rockpool in the kitchen

Granny's ark

2009-11-23T11:22:00.009Z

Look away all those who hate animals:

All this courtesy of Dear German friend - a much better photographer than she is: and besides, her own camera is kaput.

Noah of course has to feature first. Sorry about the intrusive hands...

Still busy

2009-11-21T13:19:00.005Z

Well well. This week dear German friends have been staying at Granny's house. Granny still managed to write a bit but mostly she has been entertaining friends and also doing the following: Christmas you have to realise is COMING. Plus Christmas guests, not family this year but commercial ones, so Granny has had to go back to doing the things she has become lazy about:

namely 1) making mincemeat for mincepies - including, first - you have to go back to first principles here - making the candied peel the surplus of which she will in due course dip in chocolate and take to Beloved Son for his birthday, because he LOVES this and she is a very good mother. (Most of the time. Though B S and his sister might disagree. It is anyone's right to disapprove of their upbringing and try to do better with their children. Of course.)

2) making Christmas puddings, one of which was given to Mr and Mrs Handsome. This had to be boiled for the requisite 4 hours. (Much steam - but easier than candied peel which takes up to three days to dry out and thus tends to lurk about the place, almost as much Beloved's goat products and bowls of chicken food lurk, all over the kitchen, all the time.)

Oh and 3) equally seasonal, if not so traditional, paying local taxes - done following visit to the town hall, and less seasonal but continual buying anti-flea stuff for cats on the other side of the island.

All achieved, before Granny departs for England on Tuesday to see the babies. Phew. (She wipes overworked brow.)

And on top of all this with dear female German friend, she does a circuit walk up and over and down of nearest volcano. (See above.) Hard work but magnificent. (She means the view, not Granny's efforts.)

Meantime. apart from one week, entirely covering the visit of one set of visitors, poor things, the weather has been amazing: it is still summer here. The problem with that is that with two days of rain only planting cannot be done and chickens all over the island, which like to see things growing so know that their putative chicks will find food are not laying anything. This includes Beloved's chickens: but they still have to be fed. When the eggs are finally laid they will be very expensive.

Meantime too, the ramifications of all the corruption cases on the island roll merrily on. Confessions are made and then retracted. Nothing changes there.

Sta luego.

Busy

2009-11-08T09:43:00.003Z

Sorry, dear all. No, Lizzy, Granny didn't run to or from the sea; she's rooted in her house, along with her Beloved, tending guests. Right now, next door, the sound of seven happy ones, breakfasting, talking to each other in a lively way and from time to time requesting more coffee.

When she manages to take off her cook/waitress/chambermaid/cleaner/hostess hats she does run away but only to her desk to write. She's deep in a new novel for yet more publishers not to publish. Perhaps, when she hits 80, steamy geriatric sex would do it??? None here, though.So forgive her please, if not much blogging gets done. xxx

Rapture

2009-09-26T09:57:00.002+01:00

Another quickie this.

They came, they saw, they showered - luxuriantly - and then they ate - how they ate, very slowly, savouring every bite.

There's one part of Granny - the puritanical Angl0-Saxon bit, brought up on the notion of eat to live rather than the reverse and generally surprised by the proportion of their income that those across the channel were prepared to spend on food - what about the starving masses? - etc etc - that thinks she ought not really to enjoy such gastronomic excess. On the other hand: since her long-ago education via the books of Elizabeth David and her successors she has learned, somewhat, to suppress this part of herself. (While not of course entirely forgetting the starving masses: time for another contribution to Oxfam or Africa Now, perhaps, that useful means of appeasing a guilty middle-class conscience..?) But the rest of her - and on such occasions - is quite able to quell that part. And how.

Gastronomy after all - she tells herself and you - is an art like any other. Making a meal at restaurants like this the equivalent of a visit to the Tate? Possibly. For the Waterside is particularly high art. Take the lobster Granny and Beloved ate - very slowly - its richness and even richer portwine sauce offset by a sprig or two of chervil, much subtler than parsley but not as blatant as coriander - very slightly liquorice, or aniseed, but not quite. It was a bit like that dot of white - like the glint on Vermeer's pearl earring - that turns a good painting into a great one. When the chef himself came round to greet them - it was that sort of restaurant - and Granny pointed out this perfect touch - he was pleased: 'my herbs are not for decoration,' he said. Quite.

And then there was the perfection of the restaurant choreography - a ballet of waiters, wine waiters, under-managers which outdid the Royal Ballet. After the lobster came a duckling. It was carved with marvellous dexterity by an under manager wielding a wide, glinting steel knife, while the vegetables were laid out -exquisitely -by a waiter - one of those who wore waistcoat and shirt sleeves, as opposed to the wine waiters' tail coats., turned temporarily soloist. 'You're doing a chef's job here,' Granny said to him. 'It makes the job more interesting.' he said. The duck was as perfect as the lobster, tender, a little pink, full of flavour, if a bit too much - in quantity - for Granny, who rarely eats meat. She gave some of her slices to Beloved.)

Now Granny is as fond as anyone of good food in more rough and ready surroundings - gastro pubs for instance. She doesn't always want to be part of a gastronomic ballet. Or only once in a very blue moon. But that once in a blue moon is heaven, at the time.- and for a bit longer, given the presents of jam, coffee and cookery books that she and Beloved came away with. (And now for the contribution to Oxfam to make it virtuous - sort of - as well.)

She got up yesterday and went straight to Stoke Newington to mind her beloved little lone twin baby for the afternoon. Who wailed in the park, when tired. Slept thereafter and then chatted and smiled as she does So that was alright. Real life - nice real life - restored.

Good.

Wonderful, golden autumn weather by the way. The kind she misses on her island, which doesn't do turning leaves only the rather inelegant browning and falling of the ever-green variety. To which she will be returning in 10 days or so. Next week she is off to see old friends in Somerset to see still more of the English kind.

Good.

'Sta luego, amigos.

Luxury

2009-09-24T17:15:00.002+01:00

More inter- cultural jottings - from London this time. Rasta man - hair tucked into huge beret - in the street behind Granny's flats with small child, evidently his own. He is jumping the child up and down to the child's delight. "Upsidaisy" he says, "Upsidaisy". Granny doesn't think that phrase ever came out of Jamaica. But it certainly came out of her long-dead mother's mouth long ago and from hers, with her children and now with her grandchildren. UPSIDAISY. Indeed. It belongs to us all. UPSIDAISY.

But this is all she is going to write now. She is currently sitting on a very comfortable and very big bed in an extremely upmarket and Michelin starred establishment alongside the Thames - she and Beloved will shortly go for an exploratory riverside walk. No, she has not come into a fortune suddenly. This is a final joint family present to her and Beloved to celebrate - belatedly - their mutual arrival into an eighth decade. They have been, drooling, reading the menu for the meal which will at 8 o'clock be placed in front of them.

'Like eating money,' said a very puritanical friend once of a similar establishment. 'But oh what delicious money,' Granny said, 'what a delicious money just the same.' She will, very shortly, experience - with her tongue, her mouth, her tastebuds, her belly. this lovely money, for herself.

Though you will be glad to know that she has - on ethical grounds - turned down the offer of foie gras.

