Letter to a New Grandchild.

                                         Big Sister and Daddy, making a splash.



Dear Very Small Grandchild,
Well, you're on your way, a tiny person with fingernails and elbows and knees that can move.
You have a lot of growing to do, and we need you to stay put, warm and safe and fed for another five and a bit months.
We will wait for you through the Spring and Summer, and then, by late Summer you will be ready to see sunshine and changing leaves. You will be ready to meet your family, although you will know their voices already. You will be familiar with your sister's voice because she uses it all the time, and she will want to talk to you and sing to you and teach you so many things. I think she will be a wonderful big sister for you, a great source of entertainment as well as a loving, caring person.
She is already gearing up for the role. In fact she was the person who gave me the official news. An evening phone call; "Annie, Annie - I'm going to be a big sister. The baby is very small, really small, so I have to wait. You have to wait, and Daddy...we all have to wait......but I'm going to be a BIG SISTER!"

In no time at all you will be joining in, crawling, walking, paddling in the sea, like your big sister before you in the photo. I realise anew how fleeting babyhood seems, and how precious is the time to enjoy it as a grandparent. Sometimes (or more than sometimes) as a parent, the days and nights are tough, exhausting, seemingly endless, but for a grandparent it's just plain wonderful.

But we will all have to wait.

You are already a very fortunate little baby. You will be born into a family that wants to give you so much. So much of everything, of life's experiences, of music, of books and friendships and fun.....and most of all of love.
See you later,
Love from Granny.

P.S. Grandson was born on 09.09.16 in one of the new NHS Birthing Centres, where he and his parents had two nights in a large room with double bed and birthing pool. Thank you, NHS midwives for impressive care throughout.
Everyone is well and very happy.

End of The Line

This charming clock has ticked its way through so many of my memories, and then, yesterday, I brought it home to continue its steady ticking on my desk. Now it represents the end of a chapter of family life, and for me the realisation that I am the last of that particular line of the family. The old family name has gone.

When I first knew the clock it was in my uncle and aunt's home, a place of so many entertaining evenings, a place of great hospitality and warm glowing fires. In my early years I began to realise that a few glasses of beautiful coloured liquid brought about a change in adult behaviour. My father became entertaining as he and his brother ad libbed variations on the psalms, and after a while my mother stopped being disapproving and joined in the laughter. Even better, my musically gifted uncle would scoot around the room, playing a variety of key-board instruments, square piano, piano, dulcitone while singing from his collection of Victorian sheet music.

Now that my parents are dead I can confess that, as a young child, I used to fantasise that this aunt and uncle were my real parents. They had no children of their own. They went all over the place on a motorbike. They went off to France and wandered around where the fancy took them. I used to imagine that one day they might buy a small side-car and take me too.
As it was, my parents acquired a small side-car and attached it to their tandem (this was 1940s England with no petrol, but also with hardly any traffic). But the tandem never held the same sort of glamour as a motor bike, especially after my parents took a gateway at the wrong angle and sheared me off in my little side-car. I was left sitting there at the side of the road for what seemed like quite a time before they realised. Later I also realised that if I'd been attached to the motorbike neither I nor the side-car would have lived to tell the tale.

My uncle and aunt represented fun and freedom and great joy in life. My mother used to say, darkly, " Of course they can be like that. They haven't any children."
Later, too much later, I knew them as real people rather than iconic figures, and realised that not having children came at a cost of regret.

With the clock came a collection of family documents, going back several generations. I have to think carefully.....do I want to know? I have known enough about.some aspects of my parents' families to think it is better to leave well alone. But yesterday I was given names and dates on yellowing paper, accounts of hostility over financial matters, disputes about legacies, births and deaths and marriages, second marriages for great-grandparents - and who is this Clarissa who keeps cropping up?
My inclination is to let it go, and if my sons want to find out more, then it is too perilously easy to do so.

Surprisingly, the clock sat down on my desk and started ticking away the moment I put its pendulum back. I had expected to have to spend  some time fiddling about with coins under its marble feet to get the 'tick' and the 'tock ' thoroughly even.
Even more surprising and gratifying its glass dome also travelled safely.

Book Club

A few years ago - five? six? or probably more? we started a Book Club for people who live in our small road on the edge of our small town. The idea was to restrict it geographically so that no one had to drive and we could have the occasional bottle of wine if we felt like it.
Initially fourteen people wanted to be part of it, but over time and for various reasons the numbers declined and for several years now we have remained at a steady ten. We are all women. We didn't intend that sort of restriction on membership, but it has just happened that way. Perhaps men are not so interested to be part of such a group? It would probably be daunting for any man to join in now, which is not what we intended. We meet monthly, and people volunteer to host.

