1. Here Comes The Son

2. A Long Cold Lonely Winter

3. The Ice Is Slowly Melting

Jackie Paper Came Back.  He’s got his Gormiti Egg and his Turtle Guy, so who cares about sticker charts? Into the Big Bed at 2am.  What a waste of wistfulness. Squashed between Son 1 aged 5y 2m and The Man, and boiling hot, I clambered out and went downstairs to the Double Bed.  The Man followed later. Son 2 aged 2y 2m cried in his cot. The Man went and got him, and laid him down next to me. He pressed his soft little toddler face next to mine and went back to sleep.  

Many hours and hundreds of miles later, The Man and I were at the Aged Aunt’s funeral.  Also there: Eldest Brother, Grown Up Nephew, Grown Up Niece and her husband, Elder Brother, Sister In Law and Teenaged Niece, and Younger Sister and Godfather 2.   Lots of elderly people, lifelong friends of the Aged Aunt and my late father.   Elder Sister has cellulitis and couldn’t go.  Nanna also couldn’t make it.   Eldest Brother, the child of my father’s first marriage, was brought up by the Aged Aunt.  Don’t Ask.   The vicar said we were Giving Thanks For and Celebrating the Life of the Aged Aunt. The churchyard was closed for burials years ago, but they made an exception for her because she wanted to be buried near her parents and her grandfather.  My father’s ashes are buried in our grandparents’ grave.  As are the ashes of Younger Brother, whose death, 10 days before my 30th birthday, wrecked everyone’s lives for years and years.   Don’t Ask. Again.  There is a lot of Stuff in our family.

Elder Brother, Sister In Law, Younger Sister, Godfather 2, Teenaged Niece, The Man and I lingered in the churchyard afterwards. The Aged Aunt’s grave was covered in flowers.  We wanted some for her, and for the Other Grave.  We walked over to a nearby florist, and everyone chose some.  Sea Holly from Younger Sister.  Cyclamen plants from Sister In Law and Teenaged Niece. Red Roses from Elder Brother.  Michaelmas Daisies from me - our childhood garden was always full of them at this time of year.  We laid them on the graves, and then walked across the town to Grown Up Niece’s house for tea and sandwiches.  We didn’t have much to do with Eldest Brother as children - yet more Stuff - and only got to know each other as adults.  I see much less of them than everyone else… I moved a long way away, a long time ago.  It was good to be there.  The Man and I drove all the way back again as night fell.  Heavy showers hammered down on the windscreen as we crossed  pitch black moorlands on the way home.  And I thought about the flowers on the graves, in the dark, in the rain.

1.  Signs Of Love

2.  Good Intentions

3.  Warning Signs

Son 1 aged 5y 2m and Son 2 aged 2y 2m were so wiped out at bedtime yesterday that I was SURE we were heading for a lie-in this morning. Nope. 7am. Son 1, was as usual, in the Big Bed. The Man had gone Downstairs to try to get Son 2 back to sleep.   Son 2 wanted his breakfast. We were all getting up.  Son 1 was knackered. There was a lot of lying on the bed/on the floor/on the comfy chair watching telly. Son 2 was raring.  As the morning ticked on, The Man took Son 2 outside to play in the garden while he pulled down our rotten trellis.  Son 1watched more telly.  I rang Eldest Brother. Aged Aunt’s funeral is on Thursday. The Man says he’ll come.  Eldest Brother has found a box in which Aged Aunt kept every letter I ever sent her.  I am strangely, completely undone.   Eldest Brother is missing her.  “She didn’t have a bad life,” he said.  “She spent her life surrounded, or being cared for, by people who loved her,” I said. “That puts her in the top 1% of old ladies in the World.” I put my running things on, waved at The Man through the window and off I went. 

It’s the morning of the 5 mile run I did last year. five miles Tra la la. Last year I thought it was the beginning of Big Things. This year, well, I’ve been out 8 times in the last 2 weeks. I’ve realised that the point of the 10- weeks-to-get-you-to-running-12-miles-a-week training programme which I keep starting, isn’t to get you running distances… it’s to get you running 4 times a week. So. Walking 2 minutes, running 4 minutes, when every other runner in Town was doing 5 miles. Chicago, Chicago, it’s My Kind Of Town. I mentioned my Chicago Marathon Daydream to a Mum I know who rows a couple of weeks back. She went running that day, and has been seen out running since.  I have 11 months. I can still Do It.

Son 1 wanted Eggy Pie for tea, much to The Man’s disgust.  Son 2 stood on a chair and washed the potatoes. Son 1 aged 2y 2m used to wash potatoes. Yes, there was water and mud everywhere, but that was all. Son 2 threw the vegetable brush at the cactus, stretched up to press the microwave buttons, stretched for knives and scooped water from the sink with a spoon and drank it.  These are, of course, organic potatoes, with the mud and manure still attached.  Neat e coli.  Yum.  Son 1 came down to break the eggs for me. He cracks them and put the shells in the box. We need 5 eggs. We had 5 eggs. He went back upstairs for Even More Telly. I poured the mix into the pan. “I usually have more than that,” I thought. I fished in the bin. There was a whole egg in the thrown out egg box.  I cracked it into the pan and stirred it up a bit.  They all stuffed their faces, even The Man, who also had Ready Meal chicken pieces and dip I found in the freezer.  At bathtime, Son 2 reached for a Nemo toy Son 1 had left on the bathside. Son 2 didn’t realise that he needs the bathmat which covers the floor of the bath, and stepped up the bath wall.  He slipped instantly, did a half turn, slid straight down, clunked the back of his head and zoomed on his back straight under the water. I was just walking back into the bathroom as he did it, saw it, fished him out, cuddled him and let him go back in when he wanted to.  Of course I have never left him on his own in the bath before.