Absences

2009-09-14T17:29:00.005+01:00

Granny is very sorry. No: she is not dead/disabled/eaten by shark/smothered by figs/drowned in the paddling pool/ whatever you choose - or don't choose to imagine. She is lazy/inadequate/generally useless. (Make a cross as applicable. Check all options if you like.) She has also been writing - really. Well, that's her excuse, so there. Otherwise she has been doing much as normal, apart from the fact that last weekend was the great yearly fiesta when the whole island descends on the village next to hers on foot and dressed in local dress. (Does Granny dress up in local dress. NO. Though she does walk there like everybody else: in her case it takes all of ten minutes so is not exactly an effort. And anyway, all roads closed to cars, it's the only option.)

Tomorrow is the date of the actual festival celebrated - the day of la Virgen de los Dolores Our Lady of Sorrows, if you prefer - one of the many gods of Catholicism - no more monotheistic than Hinduism as far as Granny can tell. Which means it's yet another holiday and all the shops and businesses are closed. And she herself is due to fly to London, to see the babies among other things.

So she hasn't much to say now, nor much time to say it in. Beloved is busy with the hassle of shipping a dog back to England - the Little Black Local Yokel - off to join his owner - which is worse than shipping a load of cocaine as far as Granny can see. Oh the jabs at the vet, the pet passport, the paperwork, the customs forms, the acquisition of a box of exactly the size allowed by the airline. Etc etc etc. Plus the cost: a lot. Plus all relevant businesses being closed for fiesta on the day everything was supposed to come together. Granny's advice to anyone thinking of shipping an animal back to Blighty is: DON'T.

Meantime a large amount of grapes arrive, thanks to next door neighbour - the grape harvest is finally over: but the large amount of pork Beloved was supposed to be buying from another neighbour doesn't materialise because the slaughter vet claimed the poor animal's liver was defective so that the whole animal had to be thrown away. Neighbour not pleased, nor Beloved, though Granny herself was a bit dubious to start with. (Neighbour's pigs have reasonable quality of life - more than reasonable - but aren't exactly free-range, so not quite happy enough pigs for her.)

Oh and this animal story: concerning the Beautiful Wimp who is NOT being despatched to England. No way. Beautiful Wimp is a mixture of whippet and Welsh collie; looks like a small rather pointy-nosed collie therefore. Granny was walking him along a local dirt road when up rolls a van with a group of what looks like Andean Latin Americans - Ecuadorian or Peruvian. One of them leans out, points at the Beautiful Wimp and shouts - and this is a moment of beautiful cultural, geographical, linguistic animal intermixing. 'LASSIE.'

'No. LADDIE,' Granny shouts back, imagining a village somewhere high up on the Alto Plano showing old old films to the local inhabitants. Much as she, years ago, staying in a remote Donegal village and attending the weekly fillum show in the village hall was treated to several episodes of Tom Mix: the even more antique serial where the good cowboy wears a white hat, the bad one a black. and the heroine ends most episodes tied to a railway line in front of an advancing train/about to be swallowed by a whale/fall off a cliff, whatever.

Hollywood is a great cultural binder. Especially in a world where people travel a long way from home. Granny included.

mysterioso?

2009-08-26T11:32:00.012+01:00

Disappearance of one of Granny's best - guest - pillowcases off the line. Why?

Local linen-thief? Blown off by wind? Beloved removed it? 'No of course not," says Beloved. So why did it turn up 24 hours later mixed-up with his clean washing?

Hour-long power-cut last night?

Overload here? No, whole island as seen out of window is black too. Inefficiency by electricity company? Of course not, heaven forfend... Except this is August and all utilities short-staffed. So: go figure.

Why are curtains suddenly all too short?

Mysterious clipper? Granny's eyesight? No, much too economical to use prohibitively priced cleaner, she washed them all; in cold water of course, very carefully. But.

Cats totally disappeared and/or making even more ridiculous noise than usual?

Cats kidnapped/unfed/growing ever more Siamese and neurotic? No: she has managed to teach them to use the cat door/ neglected to fill their water/food bowl/started cutting up fish on a surface above their heads.

Mysterious sounds of London police sirens echoing round her house?

Migration of London police cars to Lanzarote? Mysterious waves from outer space wafting London sounds down across the Atlantic? - no, though this is a bit more like it, thanks to Telefonica ADSL (broadband to you.) But all it really signifies is that Granny wastes too much of her time these days checking on the Trafalgar Square plinth online and feeling a little home-sick. Beloved never wastes his time like that: but that's Beloved for you.

So you see: Granny is hard-pressed for real drama. This is August after all on her island - when everything and everyone goes to sleep -or goes camping, though, due to recession, there are far less of them doing that this year. While all she does - apart from scolding Beloved and Mr Handsome for upping the water bills by doing ridiculous amounts of watering, rather than waiting to plant when the rains come like everyone else (they are beginning to listen: good) is wash/sort linen, sort jams/chutneys in date order, wash curtains, teach cats to negotiate cat-flap, tolerate dogs and manage without their cat tray -do you want to hear about all this any more than she wants to do it? OF COURSE NOT.

You are quite free to go elsewhere, even if she can't.

Roll on September.

PS. Life not so bad really if a trifle boring. Right now, here comes the sun... doesn't it? Or maybe not.

Old Macdonald....

2009-08-19T16:57:00.004+01:00

Singing Old Macdonald over and over again to Beloved Baby ('with a wuff wuff here and a bleat bleat there') reminds Granny all over again what noisy places farms are. Not that she needs reminding. Since she arrived back on the island, she and Beloved have acquired 2 new goats, 2 new cats and several new chickens. And all of them are vocal. This is not to mention the fact that the grape harvest is in full swing and the trudging of local growers back and forth on the other side of the wall sets the Beautiful Wimp into frenzies of barking, especially at weekends when the picking goes on still more. This is also not to mention that the politics/relationships of all 3 types of acquisition -within their own species and in regard to previously existing animals - eg dogs and other chickens - requires careful monitoring and constant negotiation. And generates still more noise.

The two goats are very pretty and much friendlier than previous ones (when the Beautiful Wimp is not barking at them that is, as he did at first). And also much more vocal. Both appear to be pregnant. But the smaller, older and black one - meet Caprine Elloise - has asserted authority over the brown and white and most friendly and most vocal - continuously vocal one- meet Caprine Harry - and given that Caprine E has some formidable horns and that Caprine H doesn't, Caprine E has to be carefully watched to see she does no damage.

The young chicks also have among them a bully - one that pecks her fellows at every turn. She's such a bully that one poor chick couldn't take it and died. Another was only just rescued from a similar fate. The bully was removed at the same time and both are now separated from the remaining two chicks- in due course, somehow, they will all have to be reunited but it's not quite clear how. Nasty creatures chickens. A bit like little girls - sometimes - when they're not being kind to each other. Older chicks despite it all can make a really rather nice noise talking among themselves; not just cheep cheep but something more like a melodious warble (granny thought a new species of bird had landed on the back patio until she realised it was the chicks.) The same cannot always be said of quarrelling little girls. Granny has had recent experience of that.

