Accompanying.

5:57 am. A cold nose in my ear indicates that it's time to get the day started.

On our morning walk we bump into Madame Bay. She is wearing a pair of grey high necked silk pyjamas and a broad brimmed red hat. Sophie examines her lime green open toed sandals. Madame Bay is sitting in a fold up chair at the Very Old Italian Farmers front door. He is half in, half out of the hallway in his wheelchair. The Reubenesque presence of Madame Bay seems to have given the old fellow a new lease of life and he's chatting happily away. Madame Bay will be accompanying him in the ambulance to the local heart clinic for his annual coronary check-up and ECG. They expect to be back by lunchtime.

The village odd job man and his wife have moved out of the flat above the town hall. They've saved up and bought a small dilapidated house on the edge of the village. Their first owned home. The wife drives off at six every morning to a job sixty kilometres away. Not a huge distance but difficult in the winter on narrow country roads. Her diligence has enabled them to put down a deposit and obtain a mortgage. Another quiet victory.

This morning we say hello to the horses in the field at the crossroads, welcome the four new calves that have appeared overnight ( and sympathize with their tired mothers ) and watch as the large pike that inhabits the depths of the deeper of the two village ponds briefly breaks the surface.

Angus looks at the cake displays in the local supermarket .....

.... but decides to go to our local baker. Something about the colour of the supermarket cakes that hints at enticement over refinement.

Belated ANZAC day music - what a lot of pipers : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQxjUe7aMuU

The things one learns : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-galaxies/colossal-cosmic-collision-alters-understanding-of-early-universe-idUSKBN1HW31C