When was your last pyjama day?

It's not something I do very often but sometimes you just need a pyjama day.

Mine turned out to be on Saturday.

Neil was up and out for golf at some ridiculously early hour and once he's gone I went back to bed, finally emerging to start my day at a much more sensible hour.
I decided I would do my bits and bobs around the house before having a shower and so rather than dressing, I simply donned a large T-shirt dress that I would never venture out of the house wearing or even open the door to a caller.

Normally PJ days and dogs don't go together but on Saturday the pups also seemed disinterested in going out the front door, happy enough to wander about the garden when they would normally be in the entrance hall trying their hardest to show me where their leads are kept.

And so the day progressed.

I pottered about, read my book for a while and then began to tackle the re-arrangement of my books back into some semblance of order so I knew where to find things. (To Do List - item 6).

Before I knew it Neil was home from golf. Now, he's a good hubby, he can spot a PJ day a mile off, and normally before I realise that one has developed and so, having just got back from rising at 5am and walking for 4 hours, he offered to take the pups out for their walk.

I still had no reason to leave our front door.

While sorting out the piles of books I had come across this.

This is a box I have had for more than 20 years. It's a Harrod's stationery box and originally contained 40 sheets of paper and 30 envelopes, and no, my memory isn't that good, the label is still on the underside.

I remember it was too pretty a box to throw away when all the paper had been used and it seemed an ideal box to keep letters I received in.

And that's what I did. It seems to cover a time before we kept in touch with friends by e-mail and is full of letters from friends who lived too far away to see regularly. Reading through them again brings so many memories back, some good, some not so good but all of them to be cherished.

By the time I had looked through and read most of the box's contents the day was almost gone and I started to move my thoughts back to the present day. I realised I has spent a couple of hours transported back to the mid-90's. I had been cast back to the days when friends were popping children as if there was a population shortage, where relationships were changing after many years of stability and one friend was battling cancer treatment, a battle she was ultimately to lose. I have a wonderful letter from my Grandma telling me of a ball she had gone to with her neighbour who was a councillor and that they had a 4 course meal which is why, she deduced, the local rates were so high! That she had worn a red dress to give her colour and that she had still been dancing at 1am when the ball ended - and she must have been in her 80's at the time.

I don't live in the past but I do like to visit now and then.

I just wished I'd been dressed for the occasion!