Nor would melodious be the word she would use to describe the voices of the two new cats: meet Feline Milou and her son, Feline Pink Floyd: both acquired ready-named from the local animal rescue place with a little help from the quarreling girls. Looking at the mother cat and hearing her son's name, Granny should have twigged, she really should. The blue-eyed mother looks and is half Siamese; her equally pretty son is a green-eyed marmalade cat, not at all Siamese looking. But what he has inherited from his quarter Siamese ancestry is the Siamese voice. Or rather yowl. Employed at full volume whenever (often) something doesn't please him: as when he's been fed the wrong kind of biscuit - or not fed any biscuit - or is on the wrong side (he thinks) of any door. Hence Floyd. Pink. Ouch. (Not a rock group Granny dislikes actually. But.)

Granny knows about oriental cats: she had Abyssinians for years - but has retreated more recently - with relief - to less demanding, more relaxed moggies. So what is she doing with these semi-Siamese felines - in place of the nice, half-grown moggy kittens she was intending to acquire? Pity that's what: silly old woman her. They were not doing well these two among the less aristocratic moggies at the animal shelter. Feline Milou was even wounded. Would Granny please take pity, was the import. More fool Granny she did: charmed too by how pretty both cats were -this was before she heard them - she took them home.

Compared to this farm with its yowling Siamese, cheeping chicks, bleating goats, barking dogs (at the cats among other things) and sometimes grumpy Beloved, Old Macdonald's farm sounds peaceful Granny thinks. Unless Old McD was grumpy too. Probably.

Family Holiday

2009-08-07T18:56:00.006+01:00

Well it went as these things always go. One parent got sick the day after arriving, the other the day before leaving. The two stepdaughters (10 and 12) fought endlessly. The baby has developed a mind of her own, part of which involved crying 'mummy' piteously sometimes when left with her ungranny - otherwise known as Grannyp. The two new cats yowled unceasingly, the two new goats bleated, ditto. The first week was intolerably hot, the second too cloudy, the wind never stopped blowing any more than Grannyp and Beloved ever stopped cooking- or in Grannyp's case child-minding. They are now EXHAUSTED.

In spite of which it was all WONDERFUL. Of course.

And now Granny is missing the thieves of herself like crazy; even though her house has today returned to normal and she's got her head and body back - why do they always go AWOL at such times, during such visits? -she more than half wishes they hadn't been returned to her, that the robbers were here still: but they aren't.

Hullo head. Hullo body. Hullo mind. Goodbye everyone else: goodbye Beloved Baby - turned little person these days - especially.

Hullo door-left open freezer breeding icicles - hullo strange things lurking within de-frosting freezer which have to be dealt with... real life has reappeared with a vengeance, the way it does.

(New cats? New goats? She'll get back to them next post.)

Home - sort of

2009-07-22T11:08:00.006+01:00

Well, Granny is back on her island. A bit bemused, torpid, unsettled- it's taken a week to get herself used to life here again - and with a mixed collection of memories from the past two months playing in her head.

Item: an aged and bare-foot beggar in Venice, clutching an asthmatic's puffer (yes: Granny did drop a cent or two into her hand, never mind she was a gypsy and sending their old and young to beg is a gypsy scam - everyone hates gypsies in Venice as elsewhere so what else legal - more or less - can they do?).

Item: a very large grasshopper in Calabria which interested Granny -nose to nose to it - very slightly more than the somewhat impenetrable ruins of an archaeological site her companions were busy deciphering.

Item: a Muslim woman on the Underground in London clad in all enveloping black, but for an elegant silver stripe in the cloth, and busy applying mascara. 'It looks good,' Granny told her, 'Thankyou,' she replied as they smiled at each other.

Item: many more smiles from beloved infant twin, as Granny, baby minder, sipped coffee in a cafe in Stoke Newington and made silly faces at her.

Item: the twin's two elder brothers upended over the pond in Beloved Daughter's garden after Granny and Beloved's 70th birthday party trying to catch infant frogs.

Item: a superfluity of wizards: - eldest granddaughter in Soul version of the Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, also in Bristol, playing the Lord High Something or other, and sporting fearsome make-up and a whip, and middle granddaughter in the original version in Kew, impersonating a Munchkin in a curly pink wig.

Item: beloved Son-Law, plus ukulele, leading everyone in a slightly risque song from the plinth in Trafalgar Square. Etc etc.

Item: final flourish - a scheduled weekend in Pembrokeshire - was alas aborted by the dear friend Granny was due to visit having been bitten by an adder- dangerous place Wales: evidently. (Dear friend is recovering, Granny is happy to say.) But you can't have everything. And she did take in two films instead.

And here? Well it has been mostly cloudy, windy, very humid, not exactly the island at its best, ever since Granny returned. Though today, for the first time, her part of it has emerged from the cloud sufficiently to see the islands for the first time.

Politically the clouds don't lift - whole place in total stasis, every town hall functioning with minority government, all coalitions with the suspect party which ran the network of corruption axed by the (slightly) more virtuous: meaning that no budgets can be passed, meaning that nothing can be done/initiated and noone can be paid. The Mr Big, leader of said party, who ran the whole crooked business from his prison cell via mobile and computer -the prison governor has since been removed for obvious reasons - is now languishing in a prison cell in Tenerife where he has no influence whatever, Granny is glad to say, so no privileges: he is liable to spend the rest of his life in a prison cell judging by the charges laid on top of the ones he's already in prison for. His claims, meanwhile, to have no income any more with which to pay his hefty fines, somewhat dissipated by the discovery- by the Madrid police while taking his house apart - of a million and a half euros stuffing a pillow: though alas they can't track down all the property he owns, distributed among the names of different 'owners'. In the island, on the other hand, he's still admired as the local version of Robin Hood: god knows why - as far as Granny could see the little people only benefited by the distribution of the odd television set when he or one of his trying to get re-elected. His entire party - a local nationalist island one - seems to have been set up so that he, his mates, his family, could get their hands on profitable political pickings. So Spain, so Canaries, so Lanzarote. British MPs, venial enough, claiming for moats etc are mere amateurs by comparison.

And now there's the panic about swine flu coming from Britain.... Don't start Granny on that. Said illness has been and gone in part of her family - Beloved seems likely to have had a touch of it - and so what? Flu, the odd death from flu, has always been around from time to time: Granny has had some unpleasant encounters with it herself. Illness, death in general are always around. Immortal we aren't despite the sterling efforts of Health and Safety. Elsewhere in the world they know that all too well. SO GET USED TO IT, Britannia. At the very least try and think about something else. GROW UP.

plinth

2009-07-09T10:24:00.002+01:00

What did Beloved Son-in-law NOT do? He blew bubbles, threw chocolate, recited poetry, played his ukulele, read Cromwell's speech on emptying out the rotten parliament of his day - very relevant - talked about the newly independent Greenland, phoned his parents and read his book club book. (If you want to see something else he did go here and scroll down towards the bottom of the page where you'll see a youtube video of it.)

Just off to mind Beloved Baby no 2, the little lone twin, so hurried now. But meantime.....does anyone want to share, for lowish rent, Granny's very nice, ex-council flat in West London, near the BBC? Ad went in wrong, about to be tenant defected.... And there Granny is.. looking out at birds, trees, sky - it's that kind of flat - all by herself.

