Friday Nov 10th
Rushed back from London yesterday, put vegetable casserole in oven (Jamie is on a diet!He claims to have lost a stone by eating only vegetables and fish and Irish soda bread. I don't believe him, but am happy to go on cooking veggies like this if it makes him happy....), tidied house, dealt with phone calls, tackled some letters, and whized out to post the latter, leaving a note saying "Back in 5 mins"....and of course while I was out our guest, Frank, arrived from Ukraine. He teaches English at the seminary there, and is on a vist to London.

I settled him down with a big mug of tea and we swapped news....he drank the tea as if it was nectar. He had had a ghastly journey, because if you own a foreign car in Ukraine, you have to prove (this sounds incredible, but it's true!) that you haven't tried to import it illegally, so every time you leave the country you are expected to take it with you! Which means that when you decide to travel instead by train and air (as he was doing) they stare at your passport when they arouse you from your sleeping compartment in the middle of the night, demand to see the stamp that indicates that you have registered official permission to leave your car behind...and if there is any debate about this, they make you get off the train, and sort it all out.......thereby missing train connections, waiting around at strange stations in the middle of the night, etc etc....imagine! They still have the Comunist-era mindset....

After a pleasant family supper Frank went off thankfully to sleep (in our small flat, all that our guests get is a bed in the study, but no one ever seems to mind), and I sat with a lovely book by the Holy Father that I bought in America. It's meditations for various feasts of the year and is so interesting: packed with all sorts of information and seeing things from fresh angles (IMAGES OF HOPE, Ignatius Pres.....a lovely hardback book, beautifully illustrated. Only fourteen dollars, and would make an excellent Christmas present, especially as the first bit is all about Christmas and the animals in the stable....)

While flying home I had to discard, at Columbus airport, my lovely jar of BEAUTIFUL (Tescos! COst £3.95p!) lavender cream because they thought it might have explosives in it or something.......I discovered later I could have pleaded medical need as it is for the horrible dry skin I get at the back of my neck when I am nervous and the doctor said to use some gentle cream on it......then at Chicago airport I found a little stall selling, quite oddly, ONLY LAVENDER PRODUCTS, all natural, and very inexpensive so I bought a tube of the most heavenly cream, French (Provencal) Bliss...... tonight I used it again and sat and relaxed and read and sipped tea.....