Michaelmas

Dear Heidi,

Today is the feast of Michaelmas! The day when the archangel Michael fought the fallen angel Satan and cast him out of heaven. We had stewed blackberries for supper to remember that he supposedly landed in a blackberry bush and cursed them from this day onwards. I put out three angels to represent Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and of course the knight and the dragon fighting their eternal fight.

Here at the farm we are still drying the neighbours grain, and Pappa has been helping him to move the harvester back into storage for another year. D is still working two or three days a week in town, and next week he may stay over with Pappa's friend A, because he will be working in Drammen!
I have finally written and posted the invitations for W's confirmation and replies are beginning to trickle in.

Our weather remains dreary, but it is rather nice to get the wood stove lit in the afternoon and the candles too, once it gets dark.

Aunty S is visiting W at school on his birthday and has promised to take a chocolate birthday cake as a surprise! Then she is going on to visit her oldest school friend who lives in that funny little museum that we visited once, it is full of old radios and other things made of Bakelite, an early form of plastic.

I hope that you have a safe and warm journey onwards to Toulon. We will catch up again there.
With so much love,
Mamma.