Just a thought.

plinth

2009-07-06T12:22:00.002+01:00

Briefest of brief posts from a granny who has been spread very thinly - on and off toast - over the past few weeks.

Could this be the highlight though? Beloved son-in-law will be featured between nine and ten this evening on the Trafalgar Square plinth. His family including Granny will be there cheering him on. (Plus a bottle of wine - or two - of course...) It's scheduled to pour with rain - and there's also of course the possibility of his being dive-bombed by pigeons. Let's hope not.

Granny returns to her island next week and may be back here too. Or not. But that's all for now...

Updates

2009-06-03T15:14:00.005+01:00

Granny is back in London from heavenly stay in Italy with her three old friends and in two days will be off to Venice for Beloved's birthday. Life in betweenwhiles has been a whirl of seeing family - and most beloved babies- in the course of which, yesterday, she ran for a bus, fell over, banged one cheek bone, hard, but managed to avoid a black eye, but also fell on her right hand and has what looks like two broken fingers, currently splinted by Beloved's Beloved daughter with two strips of plaster and a kiddy wax crayon - very effective if odd-looking, but no odder than her swollen and bruised hand. Thank god for NHS Direct: when Granny rang it nice nurse assured her she was self-treating sad hand properly, provided she kept on stuffing in Ibuprofen and applying ice, so averting several hours in A&E. Modern times have something to be said for them, obviously.

Back on the island it's all go. A stray dog got in and killed the two adult chickens and large white-tailed cockerel. That's Beloved's drama. The island's drama is larger and is even big news in the mainland Spanish press. Madrid police have descended on various island town halls and on the island council - cutting off their telephone lines meantime - and on the prison cell of the island Mr Big Crook, who'd been orchestrating corrupt development deals from within. Large numbers of island politicians from his party and others, plus council officials plus developers have been questioned- at least eight have been remanded in custody. A lot of document shredding is going on in local police stations..... the local police being the ones who should have waded in and stopped illegal buildings going up: did they? Hell. All of this has been documented as the 'mere tip of the iceberg.'

Among others questioned has been Granny and Beloved's local mayor - whom they did not vote for.

The police operation called 'Operacion Union' is rumoured to have been instigated by one non-bent - presumably - socialist leader in the Cabildo (the Island Council) for political reasons according to his politicial opponents, especially those in Mr Big Crook's party - which contains most of the arrested ones. All of them, of course, are claiming 'no senor, not me, senor, don't know anything about it, senor,' despite big sting in which bribe money for one development was handed over to a middleman: this one provided by the police, as it turns out.

The story looks like it will run and run. Good. And about time too.

Granny will be flying...

2009-05-16T12:40:00.003+01:00

Granny is off tomorrow. She'll spend some of Monday with precious little lone twin then take off at some hideously early hour on Tuesday with 2 of her ex-Oxford group of girls for Italy where there'll join a third. All lovely except that the merry little group is hardly one of girls any more. The trip is to celebrate 50 years of friendship -help! - - and a 3 day walk they did then along Hadrian's Wall, none of them fit and none of them with proper footwear; but they made it, blisters and all. She thinks- hopes- they know better now.

This trip will be much more sybaritic: they're staying at a delicious-looking Calabrian B&B this time- as compared to very austere youth hostels and equal austere B&B's then, both kinds of hostelry freezing cold and latter featuring slippery brown lino and disapproving landladies. Much pasta will be eaten - the Italian landlady is a celebrated Italian cook - and much wine consumed. Fifty year old trip as Granny remembers was entirely dry. Oh, those were the days - all of us in love then, but the husbands in the process of being acquired are now all dead and gone. Women it seems live longer, so though old age is not exactly to be celebrated we can and do celebrate each other. We will. Bibulously for sure.

Granny is then taking Beloved to Venice to a borrowed flat to celebrate, belatedly, his 70th birthday and both of them are having a party in Bristol at the end of June to celebrate that and also her own 70th birthday in mid June. Family and quasi-family come to 20 odd in all and to that some very old friends have been added - plus some 70's music to groove to. It should be fun.

Can anyone suggest the odd hangover cure??

Granny will be glad to leave Lanzarote for a month or so anyway. Trade winds weather - wind everywhere, persistently cloudy up here - has set in and she is not at all fond of that. So no looking back longingly on volcanos. And anyway, if she was feeling volcano-less, she and the rest of them are flying to Naples first and visiting Pompeii so she can feast her homesickness on Mt Etna. Let's hope it doesn't erupt... Not that the four of them wouldn't make lovely ash-hardened fossils. Given that they are half-way there already.

'Sta Luego. She'll post again from London. Perhaps.

Sumer is icumin in...

2009-05-12T11:19:00.016+01:00

Sumer is icumin in.. no singing though. It was a song wasn't it, usually sung by greenery yallery people dressed up as mediaeval minstrels, all very prissy. (Well that's how Granny heard/saw it once, before mediaeval music got bucolic and rumbustious.)

Granny still sees her little Pili round every corner. She still kicks the washing-machine on passing which doesn't do the washing-machine much harm, but doesn't improve her big toe either - all fair enough really. A new cat will be acquired when she comes back here in July. Meantime the mice will have their way with things. And Beloved is back and Mr Handsome outside the kitchen window painting the house, even as she writes.

Apart from the grieving it was a good week. Much sun, little wind, dogs behaved themselves on the whole, Granny had nice lunches with women friends - minus all the men, life stories could be exchanged - and were. Some of her most virtuous friends seem to have been tearaway children: good. And she got back to her piece of fiction - up to 25,000 words now: she still doesn't know whether or not it's a lost cause/total shite or worth proceeding with: she might show it to critic friend back in the UK to get an idea.

Leaving aside all this solipsistic stuff, leaving aside the good weather, she has to report, sadly that the island is in bad shape. The unemployment figures in Spain are 3 times those in the UK, the Canaries the worst in Spain and Lanzarote the worst in the Canaries, 23,000 and climbing; 40% of the working population she's been told. It's not so bad in her area: people have gardens and access to land and they've gone back to doing what they've always done, that is growing things. Oh and bartering and exchanging crops, milk, eggs, etc the way Granny and Beloved do too, a bit, now they're part of the small-holding community.

In the towns there's no such recourse. And very little in the way of social security either. It turns out that few of those who worked in the now collapsed building trade or declining tourism were properly employed, or even on contract. They were casuals, ie 'autonimos' - ie self-employed: moreover, unlike in the UK, they cannot claim unemployment money when the work runs out. (There'd had been some move to change this before the recession broke, but that's now fallen by the wayside.) The result is that families are left without any income; the charities that used to feed street people are now feeding them too. The burglary rate is going up: burglars not only stealing things they can't afford themselves but food; lots of it. (And booze: the local supermarket has taken to locking up their stock of spirits.) Can you blame the thieves? It's dire. The better-off who can afford it are sending stuff to the charities, but of course it's not enough.

