Same Country, Two Different Worlds

The local birds haven't figured out yet that I'm back and putting out food for them.

My mother lives in rural isolation and you don't notice the school holidays because there are no children of school age within miles. Here we're on the edge of town; the street is full of kids, riding bikes, sitting on walls. It's noisy but also sort of joyous. Windows are open and the people behind the windows are playing rap music.

We were talking over the wall with Sam. She says it's harder to keep Ramadan in Europe than it is in the Islamic homelands because the days are longer. I gather she fasts patchily.

Moving around the country the way we're doing we seem to be dodging the more extreme weather. I'm told London had thunderstorms yesterday.

Vita Brevis Est

My mother gave us an AA touring guide that was my father's present to himself in 1964. It has an entry for every place in the UK where two or three houses are gathered together, with brief notes about the sights to be seen in them. On every left hand facing page are line drawings of a cluster of these sights- churches, Elizabethan houses, market crosses, tombs, follies, oddities. I've been browsing. It's my ambition to go everywhere and see all these things for myself- and I realize I've hardly even started...

Aria

Our grand-daughter Aria- born today at shortly after 11- with her father Joe, my younger son.