left hanging in the air like smoke on a still day!