Oh and to add to all the good cheer, the water company on the island is bankrupt. Where all the money went, god knows, though one can imagine some of it went into political pockets, given that it's owned by the island council. (Not that corruption isn't universal: look at the news from the UK right now: tax-payers paying for MP's swimming pools? Oh come on.) The managing committee for water is made up of council members from the two parties currently in coalition, the numbers from each proportionate to their representation on the council. Currently there's a coalition between PSOE the Spanish socialist party and PIL a nationalist island party. They were falling out anyway and over the business of the water have fallen out totally. Meaning NOTHING is being decided, let alone done. Since the business can't be shut down - the island cannot do without water - and it can't be taken over, already belonging to the public, what now? God knows. Certainly the politicians don't. But then they never do, do they.

By the way: Granny and Beloved having become via their smallholding to be part of the community is a a good thing for them. In a country where democracy is comparatively young and where good of family/friends trumps good of the community - hence all the embroglios of politicians, developers, business men etc - one weapon of little people is the denuncia - which means literally 'report' rather than the more punitive English meaning of the word 'denounce.' But it works out the same. The denuncia can be anything: you've built an illegal wall/swimming-pool/extension, run an unlicensed business/unlicensed pig. your dog has grubbed up someone's garden, your goats/chickens are kept too near residential buildings. Etc. But once the report is handed to the local police - that's the procedure - even if it turns out unfounded it can cause you - and the police - a great deal of hassle in the meantime. Which is the point. Many expats living in rural areas have been hassled like this. Granny and Beloved have never been - but then they do know the odd thing about the odd illegal local pig etc, which might be a way of them causing problems in return. This helps.

(Ah Spain. Yahoo Espana has just reported an asparagus 3 meters in length. Sumer may be icumin but we haven't hit the silly season yet. Or have we?)

Poor Puss

2009-05-04T11:56:00.007+01:00

Granny sat outside this morning with her breakfast. She'd brewed coffee in a stove-top espresso pot with strong freshly-ground Fairtrade (of course..) coffee; toasted slices of bread full of seeds and walnuts from a German bakery: put out ricotta cheese - Italian - and her own home-made strawberry and balsamic jam. She had also picked two ripe guavas off the tree that Mr Handsome planted by the front gate. To her right on one side of the patio was a riotous display of nasturtiums, on the other an equally riotous display of morning-glory. The olive trees she planted five years ago were growing and healthy, she saw, the fronds of the palm tree that was small when she arrived and is no longer were waving benignly in a very gentle wind. To the far left, hibiscus bushes were in full flower. Such a sunny, relatively windless morning a relatively rare thing here, Granny sat comfortably, eating and drinking and reading an only half-read issue of the Guardian review. Bliss.

But no, actually. Not bliss. Granny was not - is not - very happy just now.

You know the comic shaggy-dog story about the cat that got shut in the washing-machine and washed? Well, she can tell you it is not a funny story really - not unless you like black humour -something fine on paper -or in the movies; but not at all fine in real life.

Yesterday morning she went to get the washing out of the machine to hang on the line. In the middle of it was the sodden, rigid, very clean, very heavy - being sodden - very dead body of Pili (otherwise Pilar Lorengar after the opera singer, because as a kitten she had such a sweet miao): Granny's half-calico, half tabby and much loved little cat.

Kicking the washing-machine shouting 'murderer' wasn't much help: the washing-machine is an inanimate object which was only doing what it's programmed to do: the real murderer - programmed to do the washing after all these years she might be, but Granny is not an inanimate object - was the one who closed the machine door and set it going: Granny herself.

She howled mightily half the day, but nothing could bring back her little cat, by now wrapped in large amounts of newspaper and two plastic bags and dumped in the rubbish: no grave no cat funeral here; the ground is too hard and dogs would have come along and dug the body up.

It was an evil collection of unfortunate circumstances; starting with the fact that the Local Yokel having not adapted to the cat like the other dogs, and continuing to hassle her, Pili had ceased to station herself in the dining-room in the evenings, on a chair and taken to hiding in cupboards etc - but never so far as anyone knows in the washing-machine before. Going on to the fact, that, having discovered the odd flea bite on one of her legs, Granny had that evening decided to do a flea blitz, had hauled the throws off the sitting-room sofas, sprayed the sofas - sprayed everywhere, dumped the throws in the machine - she hadn't shut the door, in case there was more washing to be found. (The throws of course would have smelled comfortably familiar to the cat who sat on them sometimes when noone was around to chuck her off. )

There was also, for the first time ever, another cat lurking down on the land; a black and white monster. Granny due to go to a concert watched it for a bit, hoped it wouldn't cause trouble then hurried to her office to look up the map giving her the whereabouts of the concert, remembering to put the machine on as she went.

She heard a cat scream in a little while; but put it down to the cat outside, hoping there wasn't some fight in which her cat would come off worst. When Pili didn't turn up for her breakfast in the morning she even went outside to see if she could find her wounded somewhere on the land. In vain, of course. Then she came back in and emptied the washing-machine....etc etc.

The cat's scream is what haunts her, especially. If she'd correctly identified its source, could she have got the machine open - could she have saved her? - the programme was a low temperature one, so couldn't have boiled her at least - one small comfort, of a rather black kind. Maybe even then it would have been too late. The sheer terror of the poor animal when the machine started turning is more than she can bear to think of. Your animals - like your children - are yours to protect and care for, not to condemn to horrible deaths.

Murderer Granny....felinicide - whatever. Aided of course by the lethal tendency of cats to seek out small warm, familiar-smelling places, especially when harried by a small black street dog - who isn't to be blamed either, though this disaster doesn't make Granny any fonder of the Local Yokel.

Granny didn't even get to her concert. Despite her investigation of the map before leaving, she still drove round and round an unfamiliar village and couldn't find it. Not an apt punishment for the killer of what must have already been a very dead cat. But something.

She will keep her washing-machine shut in future. And meantime, until another cat is found, later in the summer, the mice will be happy. Sod them.

(Pili would have been sitting on Granny's lap while she wrote this, in other days. She had a book on her lap at one point and almost thought it was the cat. She keeps seeing the cat, she thinks - or at least expecting it to come round the corner. She keeps on having flashbacks of everything - if only she had done this, not done that etc etc. That's how it always is with tragedies, big and small. Don't drop that handkerchief, Desdemona. Don't turn that machine on, Granny. Oh God. Oh God.

Oh dear

2009-05-02T13:08:00.010+01:00

Sorry. Granny has not taken the wings of the morning and vanished into outer space - nor has she descended to the uttermost parts of the sea. She and Beloved have had guests - one thing - also the novel she's been tinkering with for a while took off, to her excitement; she felt - as one writer friend described such things happily, mentally, pregnant and was looking forward to the disappearance of not only the guests, but also Beloved, off to do various bits of business in the UK. The day before the departures, alas, she made the mistake of reading through what she'd written and Granny's answer to Anna Karenina - or even to Joanna Trollope -revealed itself as the usual load of solipsistic shite: a baby with defects for sure. You know how it is. So here she is, all by herself, with all the time in the world, finding every excuse she can not to get back to this ungem of literature - yet another heap of paper for someone not to publish; today's excuse is writing this. Any excuse will do, boring or otherwise.

