Sussex. Friday. Can a granny say she's an orphan? A frivolous question- maybe - a sideline of utter sadness. Granny no longer surveying - with wonder - the rare but few grasses of her island territory, instead awash with them in southern England, mourning dead dad. Died - at last - 1pm Wednesday - while she, surrounded by ?happy holidaymakers was on a last-minute flight to Luton. She, son, daughter, Ozzie sister, Ozzie niece foregathered then tearfully at brother's house, and surrounded themselves thereafter with old photograph albums. Sense of exile from the lengthy past represented by the aged p augmented now by immersion in it; also augmented by gratitude for the fact that what it created is - as granny's brother not usually vocal about these things told her daughter - a lovely family. It is lovely. Particularly granny's bit - but then she would think that and the others bits are, mostly, pretty nice too.

Oh that lately so sad old man my pa - obstinate, maddening - stuck in the past - turns out he was known up at his golf club as 'Stuffy' - this says as much about golf club as him - who never seemed to have a clue where grannyp or his other daughters was coming from - whom she couldn't talk to except about the past - this gut, sticky, gritty, god-help-us feeling- this bereftness - constitutes love I suppose; and loss. Nothing romantic about it; nothing breathes...'I love you, daddy..' - just exasperation; just loss. I kissed his bald head in the mortuary yesterday. It was cold. I'm beginning to cry now.

Monday I fly to Cadiz to rescue Beloved, who is being most kindly and understanding on the other end of the phone. Thursday back here for the funeral. Not much blogging for a bit,

At the registry office yesterday there was confetti on the steps and the registrar kept taking calls from people wanting to register births. My Ozzie younger aiater and I found photos in dad's desk of him with his father aged three or so, such a darling little boy. We are going to blow it up, along with pictures of him and his children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren and display them round the house on the day of the funeral...

Tourist brochure England. Chestnut blossom, hawthorn, poppies, lupins, roses, blackbirds, thrushes busting themselves. As in life and all that. xxxa mournful granny p