Weekend with friends

On Saturday we were treated by fantastic weather and spent the afternoon outdoors. As we don't have garden ourselves eating lunch outside is quite a novelty. Time was also spent collecting apples from the many fruit trees in their garden. C's plans for apple chutney should certainly be met – although if she uses all the apples then she'll be making tonnes of the stuff!

After a fantastic evening last night Sunday morning was a much more leisurely affair. Plenty of tea and some more homemade tomato bread (so fantastic and luckily C gave me the recipe) filled the morning before we headed off to a local village for a brief walk along the river before pub lunch.

We had great fun watching the trout in the river and D also spotted something jumping along the path. Turns out it was a toad and Mr C was able to capture if briefly so that we could get a closer look. I've not been able to identify it as yet (and am hoping that when we do so it's not one that we're not supposed to touch!) but can happily report that he was returned to the leaves and undergrowth at the side of the path and happily hopped away.

After lunch we luckily made it back to St Albans before the rain hit – and boy has it rained here this afternoon! There are puddles all over the place and at one point a river was running down the pavement outside our flat. August seems to have ended in the way that much of the month went – feeling more like November than the summer. It felt nice being all sung in our flat though hearing the rain against the windows whilst watching Lang Lang perform in Prom 60 at the Royal Albert Hall. He's an absolutely breathtaking musician and the passion that he puts into his piano playing is like nothing I've ever seen before. There wasn't as much Rachmaninov as we would have liked, but that didn't matter too much. Back in April Mr C and I were lucky enough to get tickets for Classic FM at the Movies where we got to see Lang Lang play Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto Number 4. Pure brilliance!