Fire And Water

We rearranged the study yesterday. Jenny and Ian, Ailz and I. My mother came in at one stage and said she wished we'd waited until she was dead, but then she sat down with an account book of my grandfather's and forgot she was unhappy. I spent most of the afternoon outside- feeding files and their contents into a brazier.

It started raining mid afternoon. I carried on burning things until it was dark. They say that parts of Britain- and this must be one of them- have had the wettest January since records began. 

Uncle Ran

I plonked a Georgian photograph album in front of my mother in the hope she might identify the people in it but she couldn't; she could pick out her mother and father- but so could I-  and when it came to cousins, aunts and uncles she was reduced to guesswork. "Uncle Ran?"  Well, quite possibly, but they can't all be Uncle Ran- especially when two possible Rans appear side by side in the same shot.

Ran was a painter- not an important one- but good enough to be elected to the RA. I remember meeting him once- on which occasion he gifted me a collected Tennyson. He was a bit of a rapscallion I believe- at last by the standards of his high-minded Unitarian family- and there was more than one wife- the last a good deal younger than he was.  I've looked for him online but, unfortunately,  he shares his name with a minor but controversial American pop singer and if he's there- and surely he must be- he's buried deep.