Sitting in kitchen to the soound of the hoover (actually Bosch) while cleaner rids cupboards of mouse shit. Beloved and daughter off taking attic woman out to lunch. Cloudy, windy, as ever. But walking round now burnt, brown, dessicated land have brief sense of belonging and being at home. Cat, dogs now restored to the family, cockroaches vanquished, fustiness ditto, figs aren't rotting on trees as expected, but multiple and not yet ripe: fear now is that they won't be ripe enough to process before we go away again... At least this will leave time to write and think. Even if writing only turns to hilarious writer's time-wasting programme as set out by Hugo Williams in the exile's TLS read upstairs while waiting for cleaner to finish kitchen...

Think much of aged dad. No proper time to mourn, so now it all comes back. When I was last here, I realise, he was still alive, the world even if expected to turn round on itself had not yet done so. It has now. I weep. And contemplate sadly/joyfully/wonderingly the photo, ten days before he died, of old man and baby Sonny, his youngest great grandchild aged 6 weeks, gazing at each other; extreme age and extreme youth. All of our lives in one.

Wind howls. Palm tree on horizon dances about. Sun looks as if it may show itself, or pass us by, either. Grannyp