Goodbye Fran

My dear friend Frances is moving back to New Zealand. She's been living in the UK for "yonks". She arrived about twenty years ago as a newly qualified nurse with just a backpack.

She is repatriating herself and taking her UK acquired husband with her along with more possessions than will fit comfortably into a backpack.

Really close friends are sadly always a bit thin on the ground. She is one of those friends who I speak to on the phone every single day, if not more than once a day. When she was in hospital for some skin problems, I sneaked some Bailey's Minis and gossip magazines onto the ward for her instead of the customary grapes.

Fran is going back to a beautiful country, a new job and a whole change of scenery. She has said that we can come to visit her at any time, staying for weeks on end. If we ever did get all the way across the planet to New Zealand, we'd have to stay for a couple of weeks, just to make it worth the long journey. Sadly, I don't know when we will ever get across to that part of the world, so I don't know when I'll ever see my friend again. I'm going to miss her terribly and her friendly "G'day Piggy" when I answer the phone. By the way, she doesn't call me Piggy. That is just how Peggy sounds with her Kiwi accent.

This is what the front of Whitelees Cottage looks this afternoon (partially obscured by trees). I thought you readers would like to see.

You can almost see how the pink clematis is taking over the front of the house and almost obscuring one of the front windows. FYI, Clematis Montana is a real thug of a plant.