Milestones

 Our youngest granddaughter turned eight yesterday,

I used to be able to write "our youngest grandchild" but now we have a couple of grandsons who are both under a year old- and she gets bumped up from baby of the family to older sister/cousin. 

When I spoke to her on the phone yesterday she was wobbling a front tooth at me. It came out later in the day and the tooth fairy made a visit overnight. The going rate in Leicestershire is £5.00. 

I don't think the tooth fairy was a thing when I was a kid- so that's one supernatural being I never had to lose faith in. Like so much that is cutesy she seems to be an American import. Wikipedia tracks her back to a 1908 article by Lilian Brown in The Chicago Evening Tribune.

Lilian wasn't for giving money, though; instead she advises mothers to lay in a stock of little trinkets from "the five cent counter".

What happened in my day then? I'm going to say i just walked up to the nearest parent with bloodied tooth on outstretched palm and they exchanged it for sixpence- which was then a small silvery coin of approximately the same size. This is an assertion, not a memory- and I've no idea if it's what actually happened. What I do remember is the curious feeling in the mouth of a loosening tooth and how I just couldn't stop twiddling it about with my tongue- just like Clover yesterday...

Next Door's Building Work

 Louis came to the door this morning (Louis is Damian's son and second in command) to say they'd be creating a lot of dust with the building work next door and maybe we'd like to close our windows. Thoughtful of him....

We have a large, paved front yard. We tell the neighbours they're welcome to park their cars on it and sometimes they do. Alison next door has her car on it now because her own driveway is full of a skip.

As far as I can make out Louis and the gang are grinding out every other brick at the corner of next door's kitchen so they can key in the new bricks of the orangery extension. Their grinding machine has been rattling away all morning in fits and starts. 

Alison showed me a pic of the stained glass window she'll be installing in the orangery wall facing towards our property. It shows the Beachy Head lighthouse with the Seven Sisters behind and a blue sky with fluffy clouds. I'm almost as excited about it as she is.