Old Friends

After the Open, I drove to Derry, where we had dinner with Peggy and Sean O’Dwyer at their lovely home on a hill overlooking Derry. I forgot to take a photo this time, but took one on a visit a few years ago:

Peggy cracks me up. She’s very opinionated but also very proper and gracious, so her opinions come across coated in a tea-and-biscuits smoothness. It’s like she’s smiling at you while daring you to disagree with her.
This morning, mom & I parted ways. Mom went with Peggy to the McFarlands’ country home, somewhere we both visited in the 1970s. Mom knew Marietta McFarland when they were both involved in Save the Children. I became fast friends with Fiona McFarland in first form before they shipped her off to boarding school in Scotland, when I took charge of her pony, Garland.
Meantime, I went for a hike with Julie while we compared notes on what was complicating our lives.
Then mom and I toured Peggy’s gardens then moved on to Drumahoe, collecting Mary, whom we took out for lunch at a wonderful restaurant called Primrose on Queen’s Quay.

Great view of boats on Lough Foyle. I was amazed to see a food tour underway in Derry--very uptown.

Then a long drive back to Belfast, nap, then I went to a dance with Swing Belfast while mom watched a few episodes of Great British Bake Off on my laptop. The new series with the brilliant Prue Leith.
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