Dotty

We had all kinds of family fun today, but when the crew went off for a walk this afternoon I regretfully decided that I needed to stay at home and hunt invertebrates in the garden cook.

To be fair to myself, I was sort of cooking - that is, I was keeping half an eye on the shoulder of lamb I was slow-roasting, which did have to be basted a couple of times during its journey towards the foil cover coming off and a mint jelly glaze being applied. And I did peel a large panful of potatoes for later parboiling and roasting. And I, um.... drank quite a lot of tea. And sat quietly in the garden for a while, building up my strength for the fun and jollity when they all came back home again. And - oh look! It's a dotted bee-fly! And somehow I seem to have a camera in my hand...!

Because I foolishly planted the notion of foxes as cartoon villains in the Boy Wonder's head yesterday, today R showed him some trailcam videos of the foxes that live down in our wild garden. He seemed interested, and I think it helped that he could see them doing perfectly ordinary things - the adults eating, mainly, and the cubs playing around. The only strange thing about this interaction (apart from B's determination to swipe each video within a few seconds of it starting, and then complain loudly that it had gone away and he wanted it back), was his flat insistence that every adult in every film was male. "So, this is the Mummy fox," said R, "with some of her babies, who are called cubs." "No," said B. "Iss the Daddy." "Oh, do you think so?" said R. "Well, perhaps it is. And here's another of the grown-up foxes-" "Iss a Daddy as well." "Is it? OK then. And here are the baby fox cubs, look, playing around the pond-" "I want to see the Daddy again." "OK - there you go. And here's the Mummy, having her dinn-" "No, iss not the Mummy. Iss the Daddy." And so on.

The Patriarchy is strong in this one....