Faces to love.

Overwhelmed with happiness, to have been away and to have returned. And with gratitude and delight at all your wonderful comments, thank you so much.

So much to enjoy, review, share, where to start. So, to be going on with, a collage of faces, shuffled until an arrangement came up I was vaguely happy with. Left to right from top left, and of course it will blow up bigger.

1. Tall Girl and L. 'You always do that funny thing thing with your chin in photographs, don't you Polly?' said L, helpfully. I don't think she's doing it here though. First time I've seen them at home in Yorkshire. Marvellous. More to come on that I think.

2. Kiwi nephew, otherwise known as Elf and Cherub to his indulgent aunties, he doesn't seem to mind. Currently en route from India to Spanish Galicia, doing his doctorate in hippy studies. 'Tis a pretty sprig.

3. Carved wooden green mannish ornament on a house wall, Thaxted.

4. Lovely Sister and Zig.

5. Blue, Cat of Mystery.

6. Statuary, Somerset House, London. Wandering about trying not to be too early to meet Joe, who was also wandering about somewhere in the vicinity.

7. Ziggy, Cat of Very Little Mystery.

8. Roof boss, Thaxted church.

9. Lovely Sister and Kiwi Nephew, former wearing false ears belonging to the latter. He carries them about while doing travelling, as an aid to communication.

10. Darling Tall Girl. I've known her since I was just a little bitty thing, and she was quite a tall bitty thing. I really love her.

11. Lovely Sister being mugged by Zig.

12. L, thriving on retirement. I really love her too.

13. Joe. He said he'd frankly rather visit the dentist than have his photo taken, so I made it quick while he wasn't looking. I said I thought if I'd seen him in the street outside (while we were both wandering about separately trying not to be too early) I probably wouldn't have known him. But then there was that feeling of 'well, of course it's you.' Now his appearance, even with the photo, is breaking up in my memory again, yet there are aspects of our meeting, moments, which are still very much there on a quite other level. He's said it better here.

14. Angel, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, more on which later too. I met quite a few angelic beings, but this one wasn't flesh and blood.

15. Statuary, Somerset House. Looks a bit like I felt before I went away.

16. As 4 and 11.

I stocked up on liquorice allsorts, Harvey's Bristol Cream in the blue bottle and paperbacks at the airport. Molly gave me a good slurp at when she saw me again then stuck her nose straight in the bag with the liquorice allsorts. Her ordeal is, we hope, nearly over now. Tom took me out to dinner in Lamballe on the way home, and, nearly as good, had cleaned the fridge and taken the recyclables to the Ecopoint.

My cup runneth over. It quite often does.