prickles

Well, well. The good news: the dread fourteen of February is good and over; no more nightly rumbles from Beloved as the TV ads rumble past - 'commercial rubbish' etc etc- she'll spare you the full text. The bad news: next up is Mother's Day - known as Mothering Sunday in Granny's youth. More rumbles from the sofa as further misuse of red roses etc is suggested on the small screen, to the benefit of all the those evil capitalists. (No, Beloved is not a raving Marxist. Granny is re-phrasing a little.) The only problem here is that Granny rather likes Mother's Day, being a mother herself you understand; not to mention a Grandmother. 'But you're a mother all the year round,' protests Beloved, 'what's one day got to do with it?' You do not get it, Beloved, do you? Granny does not try to explain, just smiles as sweetly as she can and prepares for/hopes for loving phone-calls, whatever, from her young, on the day, assuming they come, plus deep wounding/ indignation if they don't.

So sorry, Beloved. And no, he does not count on attention come father's day. Shame, really.

Meantime Granny is suffering a weird wound, attendant on living in a province where prickly pears are grown. She does not process the prickly pears that appear every year on her land. The spines are lethal, and the results of braving them insipid. They do appear in the shops sometimes de-spiked, in theory, but not usually at this time of year. Yesterday, in a very good new greengrocer which has sprung up recently in the town where she goes to do her ecological shopping, there were some small fruits emanating from Tenerife that she did not recognise: they bore no obvious signs of prickles. Which does not mean to say there weren't any. She picked up one small pink fruit. 'Ouch' she said. 'Ouch' said old schoolfriend, simultaneously, she too, equally unwisely, having done the same. Granny, still more unwisely, put a sore finger to her mouth. No doubt now of the nature of the little fruit: she has had, since yesterday, a virtually invisible, seemingly unshiftable spine, lodged at the end of her tongue. Even Beloved with all his veterinary skills can't dislodge it. Any ideas anyone? None? Granny fears she will have to wait till the bloody thing dislodges itself.