Balancing

The house is clean, but the viewers didn't arrive. Ah well.

Little Agu and I did, however, get some time with Anna, Agu's eldest, and now (with all due repsect to her mother) my daughter, who is doing beautifully with her English but less well with securing a flat in Sheffield. (Any blippers out there with a room to spare from Sept to Feb?) She entertained Mrs Pepperpot for several weeks last month, and the two are almost inseparable now, adopting each other as grandaughter and grandmother. Verbs have been conjugated and things set in stone. You have no idea how happy this makes me. I will get a portrait of Anna some day, but it will be a hard task to really show the wonderful woman she is. Same goes for Mrs P. I love you both...

So, with a clean house, the cat got a bit excited by freshening winds on the terrace and chased us round and round the stairs. He knows something's up and I'm sure he can guess we will be off for a while. This is part of his daring banister routine, designed to thrill.

I've retired to the terrace and a bit of 'Chimes from the wooden Bell, a memoir' by Taqui Altounyan. Thanks enormously to AKHF for lending me her precious copy. When Agu returned from working late, I had to tell him some memories of Swallows and Amazons and the difference it makes to your life to be brought up in a house full of imagination and rich vocabulary. I was thinking of my times on boats and the sight of little Agu today, drifting in and out on the swell on the beach shore, aboard his inflatable and master of his ocean. And then balancing as it started to deflate...