Friday's Fave Five - 29/5/26

Phew it's been a week!  Yep a week since I last posted but Friday means looking back on the good things in the week and then sharing with others here at our host Susanne's site.

1)  Firstly lots of family time this week - our son and his family arrived late last Friday and stayed until Wednesday - the kids were on half-term break.  That also meant we saw a lot of my daughter and her family - the cousins do love to get together.

2)  Afternoon tea at the Oblix restaurant which is on the 32nd floor of The Shard building in central London.  My DIL Amy couldn't make it to my daughter's 40th birthday party so the three of us had our own little celebration last Saturday.

The birthday girl.

This building is Chapter London Bridge which houses student accommodation, complete with a rooftop bar and a sky garden.  It's right next to London Bridge station with excellent transport options.

The Shard.  We were a long way up!  With great views.

We had sandwiches to start and then warm scones that were so light.  Of course we had the usual jam or cream first debate. (Cream for Rebecca and me, Jam for Amy.)  And then those lovely little cakes.  And of course lots of choices for tea.  It was all very filling!

3)  Sunday lunch with all of us together at The Royal Forest Hotel in Chingford.

4)  Today it has been cooler.  Still in the high 20s C but much more comfortable than the temperatures we had at the weekend.  We went from below average temps for the time of year to record breaking temps on Monday, which was a holiday here.  The previous record was 32.8C but the new high recorded on Monday was 35.1C.  It felt too hot to do anything other than sit by a fan and wish we had air conditioning.  Today though with it being a bit cooler I managed to catch up on some housework and washing.  Much needed after having family here.

5)  Thankful that we can afford to keep the bird feeders topped up.  Like everything else the food is more expensive but I do enjoy watching the birds on the feeders and the two cheeky squirrels that really like the sunflower hearts and pumpkin seeds.  Actually the pumpkin seeds were a bonus from the Foodbank.  We get all sorts of odd things in our deliveries sometimes, including recently boxes of small packets of pumpkin seeds.  Not a lot of demand for those from our beneficiaries so volunteers were invited to take some.  The squirrels emptied the feeder in no time!

Looking forward to a quieter weekend now.  It's lovely having the grandchildren and family here but with early starts and disturbed sleep with the heat  I'm ready for a rest!  Have a good weekend all.