Summer

Chapter1

Picking blackberries in the village field is something we enjoy during the summer. It reminds us of the time, mid summer we ought to pack in more fun before the warm days are ended. This weekend we are going to make blackberry sorbet as part of our B-B-Q. The recipe is from YouTube the modern day video encyclopaedia. It is recommended to us by one of many new friends from Facebook. These days many people have more cyber friends than the real ones. They say cyber space widens your horizon but they don’t tell you that your real world is shrinking away fast.

This year electric fans are sold out in most electrical stores and Tesco is running out of ice cream and sorbet, so we are making our own. We have invited friends from work and also from Facebook. Only two online friends accepted the invitation to celebrate the heat wave. Perhaps the others are not ready to reveal the real people behind computers. We are not naive to think what people online tell us about themselves are all true. That is the charms of being online, you can be whatever you fancy, gorgeous, slim, tall, young and very successful, if you wish and why not?

Lisa and Jim a couple with pictures and brief outlook on their Facebook profiles sent us an email to say they were coming. They also told us to expect a surprise. I guessed that they might come in fancy costumes or something like that. We dressed up too for the London marathon last year to support a children charity. Jack dressed up as a chicken while Jill and I were two clowns. The chicken suffered plenty of abused and lost most of its feathers trying to get past people to the post.

Chapter 2

Elisa is a very petit lady who spends much of her time in the last eighteen years quietly in her office writing academic books on the specialized subject of Human Psychology. Her daughter Lisa grows up on the understanding that it is a sacrifice a single mother has to do to keep her family well provided. Now Lisa begins to doubt the reasons her mother spends more time than necessary in her office. She sometimes feels the same need to hide from the world. Since Jim comes into her life she becomes more positive. Eighteen is the time her mum has promised to tell her more about her dad. He is not aware of her existence. Elisa made that decision soon after their relationship began. She wanted to have a child of her own like most ordinary women. Now she knows there is a price to pay for.