Veni vidi vicimus...

The guests came - they saw - and Granny and Beloved seem to have conquered - though they'll know that for sure when and if a review goes up on the Alastair Sawday website. What they do know - it was work work work - is that the guests stayed in for dinner, every night, never mind that the female of the species is a sommelier - wine expert - for a well-known restaurant - and had been a professional chef. 'Now you tell us,' wailed Granny handing out her amateur food the first night.

These visitors did not come for island delights - they saw very little of these - they came for a rest and for hanging out in the sun. WHICH THEY GOT. After the first drear day, the sun shone, the wind did not blow and the happy pair spent much of their time out on the back patio, very happily. Three of the four mornings they even ate breakfast outside, not a pleasure always available on this temperamental - weatherwise - island.

They left yesterday afternoon, after another morning in the sun. At lunchtime the storm clouds began gathering. 'We'll leave a little early,' they said anxiously looking at the sky, 'So as to get to the airport before it starts to rain.' And so they did, only the smell of their unguents, shaving cream, bath oil filling the room upstairs showing that they had come and gone - this business is all about passers in the night leaving no more than such traces of themselves behind. Granny too looked at the sky; and so elected to leap naked into the jacuzzi the moment their car left the drive getting out twenty minutes or so later as the rain began to fall. Which it continued to do, on and off, till 9.30 at night, culminating in a furious storm from 7pm on, thunder, lightening, deluge and all, leaving lakes in the sitting-room and the downstairs bathroom and a much bigger and still existing lake at the bottom of the land. Though that did for Granny and Beloved's hopes of chilling out in front of the telly all evening- NO SATELLITE SIGNAL BEING RECEIVED - announced the screen, severely, the thought of all that lovely free water - the water that wasn't sitting on sitting-room/bathroom/bedroom floors that is - cascading down into the water tank, for the first time this winter owing to the previous process of repair, more than made up for it. And this morning the flowers on the land were all raising faces as happy as Granny's - if smaller - one hen was laying, the birds were singing, you could almost write a hymn about it, if you felt so inclined -morning has broken, yet again, perhaps, something like that. (Or perhaps not.) Never mind the curious murk outside right now, the disappearance of sea and islands from sight, the sense of being on an isolated little plateau in a sea of cloud which is not so joyful in itself but given where it came from cannot be objected to: Granny objects not. More visitors due on Saturday week. But till then, the mice will play - or least this mouse - Beloved mouse is not too hot on playing - he doesn't see the point.

No doors on the stove yet. But it's working all right and since the wind is not blowing it does not smoke, meaning the doors are not strictly necessary. The visitors do not have a fire at home. This was another of the holiday delights with which Granny and Beloved provided them. You see how much they will to do to please..