1.  Cleaning

2.  Keening

3.  Meaning

Our Family Activity this morning was cleaning the Fish Tank.  Flossie, Floppy, Fluffy, Zizzy, Sulky and Coupon are all still going strong. Floppy last part of his tail and it has grown back.  Betcha didn’t know that happened.  Sulky and Zizzy have put on a bit of weight.  So telling them apart from Floppy and Fluffly is… not possible. Coupon has grown in confidence, and no longer lives shivering in the Bog Wood.  Sigh.  Whole New Worlds into which my children have taken me.  Anyway. The Man has a new sucky siphon thing which he used to hoover the gravel. He cleaned the filters.  I caught snails, because The Man won’t touch ‘em.  I caught 10, and put them in a plastic tub, where most were flattened in a single squelch by the curious and chubby index finger of Son 2 aged 2y 2m.   

Then we went crabbing. This was down to The Man.  Yesterday, having a quiet cuddle with Son 1 aged 5y 1m, he said idly: “What time’s your party?”  Oh dear, wrong in so many ways.  I had accepted an invitation to Little Classmate’s party. And then I had to ring back and say he couldn’t go. I explained all this to Son 1, and he’d protested, but then forgotten. The Man dredged it all up again. And then said, to calm the wails: “Don’t worry, we’ll go crabbing instead.”  Son 1 was thrilled. “Darling, there’s a Force 10 coming through, and the Coastguards are asking people to stay away from quays,” I said. A cubic metre of water weighs a tonne. My new fact of the day.  More wailing. Today the sky was blue, the water was flat, so we all went down to the Quay at the end of The Terrace, and caught bucketsfull.

The Aged Aunt has died, and I am strangely unsettled. She had a stroke while we were on holiday, and has been in hospital since. Eldest Brother was her carer, and I’d spoken to him last weekend to see how they both were.  Younger Sister rang this morning; she’d died in her sleep.  The Aged Aunt was my late father’s elder sister.  There was another brother, shot dead aged 19 by a German when he parachuted into Normandy in 1945.  I feel as if a link with my Dad has been cut.  We took the boys to see her in June journeys so at least we have pictures to show them later.  I watched Son 2 load pigs, sheep and people onto his Playmobil tractor. He knocked it over. “Oh Deer. Wos ‘appen ‘ere.”  The light caught on his pale white face, his skin smooth, his eyes shining.  In 1924 my Grandmother may have sat, with the same adoring expression on her face, watching the Aged Aunt play.

1.  Travelling Hopefully

2.  Going Underground

3.  The Wild

Court finished at lunchtime on Friday (memo to self. Make sure boys go into the Law. These people are not over-working.) so I packed all afternoon.  Set off at 6 and drove at a fair crack.  We are so rural it takes more than four hours at 70mph to reach the M25.  Younger Sister and Godfather 2 stayed up.  I tried to put Son 1 aged 4y 8m and Son 2 aged 20m to bed when we got there but they outvoted me. ”Cat,” said Son 2, repeatedly, whirling round in circles to make himself drunk like he does when he’s excited. ”You see these teddy bears which are cats’ toys,” said Son 1. “I expect they’re for us now.”   They stayed up till midnight.   

On Saturday we went with Younger Sister to their local wildlife park.  We fed goats and chinchillas.  Son 1 gave a lamb a bottle of milk. Hot hot hot. On Sunday Son 1, Son 2 and I got on the train, went into London, crossed it on the Tube (hot hot hot) and met The Man, fresh off the Gatwick Express at Victoria.  Then we went to Kensington Gardens and watched Peter Pan.  Son 1 of course thought it was fantastic. Son 2 sat through the whole two-and-a-half hours with barely a fidget. The child who is hated by a planeload of holidaymakers. “Isn’t he good,” said the lady in front. “Mine could never have been that good at that age.”  We think the fairies swapped him.  His favourite characters were Nanna “Woof woof,” and the Crocodile  ”Snap snap.” When Wendy was carried off from Marooners’ Rock on a kite tail he let out a show-stopping baby chortle.  “It’s not funny,” hissed Son 1.  I do love this story but I am with Son 2 on that bit.  On the way out I said “Son 1 please stay with us. You know what will happen if you get lost in Kensington Gardens.”  “Mummy it’s not real life,” he said, scornfully.  I saw ya, you little beggar, staring transfixed and whispering ”I believe in fairies” to bring back Tinkerbell.

We had planned to do London Zoo on the Monday, but it was too dang hot to brave on a working day, and there is a massive zoo about 10 miles from Younger Sister’s, so we spent the day there.  We did the Big Five… hippos, lions, giraffes, elephants and cheetahs. Went on a steam train, ate ice creams… and got hot hot hot.   At Younger Sister’s we took family photos, and the children again stayed up for dinner.  On Tuesday we drove to see Aged Aunt and Eldest Brother. Aged Aunt looked brilliantly well, their garden was great, the boys were Perfect Children.  And then we drove back. On the hottest day of the year. Fortunately we had wiped Son 1 and Son 2 out and they slept for most of the Very Long Indeed trip.