We read. Of course we read lots of books that we suggest to each other, or that are suggested by other people, other sources. The reading triggers some animated discussion and personal responses. Sometimes there are uncomfortable thoughts. Always there is a wide range of responses, through which we learn a lot about each other and even more about ourselves.

I'm not going to supply our reading list, only to say that it's very diverse and very democratically selected.
At first we got books from our local library which supplied a list of books with multiple copies so that we could order well ahead. As a group we went through the lists and made our selections, and then I often had to make multiple visits to the library to try and collect the right number of books at the right time. Books were on loan throughout the County and were often not returned on their due dates or had generally gone walk-about.

So then we decided to buy copies, enough for us to share around, on-line or from charity shops, and to spread out the reading time we organised a DVD session every other month. Where possible the DVDs are linked to the reading. We put a pound in a pot each time and the idea is for the host to use that money to fund drinks and biscuits. But often there is a fair amount in the pot, so we save up and have a bit of a party.

Those are the sort-of bones of the group, but it has become so much more than that.
We are mostly close neighbours who used to smile at one another and say, 'Good morning', and now there is the most supportive  web of friendship. We don't see one another for days on end, but we have the knowledge that in the background there is always someone to help, always a listening ear, always someone with the kettle just about to boil.
For people who live alone, and quite a few of us do, this sort of support  is invaluable. I cannot tell you how much this group supported me through tough times, and how much that means to me now.

We do other things.
We exchange plants, give each other fruits and vegetables, make each other go for walks, admire each other's gardens, have days out and laugh a lot.

Not everyone reads all the books, and the reasons why people find a book difficult are just as interesting as the reasons for enjoying it. (I can't get into fantasy or the Watership Down sort of anthropomorphic writing, while others in the group love it.)  Sometimes people simply don't have time to read, but they come along anyway and just enjoy the friendship and the herbal teas.

Book Groups, even one as informal as ours, make you read and think about things that you might not do otherwise. They can be challenging in several ways, but as a means of getting to know your neighbours I don't think they can be beaten.

Storm Gertrude

Here are son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter on a beach during a brief respite from Storm Gertrude earlier this week. There was just time to splash about a bit and draw a few sand-pictures before diving into the vehicle and heading back to the  warm and comfortable log cabin while the wind howled around and the rain cascaded into the already sodden fields and bulging rivers. But it was warm, or at least mild, unlike Gertrude's dramatic visit to America. And everyone is used to rain in Wales. Even when it comes with roaring winds the sheep go on steadily munching and the many ancient castles go on steadily crumbling, and the beaches....well, the beaches are as wonderful as ever, with all that firm, clean flat sand.

I haven't been able to walk on a Welsh beach for a long time, and I was so grateful to have the opportunity do it again. I could walk all day on a sandy Welsh beach, even in the teeth of a gale. Perhaps especially in the teeth of a gale when the surf is rushing up the sand.
This beach is at Tenby by the way, and sometimes it looks like the photos in the link. Not always, though, and certainly not the other day.
We also went here, which, to my mind, is even better, smaller, with a working harbour and lots of rock-pools.

Not only was I aware of  the joys of being on flat sand again, but I was also made very aware of my changed status. Now that Little E is talking (constantly, endlessly, entirely engagingly about everything possible) I realise that family conversation involves everyone calling me 'Granny', and I end up calling son and daughter-in-law 'Mummy' and 'Daddy'.
Yet, when I went recently to collect Little E from Nursery she introduced me to the group by my Christian name, saying firmly to one of her companions who called me 'Nanny', 'She's my Annie (Granny), not yours!'
So if she gets it so straight, why don't we?

I reflect on the concept that possibly Grannyhood causes a sort of softening of the brain, as allegedly in pregnancy. I regress. I am in danger of ambling around thinking about fairies and dragons, talking rabbits, frogs riding motorbikes and small furry things in jackets and dresses. Granddaughter, meanwhile, is also investigating astronomy, geography, numbers and human and animal anatomy.

As she reaches forward I seem to lean back. I appreciate the luxury of handing over responsibilities, of having someone else doing the driving and making the holiday booking. In essence, of being able to share in Little E's state of  awareness and fascination with the world without the constant tension of having to do something about it all. To take a back seat, literally.
How restful to sit back and watch the scudding clouds and think that Peter Rabbit must be getting awfully wet out there!