What does one say about the Baxters because they are going to read this and, as sure as God made little apples, if they were to be aware of what we truly think of them their heads would grow to twice their normal size and I for one would hate to be the instigator of such deformity. An evening at the Baxters for barbecue, conversation, laughter, and fun has so far (superstition creeping in here) been a blazing 10. May it continue to be so. (superstition mollified).

There was an extra face yesterday evening, Inez’s friend, Columba (hope I’ve spelt it right: my spell-check gives me unbia, ombia, ombo, umbic and umbus – the last two definitely wide of the mark) and the food preparation was evidently a shared experience – Columba doing the pork souvlaki, Lucy did the beef and Nina did the chicken, Inez cooked the potato dish and delicious it was. I only had a taster supposedly still being on diet. James as usual did the barbecuing.

Late in the evening a tiny head appeared above the terrace steps and the body of a rather fine looking cat followed. There was some souvlaki left over so Ursula, being the generous and sentimental soul that she is, threw a chunk a fair distance. The cat grabbed it and fled back to the steps. A moment later the head reappeared. This happened a number of times, each time the cat gathering its courage to move a little closer until finally it sat happily, tail wrapped around its legs, only about two feet from the table and only tended to shy away if a hand went too close to it. It really was a beautiful animal and Lucy named it Jeremy. Douglas finally got close enough to confirm it was a Jeremy and not a Jenny and, as some of the conversation had been about the works of Steven Sondheim, starting of course with Sweeney Todd, of which Nina seems to remember an awful lot despite none of us being enthusiastic about the movie, the cat ended up as Jeremy Sondheim, a moniker he should be proud of.

There, 350 words and not a single one about how we feel re the Baxters. Aren’t I a geniarse?