Time's winged chariot

Poor Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law 1 spent Wednesday night throwing up, so we went and collected the children on Thursday morning and kept them for the day while Daughter 1 went to bed in our house and SIL stayed in bed in theirs. Grandson is post-viral and a bit pale, but we went for quite a long walk and he valiantly wheeled his dolly in its buggy almost all the way. I think the attraction may be the wheels rather than the actual dolly, but I love to see him trundling unselfconsciously along.

This morning I took the children to the museum. We shared a scone. Here's Granddaughter enjoying some tiny bits. Hasn't she got lovely blue eyes?

After the summer, Grandson will probably go to nursery part-time. He'll be three in July. Granddaughter will be 1 on Sunday. Whizz, whizz - there go the years.

The springing of the year

It's definitely becoming more springlike around here, as you can see from my little vaseful of flowers from the garden.

Son came down for the day yesterday and we walked along by the sea at Cramond.

It was sunny, if not hot. I'm so glad to live on the coast and also near hills. Both are essential for getting perspective on things - though of course even they don't always work.

The grandchildren and their parents came round later and the little ones enjoyed meeting their uncle again. We went out to the garden with Grandson, leaving Granddaughter inside (with her grandpa), and she wasn't having any of that.

(Grandson was ill over Saturday night - the sort of illness that requires two changes of pyjamas and bedding. On Sunday, I phoned to enquire how things were.

"Oh, fraught," said Son-in-Law 1, sounding - well, fraught.

"Oh dear," I said. "Has he been sick again?"

"No, he's fine," said SIL 1. "It's just that there are only two of us and there are millions of them."

Millions = one child of 2 years 8 months who is full of ideas - not all of them convenient - and one child of nearly 1 who crawls very fast, is highly enthusiastic and has no sense of danger at all.

I remember it well.)

Thank you

We seem to have a lot of pictures like this: Sirius just cuddling in comfortably. He was an instant purrer - one touch and the rumbling began. Cassie is also keen on sitting on people - but on her terms. She likes to keep her dignity. Sirius would happily submit to being picked up, turned upside down and generally used as a teddy bear. And he had beautifully thick fur - not particularly long but very dense. Hence his nickname of Velvet Ted.

Thank you so much for your kind sympathy. One must, of course, try to get perspective. He wasn't a child. He was just a cat. But he was such an accommodating animal. You wouldn't always trust Cassie's claws as near your face as Sirius's were to Daughter 2's face in this photo.

It's a relief to know that he's not suffering any more. But we do miss him and mourn the shortness of his life: he had less than five years of good health. Cassie - it's hard to tell, but she hasn't gone outside much since he disappeared from her life. It's almost as if she were waiting for him to come back. But that's maybe us being fanciful; though it's easy to believe that at any moment we'll hear a jingle of his bell in the hall and he'll pad into the room, his old healthy self, and settle himself down. If only this could happen.

Meanwhile life goes on. Grandson and I were in the car at traffic lights the other day. He looked at a large clock at the junction. It had Roman numerals. "That clock's got funny numbers," he remarked. "They're all elevens."

Sirius Black

We had to have our lovely, tolerant, gentle cat Sirius put to sleep on Monday. The vet agreed that he had after all been suffering from lung cancer. Sirius had been much less active recently than a cat in his prime ought to be. He's been on steroids for a year. We've been very worried in case he was in pain and we've been wondering if we ought to bring his life to an end, but it's such a hard decision to take. Then in the middle of last week, his breathing got faster and he was clearly very tired.  He was also coughing more. Son and Daughter-in-Law, both doctors, were here at the weekend and said that if he'd been a human he would have been on morphine and oxygen.

The vet came to the house and Sirius died lying in the sunshine in our sitting room. We are very sad. We know that animals and indeed people die all the time but he was our lovely furry boy and we miss him very much.

He was nearly seven. Younger, in fact, than this blog, which featured lots of pictures of him and Cassie when they were tiny. He's the one on the right in the photos above and below.

One should not get so attached to pets. But one does. Goodbye, dear Velvet Ted. 

Out of the mouths...

I don't know why Granddaughter looks orange here - she isn't. But she's very smiley. And hand-wavey.



Grandson's recent experiences of feeling that he's surrounded by idiots: Episode 3

[He picks up feather from the floor (escaped from cushion) and hands it to me.]

Me: Thank you. That's a feather. It's from a bird.
Grandson: No, it's from me.

Zipped

When we were in the Isle of Man last year (as bloggy friends with long memories might recall) I bought a kit to make the front of a patchwork cushion cover. We then visited Daughter 2. She had some material which she cut into strips to do one for herself, and she and I made the cover fronts together, in a sociable sewing-bee sort of way. When she came home this weekend, she at last had time to put a back and a zip on it.

I made mine up some months ago. The kit actually had brown squares for the square patches, but I didn't like them much, so used some green fabric samples that Daughter 2 had. She used yellow fabric samples, as you can see. There were only two of each shade in each case. I didn't notice till months after I'd made the cushion that I had stupidly put both the slightly darker squares on one side and both lighter squares on the other, instead of putting them diagonally opposite each other. Am I enough of a perfectionist to take the thing apart? I am not.

Cassie enjoys the sunshine. You'd think she was a fluffy toy. You'd be wrong. She is a person of independent mind. She doesn't necessarily want you to stroke that tummy.

Sirius is a very gentle and good-natured cat*. He's not so pretty but he has a really sweet personality. He's still on steroid tablets for his presumed asthma. These are keeping him reasonably cough-free, but he's not the cat he was. He just lies around most of the time and when he moves, it's slowly, which is a shame for a chap in what should be his prime. We worry about him. However, he seems happy enough. I don't think he'll live to be an old cat, though.

Grandson's recent experiences of feeling that he's surrounded by idiots: Episode 2 

Daughter 1 was in a taxi the other day with the children. Grandson leaned over to press a button on the door. "No, no, don't do that," said Daughter 1. "I don't know what that button's for."

I wasn't there, but I can just imagine the expression on his face. You know that one - when your children start pitying you, in a caring sort of way, for your lack of technological expertise.

"It's for pressing,", he explained.

(Silly Mummy.)

* What a rubbish photographer I am. I don't think you're supposed to include your own shadow, holding the camera, in the photo.

Kinnoull Hill in the sunshine

Mr L, Daughter 2 and I went to visit Son and Daughter-in-Law yesterday. We had rather a big (though delicious) lunch out and then climbed Kinnoull Hill.

I'd have found this easier if I hadn't had pudding.

However, I'm sure we must have worked off at least some of it by the time we were looking down on the silvery - or in this case blue - Tay.

It was very pleasant, though it's always melancholy, when visiting one's distant children, to go away and leave them. I know I should have more fortitude.

Daughter 2 is still with us but goes back to London tomorrow. Same problem again. Ah well.