Threescore years and counting...

I received today the ditty below from dear friends wot I've known for well over Hälfte des Lebens:

Have you heard the news then,
About oor Dave and six times ten?
This adept of the cyber pen
Who describes the conjugal “but and ben”,
Flowers, and visits from Jenny Wren?
This loyal friend chock full of gen [at least she didn't say 'gin': Ed]
Who presides over courts crime-ridden
And never fails to help when bidden?
What can one wish this pearl among men
On the occasion of his six times ten?
Much love, health, wealth – and what else, hen?
Keep a calm sooch and “reste toujours zen”!

Quite moving, and as someone once said of the public reading of a McGonogall poem, there wasn't a dry lip in the house. One more glass and I could get quite sentimental over the snowstorm of kind wishes I've had over the last few days.

First call today was the local railway station, to buy my old geezers' train fare discount card. I was cross, to say the least, that my bus pass had not arrived in time for me to go there free. Ah, well. We came home with a heap of shopping, so the last half-mile would have been a pain. It certainly was after a copious lunch a bit later at the local boozer: we have had a good snooze apiece this afternoon.

We had a wee pairty here on Sunday, with a very small group of friends. Wish we could have cast the net wider, but small parties are already bad enough for socialising - certainly from the host's point of view. We'll invite the alternate 'A' list for my 70th! The weather smiled on us, so everyone was out in the garden, where we'd set out little nests of folding chairs, benches etc.

My birthday present from Annie was a trip to the Henry Moore exhibition (emphasis for the benefit of N Americans who wrongly omit the last three letters) at the Tate. Fanbleedin'tastic. Annie, Vic and I went together to an exhibition of H Moore bronzes in the early 90s at the Bagatelle gardens next to the Bois de Boulogne, so it was something of a sentimental journey for us both. I hadn't registered the fact that he was a distinguished war artist, and produced some superb drawings of coal mining and of Londoners sheltering from the Blitz in the Underground. Neither had I realised how many different media he sculpted in: many kinds of stone, plaster, several woods, lead, bronze, plaster, string!! It was illuminating to see his earlier sculptures, which mixed flat, rectilinear facial features with flowing organic shapes. Over time, the earlier tight little mouths gradually disappeared from his work, and the sculpture moved from the representational through the cubist to the flowing style and the abstract forms that everyone knows from his later work. In the last piece in the exhibition, the face was simply sawn off flat. Need to read up, I think.

Second cultural visit to the smoke in a few days. When we met Annie at KX we went straight to Tower Hill for a quick bite followed by Kate's current play, Judenfrei. Excellent piece - her best to date, we think. Now in performance at the Henley Fringe Festival. See it if you can.

What else? It has been a lovely few days of being thoroughly spoiled by dear ones. Including the garden, which has given us a good crop of charlottes. The runner beans are setting, the echinaceas are finally coming into flower, and this year's seedlings are either coming into flower, given away or on the point of being planted - and several combinations of the above. Guests on Sunday brought plants with 'David' in their botanical names, so we have been studying the weedpatch to identify good spots to plant them in. We just about have the garden the way we want it, and these extra perennials are just what we needed. Wot wiv that and all the good wishes expressed in person, in cards and in e-mail and Facebook messages, it's a joy to know what good friends we have. So it's time for that maudlin other glass.