Party time, with balloons

Although Grandbaby’s birthday isn’t until Monday, she threw a party today for all her little friends; that is, two other small children and fifteen assorted adults. And very enjoyable it all was, to the extent that Granny had a little nap around 6 o’clock. After the other guests had departed of course, I wasn’t the decrepit old dear comatose in the corner while everyone else frolicked.

Baby’s 2-year-old cousin enjoyed playing with the balloons. “Look” he declared, holding up a long thin yellow one. “Penis.”

And baby walked unaided for the first time yesterday. Properly, several steps, but she wouldn’t repeat the trick today and her daddy hasn’t seen it yet and nor have I.

It feels quite unnatural, using assumed names for my children. Now they all know I’m writing I feel I’m not being impolite to refer to them properly. So they will be El, Al and Ro, which is what I often call them anyway (being extremely lazy and reluctant to use whole lots of syllables when one will suffice). I like the Sage though, so that’s what my husband will remain. I’ll tell him some time, but he is, endearingly, totally computer illiterate so won't know what I'm talking about. “Will you Google someone for me please”, he’ll ask, meaning, please look up their phone number. And when there’s a business email from a stranger, “Where does he live?” I explain each time that the email address gives very little away, not always even the country, but I think he has the feeling that it isn’t quite correct not to head a letter with your address, even in an email. I write a journal for his website, as him - the main benefit from that is that everyone (except my website doer) thinks it's his fault that one hasn't been posted for several months.

Our oldest hen died yesterday. She belonged to the son of friends, who kept hens as a hobby when he was a boy (well, this is Norfolk). Once he started to work full time on the family farm, he hadn’t time to spend with them and his mother took over their care. Eventually, when there were only two left, they came to live with us. One died a year ago; well, we were visited by a fox and lost nearly half our flock; but the other lived out her proper lifespan of 15 years. She didn’t lay any eggs in the 3 years we looked after her, but she was a sweet, cheerful fowl and when she took to a nestbox a couple of days ago and didn’t stir again, we let her doze her life away gently.