Remembering

More self-indulgent pictures of Littlest Granddaughter. I feel the need to indulge because she's now 400 miles away, as is her lovely mum, and I miss them a lot. Here is Littlest playing with her Edinburgh cousins, who're being very patient as she carefully undoes their construction.

The next day, Big Grandson was having a nice quiet game on someone's phone when Littlest Granddaughter came and leaned companionably on him. So sweet. She was lying on his right arm but he didn't complain.

It was my father's 100th birthday on the 9th. Sadly, he died in 2007, but we put a candle on a cake and sang him Happy Birthday anyway. Littlest, who didn't quite grasp the concept but knows the song, insisted that it was her birthday, so we sang it to her and then, at her suggestion, to everyone else too. My dad would probably have been a difficult 100-year-old - he was quite a difficult 50-year-old, 60-year-old etc at times - but it's sad that he was so definitely alive and no longer is. He was very very clever. We're all clever enough but his exceptional brain has now evaporated, which seems improbable.

And then the other day it snowed, and Biggest Granddaughter, who is too young to remember snow (I don't think there was any last year and she's only 6) wanted to go out into her garden and throw snowballs. There was just about enough for her to manage (though it's all gone now). Duck!