EDDIE meets JINKSY

It is not every day two bloggers meet but yesterday I was privileged to meet Jinksy, who lives about 90 miles from me.  

Jinksy is one of the first people I met in BlogLand and I have known her for about 6 years and we have become good friends.  

The occasion for us meeting arose when Jinksy, known as Pen to her friends, kindly crocheted a beautiful cuddle blanket for me to keep me warm in the winter.  She had offered to post it to me but I thought it would be a golden opportunity to meet up, so we arranged it last week.

I quickly discovered Pen was not the slightest bit crotchety in any way, lol, although she is a real 'whiz' at crocheting - and here is the living proof - a Napple Blanket, as Pen calls her special creations.  Isn't it gorgeous?

"Why does she call it a Napple Blanket?", did I hear you ask?.  Well, her surname is Smith and she is known as Granny Smith to her grandchildren. Granny Smith is a variety of Apple but unfortunately one of her grandchildren could not pronounce the word 'Apple' but said 'Napple' instead. So the word stuck - hence the name Napple Blanket and hence her blog name, Napple Notes.  For the full story to go HERE

Here is another shot of us playing 'footsie' under my nice brand new Napple Blanket. Why Jinksy, I didn't know you cared!

And you can see how pleased and proud I am to be wearing my blanket and you can see how happy I was to meet Pen and spend some time with her yesterday, discussing blogging, poetry, life and music . . . . . and she fed me a very appetising lunch, and even treated me to strawberries and cream. Thank you.

And what about Pen?  Well she was a little camera shy, partly because I had caught her a little early before she had time to apply all her Estee Lauder, as you ladies do. 

You ladies are all the same - none of you like your photographs taken, do you? 

But I managed to get one shot of her in a moment of weakness. The next one was with her winking at me so I thought that was not entirely appropriate to publish for a family show.

Unfortunately we could not get a shot of us together to celebrate this momentous occasion - our attempts at holding the camera at arms length were pitiful to say the least and there was no-one else to take the shot.

Pen runs two blogs.   Her first Napple Notes is her general blog and she runs a second for poetry, her first love, and that is known as Alias Jinksy.

Please visit her - she is a very talented writer, particularly for poetry.

Pen is a dab hand at using Photoshop and a few years ago she created this little 'bloggy' motive for me, which some will recognise.  I have it still on my side bar:

En route to see Pen my SatNav was most unkind to me and I almost responded to it and reprimanded it in a Basil Fawlty way.  I keyed in Pen's address and, not fully concentrating, I was alarmed to see the distance was 123 miles instead of the 80+ miles I was expecting.  

So I had to drive like the clappers to get there on time, almost like I did during my ambulance days, with blue flashing lights. The silly SatNav had chosen the Motorway route instead of the quickest route, which I later found was only 91 miles.  I still managed to make it to Pen's house by 12 noon as agreed, on the dot, after breaking the sound barrier on the way. 

When it was time for me to leave I entered HOME on my SatNav and this time it told me the truth, so I forgave it. I drove a leisurely return journey via the scenic route - very beautiful scenery unlike boring old motorways.

Thank you Pen for a very enjoyable day and I will always treasure my Napple Blanket and our meeting.  Perhaps we can meet up again another day.