Foxes, balloons ...thumbs

Granny is in Bristol. There are foxes in the garden. One was sitting on the grass yesterday when she looked out; a large, dog fox, probably, with a good red coat but a thin brush, more like a cat's tail.

'Hullo, Reynard,' Granny said. (She knows her French, you see, and will willingly show it off even to foxes too far away to hear and too ignorant of language to understand.) The fox sat there looking at her and twitched an ear; its language presumably and she was too ignorant to understand that, even if she didn't need to be near to hear or rather see it. But it felt as if it was talking to her. (She can hear Beloved in the background here, muttering 'anthropomorphism' - well, that's his problem, she thinks.) The cat appeared then. The fox took off over the wall. There are other foxes, Beloved Daughter says. Some of them have big brushes, but this was a beautiful fox, nonetheless. Her fox. They had a conversation, after all.

In the evening everyone else went out to attend to Beloved Eldest Granddaughter's star appearance as Viola in her school's much adapted version of Twelfth Night. Granny will attend that tonight - how she is looking forward to it. Meantime she lay on the sofa watching telly on the one hand, balloons floating past on the other. Bristol is the city of balloons. Beloved Daughter who has lived in Bristol ever since she went to university there, took up flying balloons herself once, and, loving it, trained as a pilot. 'All the pilots are a) rich,' she said, 'b) male. I'm neither. Let's try.' Though this meant a lot of being obliging, going round the countryside picking up the balloons belonging to the other pilots almost all rich, and almost all male, in order to cadge flying practice, she did train, she did get her licence. She promised to take Granny up with her, but then almost immediately became too busy to fly any more so that was the end of that. Just as well, probably; Granny suffers from vertigo, somewhat, she does not think she would have enjoyed the experience much; though she would have gone, of course. She is like that; intrepid. (You can believe that or not as you wish. She's not sure whether or not to believe it, herself.)

Meantime she's been taking photographs of her rather peculiar right thumb on her mobile's camera, and trying to email them to herself: in vain. She was going to tell you the story of why her thumb looks so weird, but since the emails aren't getting through and she can't yet post a picture of her right thumb here you will have to read it another time.....sorry.