Happy birthday legionseagle 

 Happy birthday dear ankaret !

 To say - happy birthday, lilliburlero !

(had to be done, sorry)

My current favourite most comfortable boots are from Clarks, and their only drawback is that they are not waterproof (they're not exactly terrible if caught in the rain, being from the side of the shop associated with masculinity, but they aren't designed to be waterproof and I don't expect them to be).

Turns out they come in a Gore-tex version. More than that, they come in a Gore-tex version in my size in the sale.

I'm going to have to do this bloody walk now. Especially as Millets have OS Explorer maps at 40% off (I have an up-to-date copy of the Norfolk Broads one, which covers the first few stages, but I didn't have the two that take me round the corner into North Norfolk).

I didn't go to church today, but I did watch the whole of the first series of Grantchester in a sitting (with a lunch break), which isn't quite the same thing. Thoughts (this is series one and series four has already been broadcast. The spoiler ship has well and truly sailed):

1) You do not get muscles like that from occasional scythe-swinging to express one's manpain.
2) No, masculine muscles still really aren't my thing. Put a vest on. And then a shirt. And then a nice tweed jacket, most of this is blatantly filmed in chilly spring pretending to be golden summer.
3) Speaking of golden summer, isn't it supposed to be 1953? Wot no Coronation? Wot no notoriously rainy summer?
4) SO MUCH MANPAIN.
5) Amanda is exceptionally dull and lacks any kind of inner life. 
6) Hildegard deserves three cheers for deciding she had already wasted quite enough of her life on a man who would always have to stop and think before crying out a name in extremis. So thanks for solving my first husband's murder, I have a life to lead, and a ruined city is a better bet than the echoing emptiness of Sidney Chambers' head.
7) I am going to have to keep bloody watching, because Leonard (and Mrs Maguire). The inside of Leonard's head strikes me as a far more interesting place to spend time. Will the writers let us dally there? I do not think so for a moment.

By which you shall gather that I finally did get my arse to a cinema to see The Favourite. Which is magnificent. Ducks! Wigs! Storytelling through astonishing costume design! Men very peripheral! Olivia Colman AND Rachel Weisz AND Emma Stone!

Incidentally, there is a Frozen joke in there, but I think I am the only person I know who has seen it to have a daughter of the right age to allow me to pick up on it. When Anne and Sarah are reminiscing about not being allowed to play outside in the snow, so they opened the ballroom windows to bring the snowstorm inside - that's the opening of Frozen right there.

 Happy birthday ankaret !

Not quite here yet, but I am on the point of retiring to bed with something coldish-feverish-achy-and-foul.C is picking up the children straight after breakfast tomorrow, the house is full of food, I can stay in bed for two days, which might just make the difference between a bug I get over fast and one that drags on and on and on for another whole half term.
 
And Happy New Name!

Sillymouse was chosen in a hurry a long time ago, and to be honest I felt rather like an easily confused rodent at the time. But it increasingly failed to fit what was happening and who I was turning out to be, so the time was ripe for a change to something a bit more enduring (perennial, in fact, like the bloody bindweed). After all, the first half of my name is "Vivi", and that means life, enduring life. Anna because the second half of my name is "enne", and I've always taken a slightly slapdash approach to vowels. So that's how my brain works.

99% of entries are locked and are likely to remain so. I am fairly freshly divorced, there are children to consider, it takes a while for me to trust people enough to let them into one of my main venting spaces. It's not you, it's me.

 Happy birthday, tree_and_leaf