July is a busy month

July is a busy month for us, socially. Today Mrs C and I will be
celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary, with an evening meal out
with one of our daughters, and a meal in at lunchtime with two of
them.

We visited Nottingham's "The Cheese Shop" two days ago to get in
some lovely food for today's lunch ... a really ripe (and stinky)
French brie, some Blue Stilton, plus some olives with garlic
inside them, fresh anchovies, and some nibbles. I'm baking some
malted grain bread rolls this morning, and Mrs C will make us some
Kenyan Peaberry coffee -- gorgeous flavour (but cost-a plenty).

Yes, the cheese is really smelly ... we get a strong whiff of
rotting cabbage everytime we open our fridge door ... still, it
helps cover up the smell of our own farts. "The smell, dear? Well,
I got some cheese out of the fridge a short while ago."

The restaurant we'll be visiting tonight is one of our favourites
- Cafe Nomad - which is a short walk from here, with lovely
vegetarian food (Moroccan influences, I think), and one of the few
places where you can bring your own bottle of wine.... and totter
back home again afterwards. It's had mixed reviews on the Veggie
Heaven website, but we'll be going there a lot.

Though I can see that restaurants need to charge a lot for wine
in order to stay in business, I do resent being charged an extra
£10 on top of the price of £4-5 bottle.

But to come back to my main theme, which is wedding anniversaries
and birthdays this month ... last weekend, we went to Mrs C's uncle
and aunt's 40th wedding anniversary (which I mentioned in my last
post). At the meal, Uncle Frank and Auntie Margaret sat a short
distance from each other so they could chat with family members.
During the conversation, Mrs C asked a kind of rhetorical question,
(which F and M didn't hear as they're both rather deaf and wear
hearing aids): "I wonder what the secret of a long and happy
marriage is?" To which their son, Mike, quipped: "Sitting apart
from each other!" I suppose if you wear a hearing aid, you could
say: "Turning it off."

We've got lots of July and August birthdays in our family... two of
our girls, my two sisters, Mrs C and her mum and sister, and several
other relatives too. I wonder if this is happening/has happened
nationwide...are maternity staff busier in the summer months in the
UK, and does this reflect what couples get up to in the winter
months ... more bonking in October to November due to the longer
nights and colder weather.

How nice it is to cuddle up to your loved one in bed at night to
keep warm ... and as they say: "And one thing led to a mother".
If this is a national trend, I think it contradicts what the
Italians say about what we get up to in bed at night: "Oh, we
Italians make love ... the English, they have hot water bottles."

But then what about the falling birth rates in Italy, with few women
wanting to get married and settle down to have lots of children
and to do all the domestic chores. Are Italian blokes (and women)
missing out on having sex, or are they just better at using
contraception than we are? And is it true that Italians have more
fun and more passionate sex than we do, I wonder? When we last went
to Italy in the summer, it was just too hot to have sex (other than
a quickie) in the evenings, so I wonder how they all cope with the
heat?

I'm rambling on as usual, so I'll stop there.