There's the laundry from the guests, for instance, then there's sorting out the bloody dogs of whom she is now in charge. (After a nice week in which the safely enclosed animals gamboled round their dog garden, the Local Yokel applied his teeth and claws to the usual effect - how Granny HATES that dog - a hole in the wire appeared and out they all came. Shit.) And then there's hoovering the rugs in the sitting-room - and washing the kitchen floor - and moving herself upstairs to what in the summer is her and Beloved's bedroom instead of the guests'. And yesterday there was a charity barbecue, attended by the usual expat display of bottle blonde and withered cleavage - often on the same person - not anywhere Granny fits very well, lovely as some of their owners turn out to be on closer acquaintance. She hasn't got a cleavage anyway after her unwilling encounter with a surgical knife and turning blonde would not suit her one little bit. She did encounter an extraordinary brown-eyed - and white-haired - Belgian woman with a very deep voice confined to a very high-tech wheelchair: despite which handicap she lives on the island in winter, IN A VAN - parking it on any offered garden. Granny heard herself offering her their carpark place in one weak moment - no she hadn't drunk anything: the prospect of having to move the truck out of a tight space and up a steep slope when she left the barbecue inhibited that. But she doesn't think the carpark place would be enjoyed much: too windy. Nor is she sure what Beloved would make of this unusual visitor. Contemplating which she ate far too much garlic bread - the barbecued meats were slow to arrive -before, with difficulty -see above -taking herself off home.

No such excuse today - though she does have to go to a concert this evening. Lunch then? Or siesta? Or back to the load of shite? Choices choices.

Actually no choice: after a gloomy morning the sun is out. It's her hammock for Granny. Literature? What's that?

2009-04-15T09:38:00.005+01:00

Yes well. Granny and Beloved saw. And the dogs escaped again - thanks to Local Yokel's ability to find weak spots in the fence. Beloved and Mr Handsome are again scratching their heads.

G and B meantime are proud owners of a simpering Barbie Doll. Gulp. Fact that Barbie Doll is clad in local costume, barely excuses it. What might do, somewhat, is that the simper comes courtesy of Aurora, owner of the libidinous billy goat that impregnated the unfortunate Ruby, leading to her demise; (not that was Aurora's fault or the billy goat's come that. Causal factors do not necessarily imply culpability: nature comes into it somewhere. Also sheer bloody bad luck not to mention the fate of femaleness: pregnancy is, can be dangerous, always has been, always be. Tra la la.)

Aurora also suffers from being female - ie lousy partners and too many children. She supplements her inadequate income and miserable health - she's a slave to arthritis which Beloved's offerings of cider vinegar don't relieve much, if at all - by various handicrafts: painting pottery plates, dressing dolls, making crochet hats and bags etc. Yesterday she brought around a plethora of Barbies clad in different versions of local dress, festive, daily and from different parts of the island 'Choose,' Granny ordered a bemused Beloved, who's barely been forced to confront one Barbie before - though this may change now he has a granddaughter - let alone several. 'The one with the striped skirt,' he said hurriedly. The striped skirt one now simpers on the dining-table, and Granny is 30 euros poorer.

'Is it too expensive,' Aurora asked. 'It's a lot of work.' Granny didn't have the heart to say it was too expensive - think of all the efforts - if subsequently dangerous - made by Aurora's equally hard working billy goat -and besides, it's not Aurora's fault either that the pound is barely worth a euro these days, and Aurora probably needs the money more than she does - more than probably. So Granny is 30 euros poorer today and will be even poorer if the TV man comes back to fix, finally the satellite dish; he didn't have the right bolts yesterday. Turns out the dish isn't on its last legs, the satellite is and will be replaced in due course. Meantime he can make do and mend, for a price; the way things always are.

It meant Granny was spared Gok Wan last night anyway. Granny approves of GW in principal but you can have rather too much of him - one episode or even half an episode is more than enough - so she got another lovely dose of the Wire instead. Tonight if she's lucky she might get more than Kevin McC's ankle. On the other hand, despite the wonders of Kevin, she'd willingly settle for The Wire and Dominic West yet again. That series is a marvel. Even Beloved admits it will just do.

She can still get the internet, though - so will point you to these headlines from the BBC news site: this and also this. Even though the headlines - 'Amazon ants abandon sex for a world without males' and 'Red Mercury hoax sparks Saudi sewing-machine frenzy... .- are, as always, a bit more intriguing than the actual stories, both, she thinks, add to the gaiety of things, at least as observed by her small mind. Enjoy.

Life goes on

2009-04-14T12:06:00.011+01:00

Beloved Daughter came: Beloved Daughter left; the usual thing with adult children: first joy then loss again. (Though, to be realistic, much as Granny loves her kids, she knows that like most people with grown-up young she would not want them around all the time. Once the nest flying time has come - and gone - the abandoned parent can enjoy independence too, and mostly does. It's an enjoyment Beloved Daughter had a whiff of, minus both husband and child for almost the first time since Beloved Eldest Granddaughter was born, so able to get on with her own activities, uninterrupted. She looked forward to being with them again, though, in the end. (She said she would be, anyway. Though not with the kind of enthusiasm that might have meant she'd also had enough of her mother - or the wind, come to that. She's tactful that way, Beloved Daughter.)

Good weather alas did not come; nor, by definition, did it go. It blew, it clouded, it rained a bit. Granny and the BD had a good time together just the same, walking, eating, appreciating the landscape, getting sun when they could. Though they did get some sun ( a little) most days, BD admitted wishing she had brought more sweaters and never once got to wear her shorts.

Granny who had still been melancholy when BD arrived felt a good deal better by the time she left, despite spending other parts of the happy week reading, with surprising pleasure Julian Barnes' semi-autobiographical dissertation "Nothing to be frightened Of". About a) his fear of dying and b), if incidentally, his irritation with his mother, it not only made her both laugh and think, she could also like most of us identify with both the fear and irritation. The more wryly perhaps because she is so much nearer to death at her age, and by the same definition much more likely to be the parent who causes the irritation than the offspring who feels it. All very commonplace as Beloved would say. But also all too real.

Currently she is waiting for a man to come and inspect their errant TV satellite dish. If he comes up with some solution she and Beloved will be denied the pleasure of watching a prolonged shot of, say Kevin McCloud's ankle, the picture having frozen there and stayed frozen for a long time. You can see Granny likes Kevin McCloud and Grand Designs. A lot. What she wasn't so so looking forward to last night was the prospect of wall to wall Henry VIII, not to mention the dread David Starkey - imagine a prolonged view of any part of his anatomy - so she was quite glad when the satellite did its disobliging thing and she and Beloved could settle down to the next episode of The Wire. Six episodes into that they are beginning to get the hang of it. Of such things are their windy Lanzarote evenings made. (Beloved doesn't do Darby and Joan evenings sitting by the fire reading... he thinks it's unsociable. A pity really. Joan would do them- but having picked, having got to love this Darby, she does go along with him, some of the time at least.)

And the dog fence? The hole has been fixed and all three canine horrors have spent the whole morning in their enclosure. "Maybe we've solved the problem," Beloved said over lunch on their most sheltered patio - the wind you see is still blowing even if the sun is out. 'That's what you said last time," Granny said. "We'll see."

