Time

Gosh, it's been a busy couple of weeks. My two choirs had their concerts on consecutive Saturdays, so one week I was frantically polishing up the hard bits of Mozart's "Coronation Mass" (which is in four parts and relatively short) and the following week I was even more frantically making sure I knew the fiendish parts of Handel's "Israel in Egypt", which is in eight parts and quite long and tricky. They're both wonderful to sing but the Handel particularly is fairly exhausting.

On Tuesday we went up to see Son and DIL and the Unbloggable Baby, who is such a cutie, with huge blue eyes. She's nine months old now, and crawling. She has an fixed ambition to chew their cats.

We had lunch at Dundee Botanic Gardens, which are pleasant but not as impressive as the Edinburgh ones (which are, moreover, free to visit, unlike Dundee's). The weather was lovely. Indeed, the weather has been unfeasibly lovely for weeks: Edinburgh was the driest part of Britain in April, which has meant practically not a drop of rain. The garden is parched (or, as parched as a Scottish garden gets).

Sweet feet. I miss them.

Grandson was ill all week with a fever and sore ears. He didn't eat much; and since his usual physique is like a piece of string, he became alarmingly skeletal, with every rib visible and his spine all knobbly. We spent quite a bit of time helping to entertain him, but thankfully he's much better now.

Then today was Mr Life's birthday. He's now in his 70th year. How on earth did that happen? (and me only 35, too...). How many more good years do we have, I wonder?

Daughter 2 is expecting a baby in October. She's had problems in the past so we're all hoping that things go smoothly for her this time. Then we'll have four grandchildren, though alas only two in Edinburgh and thus available for intensive grannying. When this one is 15, we'll be 82 and 84 if we're still here at all. A sobering thought... .