Rain!

It rained in the night!! quite unannounced by any weather forecast. For tomorrow all the ones granny consults agree on 'windy.' Don't know what they'd call what's been going on the whole week. Breezy? The islands are visible, there was even sun when Granny woke up, though the clouds have now crept back. The landscape has regained that soft blue-grey evanescance of an Atlantic climate. The one it loses all summer under the trade winds.

This has to be brief. Granny will reply to comments later. This morning she is off on her weekly visit to the Attic Woman. Something Jane R was spared. Call it the wonders of modern medicine: that the first Mrs R is not raving just sweet and sad now she is tended by those who know how to do it and fed the right medicines (not the zombifying disabling kinds.) She didn't manage to blind Granny's Mr R, either, though she did very nearly kill him. Granny is all too conscious of those millions of unsupported carers out there who do, very often, fall down dead in the process of attempting to care for their demented or semi-demented nearest and dearest. Luckily Mr R has a daughter who thinks this is not an irrevocable 'duty' let alone 'essential' let alone any sign of virtue. And who evacuated him the moment - after seven years - he seemed unlikely to survive such duty any longer. With the help of the local branch of Age Concern. For whom much thanks. (Give them money everyone, please. You may be grateful yourself in days to come.) Admittedly they passed Mrs Rochester/Beloved on to non-voluntary paid carers, too expensive to be an option in too many cases - where the only solution is a dire 'home' somewhere. Not Mrs R's fate thank goodness. Though the fact that everything is cheaper here does help, it's quite a struggle for her family. But they manage it.

So it is that the first Mrs R lives in her own small home, has a living husband still who visits her regularly. And she has this other Jane - Granny - who has grown unexpectedly fond of her too and actually quite enjoys sitting by the sea with her predecessor, drinking coffee, watching gulls swoop down on the cooks from the seaside restaurants gutting fish, and, on good days, prattling about the past. The first Mrs R may not remember day to day very well but she does remember long ago and likes to be reminded of it.

Life is very strange. It is also a bugger it really is. Ageing is a bugger. Granny is more than conscious that she and Mr R are the lucky ones. For the moment.