Excuses

2009-04-07T18:45:00.007+01:00

No, Granny has not jumped into the sea round Lanzarote and waved goodbye for good. But she was beset by sinus trouble last week and she has got Beloved Daughter staying now - neither of these things leave much time or energy for blogging. In the course of the sinus she succeeded in backing the truck into a parked car and getting a ticking-off from the police for not reporting it to them: result yet another 90 euro fine.... turns out even such small things have to be reported to the police here. (So much law to run around when it comes to small things, so much seemingly licensed evasion on large ones; just look at all those illegal houses/hotels/car parks that won't be pulled down.) Beloved says their truck insurance will go up for sure. He was very nice about it though. He is nice about things like that - and all too inclined to back into things himself.

Meantime the war of the dog fence continues; the canines are finding ever more ingenious methods of getting over or under it - the most ingenious by far turning out to be the Local Yokel, his intelligence not highly rated up till now. But given that the LY is descended from street dogs that was probably a mistake: street dogs have to be pretty canny to survive, a cannyness passed on in their genes no doubt, which is yet another tiresome example of the equally tiresome - and ruthless - notion of the survival of the fittest. Much thought will have to be put into the latest - also tiresome - round of the contest between man and beast. Granny will keep you posted.

Oh and the winds have got up to welcome Beloved Daughter. They would, wouldn't they. One problem with the winds now is their effect on television reception. Once upon a time, only rain could interfere with the satellite signal. But they've moved the satellites around a lot and now high winds - or not even very high winds - do still worse and can remove it for days, more or less. Mr Surfer /Tellyfixer has advised building a wall round the satellite dish, but that will have to wait till next week: Mr Handsome has taken the week off, and Granny does not want Beloved to risk his neck on the roof even if he was willing to; which he is not, much as he does miss his Channel4 News and Time Team.... (Not that she'd wish Mr Handsome's neck in danger either. But Mr H does have somewhat more sense about such things and is a good deal steadier on his feet, besides. You know how it is.)

Granny and BD went for a good walk today in sheltered ravines along with the Beautiful Wimp. Unfortunately Granny forgot to take the mobile that was supposed to summon Beloved to pick them up and her attempts to use the public telephone were unavailing as well as expensive; not having used such an instrument in years she had forgotten about not hanging up between calls so long as there was credit left. She and BD had to sit in a cafe for a long time - an equally expensive activity - before Beloved turned up; fortunately he'd put the lack of a call down to Granny being out of signal range. So no problem there, apart from the vanishing euros and the thoughts assailing her as she watched another aged parent and offspring pair, in this case a Spanish speaking Englishman with an extremely ancient, skinny, clearly demented, but very tanned, beach-clad and sun-hatted old mother, sitting at the next table. Some people are much nicer and more patient than Granny could ever be, she thought. She tried not to think she might be like that herself before too long - the aged mum that is. Oh dear. Oh dear.

As must be obvious, Granny is in a hurry. Beloved's cooking - and the washing-up incurred thereby - is due for her attention. Night Night.

Chilly

2009-03-30T18:17:00.006+01:00

Well, Granny is back home, it's chilly and quite cloudy again and she has gone down with a bad cold. It's not clear who started it - both Beloved and Mr Handsome started suffering before her and each of them seems to think they caught it from the other. Well, it doesn't matter and Granny knows hers came from Beloved for sure. And this after arriving home feeling smug that she'd managed to avoid all the colds that were besetting her family in London... thinking that's it for the winter at least. But it wasn't.

She is still sad of course. Grief is like a baby that keeps waking in the night and making sure you know it's there and that you're ready to give it attention. It brings back to Granny the death of her own twin in particular - but then it brings that back to everyone, to her twin's children, especially, as all of them confront the loss of this other tiny, twin who, with her sister, was supposed to make the family feel whole again in a symbolic kind of way. But life is not that neat is it, and we shouldn't get our hopes up so ever. Serves us right. Except that hope it necessary and good and why not run with it now and then, even if you end up turning round and cursing it, more often than not? After all it does turn out to be the right feeling sometimes. Of course it does. (Granny is being hopeful again. Silly - or not so silly - her.)

Many comforts here, despite the - relative - cold. The garden is full of vegetables ready to eat; Granny picks peas, broad beans, pulls spinach, cuts artichokes, digs up fennel; all of it delicious. And today she made strawberry jam with local strawberries, some of them from her garden. And the island with its fuzz, its fur of grass these days after all the rain, and many flowers still and all the new life and re-tilled fields now that people have no work and have to grow things, is looking more beautiful - delectable - than ever. And the sea is an amazing blue and the surfers ride the waves - some much more skilfully than others - and birds are everywhere - including more than usual up here, because of all the food - so that is good.

Also Granny has been reading a perfect comfort book. One of those oddities, unlike anything else, called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. About the occupation of Guernsey during the war, terrible in parts, but also very romantic. Try it.

Also Beloved Daughter is coming to stay next Sunday for a whole week. Now that has to be alright, not to say good. It is.

Granny has a small glass of malt whisky alongside the computer, called a cold cure. That's all helping too. Skol. L'chaim. Prosit. Sante. Bottoms up. Whatever you like. (Though L'chaim might be best. It means to life. Yes. TO LIFE! She'll drink to all of you. She's drinking. Cheers.)

Twins

2009-03-24T11:10:00.003Z

A brief post from a partly sunny London.

Granny has seen them now, both twins, together still if only in photographs (photographs are encouraged these days and older brothers invited in; so different from when Granny's little brother died, aged one week, all those years ago. He was not shown to Granny and her twin, alive or dead. He might never have existed. Oh, but he did.) She has also seen and held the beautiful living twin; will see and hold her a lot more over the next few years. This twin was bigger at birth than her equally beautiful but no longer living sister, and looks very like Granny's twin. How, weird. scary, beautiful the passing-on of a family forehead, a family face, especially when revealed within the pathos of new born babyhood, in a child part of the world already, yet not quite part of it, gazing away, into some other place. Many tears around her. Of course. But families come together at these times which is as it should be.

Granny's lovely twenty-four hours with the other beloved baby - Beloved's granddaughter -was very comforting too.

So life is not all bad. If so so sad. So sad. Especially just now for Beloved Nephew and Niece-in-Law.

The inescapable fact of parenthood is that you cannot always protect or even save your children. A fact and a fear which lasts from moment you conceive - or at least from the first moment you feel the baby - or babies - moving and the real communication starts. And which won't end till you're dead yourself.

Back on the island the three dogs are finding ways of getting out of their run: the Tiresome Terrier climbs the fence, the Local Yokel squeezes underneath. Poor Mr Handsome scratches his head, and Beloved, on his way home now will shortly be scratching his too. Granny meantime is off to buy supplies to take back to the island; tomorrow she will be busy holding the beautiful two-in-one baby for one more time, before she has to return to the island herself.

A Japanese Yoga teacher said the very best thing of the lone twin. 'She will have the spirit of two.'

Oh yes. Of course she will.

Twin(s)

2009-03-17T12:37:00.006Z

Update: Beloved nephew rang last night. Twins have been born: one girl hale, healthy, perfect, the other not: she is not expected to survive for more than a few hours longer.

'But at least,' said Beloved nephew - of his two sons and the healthy new baby 'At least I've got three beautiful children. I have to be glad of that.'

