Fragments of A Dream

I was living in a terraced house with enormous terracotta statuary groups in the front yard. There was a salmon on the carpet, walking around on its fins. I picked it up and it cloned itself and the clones turned into long-haied goats- or possibly rabbits. Someone was translating a passage of classical Greek to an audience of admirers- and William Hague popped in at the side and said "Actually that phrase means 'Theseus's agent.'" And then did a back flip.

Getting Settled Into The New Year

I like to have a calendar on the wall. Last year we bought one and received another as a Christmas gift. The first featured a set of Alice in Wonderland illustrations and the second a set of miscellaneous illustrations by Arthur Rackham (his Father Christmas was a big creepy goblin surrounded by lots of little creepy goblins pretending to be toys). This year we've bought and been given nothing and what I've got hung up in the kitchen is one of the three we were sent unsolicited by the charities my mother supports.

The heat is going out of the family crisis. My mother-in-law (for it is she) is in hospital, facing a longish stay (nothing much wrong with her but old age- she's 89)- with a spell in rehab to follow and the relatives on the ground seem to have things in hand. We are responsible for the full-time care of another old lady at the far end of the country- and the only way we could manage this second one is if she moved to Kent- which is something she resists. Drama is good for us: it teaches us about ourselves. There's no drama in what we (inaccurately) call the afterlife (only love, love and more love) and I'm told we rather miss it.