Nearly a Year Later........,

The heavy-duty extra-insulated vacuum flask I gave to my elder son the Christmas before last is still working well high in the mountains of Kazakhstan. My younger son, his wife and my two grandchildren are leading a busy life in South West England, and I am still here, appreciating my wood-stove and many other things in Middle England.

I'm not sure what happened a year ago, the point at which a very new grandchild was confirmed to be on his way, but it seemed appropriate to stop blogging and wait to see what happened next. It felt as if things would change for all of us, as indeed they have done.

Grandson was obliging from the start. He was on his way just at the point when I had finished baking for a planned visit to his home the next morning. I was to be there for his birth and luckily I was able to load hot cakes, pies and casserole into the car and set off down the motorway in a warm and fragrant cloud.
"It would be really good if you can come now," said my son. "I don't think we can leave it until morning."
He was so right.

Granddaughter and I had a mostly happy time while we were waiting for her brother, but it took another night and morning before he came home. Not-so-Little E dressed herself with care that morning. She said, "I want to look beautiful, so that Little Brother will like me." She chose football shorts, a tutu as a petticoat, a dress to top it all, and a flowery headband. I thought he would love her from the start.
Things changed, of course .The camper-van has been exchanged for a five-seater family car with a great big luggage space. The music studio has become a nursery. There's a baby gym on the floor again, a pram in the hall, a mountain of washing to be dried, and two cats who realise that just when they thought it was all over.......well, it isn't yet.

Good things, very good things happen, and sometimes it feels as if I'm on a calm(ish) plateau, looking back over my 77 years, and forward into the lives of my sons and grandchildren. Then I find that someone, somehow has hacked into my gas and electrical supplies and tried to change my suppliers.. Oh, how perilous the serenity.

So it's been nearly a year of much significance, of small events, irritations and happiness, and to anyone who revisits here I say thank you, and I've missed you (but I've been reading all the time).