It's all over now

Yesterday was our Guild birthday party - 25 glorious years. A really nice day, lots of people there, former members, newish members, all happy and chatting. We had between us created a super lunch, too, never a bad thing.

I took a spindle, of course, and spun quite a bit more of the English top from Freyalynn that is destined to be navajo plyed - before next weekend......Or maybe next Sunday, as the Lizzie Kate is now packed.

Most stuff is rounded up and packed, very little remaining to do. The DSM has done the photocopying, bless him, so too late now to make any revisions to the deathless prose. WE have yet to gather a few small bits and pieces, mainly tools for setting up the folders - with 24 participants, we felt we might just leave that chore until the last minute or even to the students themselves! (How mean!)

He is working on some very nice fingerless mitts for me from the spindle spun Shetland in four colours that I did a while back - I am still grappling with the bag, and there was no way I was going to get them done. Traditional fairisle patters, they look great.

However - before setting off for Bradford, I had to wait for the postman to come. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I managed to read one and a half chapters before leaving and whilst the DSM put fuel in the car. Then I was very, very good and didn't touch it until home from Guild. By bedtime, I was more than half-way through.

I read quite a bit more over breakfast, but then we had to leave for York to see the mater. That was surely an interesting visit. She came out of her room as we approached, looking for the staff who were supposed to be changing her sheets - she had told them it needed doing early as she had visitors coming. Whilst they worked, she hassled them about all sorts of things, about the bed, about various things in the room - all of which did need doing at some point, but not on a Sunday when they were short-staffed and had a really sick inmate on their hands. I was impressed, they remained courteous, but by the time they left, there was a distinct note in their voices. I knew that she had always done this with me, but I really hadn't realised that she did it with them as well. I had checked with the staff member who had done the drinks round - and they always offer something to visitors - if she wanted me to take my cup anywhere. She had said not, leave it for her to collect on her next tour. So the mater demands that I do remove it as we make our move. In the event, I forgot, as another demand intervened. Heigh ho.

I know, I know. It's the only power she has left, it's only small stuff, I should be more tolerant. Well, maybe.

Had a very nice lunch in a pub not too far up the road, a real find for these trips. Then home, and I got down to finishing HP, which I have now done. I won't say much at this juncture, too soon. But I did like it, in the main. I think, personally, it is the best, certainly the tightest written (edited?) Whilst I hear the criticism that there is a lot of death in it - and there surely is - it is consistent with what the story is all about. There is already controversy about the Epilogue, which I liked as far as it went, but if it is there at all, it needed in my opinion to be rather more comprehensive. But I was grateful for what there was.

But - and I'm sorry if this sounds totally loopy for one of my advanced years - it seems so strange now that it is all over. Actually, I have the same sense of (overstating it) loss as when the LotR films finished. But HP has been around for so many years, with all the speculations. Very little of my guesses were right, of course. I got close in one thing, but was spectacularly wrong in most. Probably too old.........

Strange times.