Home at last

After nearly three months Granny is back on her island. All is as it is. Sun shines by day, rain falls by night. Now. (Three days ago it raged by day and wiped out all telecommunications; a common event with such weather here. 'I've replaced 4 other boxes like yours up here today,' said telecommunications man, who arrived within 4 hours of being summoned; a much less common event in these parts.) Radio 3 is playing via headphones on her laptop, Beloved out visiting the Attic Woman, chickens pecking at newly coming up green shoots - but not laying eggs; apparently free-range hens don't lay here between now and January; if you want eggs they have to be from tortured hens. Tiresome terrier is being tiresome - no change there - she has laid into Feline Houdini and a poor innocent walker already since Granny and Beloved came home. Beautiful Wimp is as ever wimpish, Feline Houdini has caught a mouse and taken a dislike to the latest form of biscuits (much mewing and wrapping round legs; meaning he gets fallen over. More, even louder, still more indignant mewing.) Granny herself has been gathering her belongings from suitcases and every corner of the house and recolonising her own bedroom. She has also, less patiently, been doing those tasks men don't do; that seemingly haven't been done since she left; changing catlitter (yuk) putting salt in dishwasher etc. BORING. Beloved meantime has been setting up a wireless system for the internet; vainly it turns out - old Canarian houses like theirs are built of stone, and stone walls do not good connections make. This does nothing for his temper. (Nor Granny's, unable to dial up all evening, because of his efforts. Curses.)

She has her usual sense of pleasure at being home - for instance sitting by woodstove at night with Feline Houdini on lap, Beloved in next door rocking-chair (oh yes, they have his'n'her rocking chairs- REALLY) a VERY good book occupying her eyes and head. (One by Javier Marias, a writer whom everyone should know and run to. NOW. No, she is not reading him in Spanish.) She also has her usual sense of exile from home, kids, grandkids, London, and is having sad dreams of dead children which may relate to this, if not to her recent loss of a body part. In consequence, after rediscovering for the first time in three years what it feels like to watch her home town shift from summer to autumn to the beginning of winter - which she maybe loved the more because she wasn't going to have to sit through the full dreary stretch of it - she is trying to compose one last valedictory London piece before engaging fully with her expat life. She will put that up soon. She hopes. For the meantime, reader - if there are any of you out there still - you will have to make do with this....