The lone and level sands...

This is the street where I lived till I was 12. Strangely enough, Daughter 1 and family live just round the corner from it now. I like to walk up it occasionally (and did, on Sunday) looking disapprovingly at number 1, where we lived and which has looked scruffy for years, and number 14, where my lovely Granny and Grandpa lived (he wasn't quite so lovely but he meant well) and where Grandpa carefully tended his roses - now discarded in favour of paving slabs. I tell you: you leave a house for a mere 50 years and people don't look after it properly. 

Littlest Granddaughter did a science project and drew this portrait of Sir Isaac Newton. Well, she got the hair right. (She's only 5.) And he looks very pleased with his discoveries. 

This is still the nothingy period when I should have been in London (home today) so the calendar is empty. We walked along the river, encouraged by signs of spring. 

The water was absolutely still but then a dog jumped in, chasing ducks and making ripples. 

Crocuses,

and more snowdrops. 

I really must do more to the archives. These photos are from my aunt and uncle's 1960s and 70s album. They had no children and were missionaries in Pakistan - my aunt was also a doctor, and these people are the hospital staff, I assume. My aunt (my dad's sister) is the third from the left. I should really throw this, and many similar photos, out.

 And this is when they came home on furlough (a word familiar in a different context these days). This is my parents' next house. My lovely Granny is on the left, the Granny I hardly knew on the right, my parents at the back, the not-quite-so lovely Grandpa, my aunts and one aunt's missionary husband also in the group, not to say my brother and myself. I wouldn't say that this is the best posed photo one has ever seen, not being helped by what looks like the intellectually-challenged, with one blind eye (not really) 13-year-old me. 

My mother made me that dress. It was made of green velvet. 

I still have the vase on top of the bookcase. And my brother. Nothing beside remains. 

So, to sum up: not a lot has happened.