Yes, indeed. But it isn't quite so simple. Two babies were in the womb for nine months, two babies came to feel like real people. For the surviving baby the non-survivor was her companion all those months - modern technology makes clear that twins in the womb do have a relationship that differs from pair to pair. When one of the pair dies shortly after birth, or even before it, that relationship has been prematurely swept away. Granny, a surviving twin herself belonged for a while to an organisation called "The Lone Twin Association". She did a survey of its membership once; more than a third had twins that died at birth, before it, or within a year. Many did not know till much later in life that they had been born twins, but had always felt an incompleteness in themselves. Granny herself knows of two artists - one a very dear friend - who only found out about their twinship as grown-ups but whose art, long before that, centred round objects or designs that always came in pairs.

And then there are the feelings of the parents - ready for two babies and now only tending one: loving the one, rejoicing in her, but still longing, grieving for the other. What would she have been like? Who would she have grown into? Noone will ever know.

Those who have only ever expected single babies - still more those who lost single babies and ended up with nothing- may find this strange: why should they mind? They have a baby. Isn't that enough?

But no it isn't. Not after nine months of gestating, loving, expecting two; that special thing. Granny a twin herself, may know this better than most. Of course she too is grieving, crying, as she writes this, but hers is a small grief compared to that of the parents, and, over her lifetime. of the surviving twin.

Update: the sick twin died last night as expected. Time for grief.

Stasis

2009-03-16T14:04:00.005Z

The goat you could say was static. Very. And after the Saturday morning efforts of Mr Handsome and one of his mates is now just one more dead animal in a site where everyone throws their dead animals and which - there is an article in the local press this very morning - everyone else complains about - that is anyone who lives nearby: you can imagine the smell. (Other dead animals just get dumped in the nearest bit of countryside for other people's dogs to find and roll in, which maybe is- it can be - worse: Granny, as you know, speaks from experience. Beautiful Wimp's latest dead goat reek has still not quite disappeared.)

So: one dead goat - what's to upset you - or her -about that? Nothing really. All animals die, after much shorter lives than their owners. Except it was Granny's - or rather her and Beloved's goat and most days she would go down to the goat pen and have a conversation of little huffs and grunts with the unexpectedly dear animal - you remember how anti-goat Granny was to begin with - the animal who is now one more smell of rot in an ever more smelly place and not conversing sweetly any more. This time last week she and Beloved were expecting to be the owners of three goats, one big, two little: now they don't own one. Nor will they until Beloved gets another goat or two in the autumn. No goat milk ricotta for breakfast, not any more.

Strange, hot times here, generally. adding to Granny's sense of unease. Apart from one chilly day when the wind blew from the north and the cloud surrounded them all day, there has been a calima, dust haze and wind from the Sahara, for over a week; unheard of. Such things never usually last more than four days. Add a two headed-goat or two and the odd comet to this disjointed season and it could really be Apocalypse Now - Granny hopes not. She really does.

Still no twins and she is still all of a twitch - 40 weeks of pregnancy today; she cannot believe the womb that encloses them will be allowed to any longer. She is off to London anyway on Thursday and since the visit is on the twins' account they'd better have arrived. (She can't leave it any longer because the fares between her island and the UK will start tripling, the nasty way they do when school holidays are in the offing. Meaning that if her family isn't feeling flush they and the grandchildren don't manage to visit: probably the twins never will, in the family of six they're going to live in. What a shame.)

animalia

2009-03-13T11:19:00.008Z

No twins - not of the human kind that is. Granny's agitation while waiting has been added to by Ruby the goat's production of her twins two days ago: both still born. Now Granny is well aware that the obstetric history of a goat on a Canarian island has nothing what ever to do with the delayed child-bearing of a niece-in-law in North East London. But that's pure reason. The anxious part of her is not reasonable and she waits the news with the heart in her mouth beating more wildly than ever.

Poor Ruby, the goat, meanwhile, is not a happy animal, lying there listlessly, not wanting to eat or drink; a sad sight. Beloved is going out, buying apples, whatever, mixing sugar salt and water, trying to persuade to take some nourishment. Granny as another female aches for her. Who says an animal doesn't feel? Maybe Ruby's loss of twins cannot be articulated in words or mind, but it is certainly articulated in her body: you only have to take one look. Granny and Beloved scour veterinary websites meanwhile to try and find out why goats abort like this. Does Ruby does have some un-obvious infection? Was she insufficiently nourished - she'd been fed high-calory goat pellets all this while but she doesn't like them much. So what?

No leaping kids this year, anyway. Woe is woe. Sadness all round.

Meanwhile, another dog has joined the Tiresome Terrier and the Beautiful Wimp. Let's call this one the Local Yokel - a standard little Lanzarote dog, black, with a curly tail and very short legs, the only thing distinguishing him from all the rest of his kind a bark as deep and reverberant as the hound of the Baskervilles'. Do not ask how this acquisition came about: let's just say it couldn't be helped. Among drawbacks: this dog has not yet learned that it is forbidden to sit on sofas. He is also much less continent than the Tiresome Terrier with whom he shares a basket at night: the TT, turning motherly, yips for him to be let out then yips again for him - and her - to be let in. At three in the morning this does not please Granny -she had a sleepless night or two until Beloved sorted that one out. What with the Beautiful Wimp having rolled in yet another dead goat and stunk the place out for over a week, despite Granny having bathed him three times, what with the Tiresome Terrier having eaten Mr Handsome's lunch out of his bag for the third time in as many weeks, dogs are not anybody's favourite animals just now.

"The dog learns more quickly than you," said Beloved to Mr Handsome of his lost lunch - not a particularly diplomatic statement one might say: Mr H didn't seem to think so anyway. Nor did Granny come to that.

On top of that, the bantams have taken to eating their own eggs and beating up the one hen who does not want to eat her eggs but sit on them.

Animals really can be horrible - when they are not sad.

The calima has covered everything in dust over the last few days. To calm herself down, Granny has been sitting quietly on the land, watching lizards sun themselves - snouts out, little hands set firmly on stone surfaces -or flicker in and out of the rocks: watching lizards is a very meditative activity, particularly at the moment: the lizards are in handsome breeding mode, iridescent green patches on their sides flashing in the sun. Beloved meanwhile has been hopping between his goat and his laptop - two kind German friends and visitors have been helping him remake the house website. Granny and Beloved have been cooking lovely meals in return and sometimes in holiday mode, visiting nice places with their friends, so all is not totally negative.

But oh poor bereaved Ruby.

And oh, where oh where are those North East London twins?

5.pm. Update. Granny visited Ruby after she'd written the above - came back to the house saying 'you should get the vet,' to find Beloved already looking up the number. The vet - nice Basque woman - appeared, pronounced an infection etc etc, large amounts of anti-biotics have been given and are meantime making the goat feel much worse - as the vet promised she would. "Animals don't complain,' she said. "You only know they're ill when they're very ill.' So much for sorrow. Except maybe sorrow helped make Ruby iller. Who can tell. Poor goat.

Update 5.15pm. Still worse. Beloved and Granny just went out to administer more treatment - goat no more. Dead. Not a good week.