Stasis

The goat you could say was static. Very. And after the Saturday morning efforts of Mr Handsome and one of his mates is now just one more dead animal in a site where everyone throws their dead animals and which - there is an article in the local press this very morning - everyone else complains about - that is anyone who lives nearby: you can imagine the smell. (Other dead animals just get dumped in the nearest bit of countryside for other people's dogs to find and roll in, which maybe is- it can be - worse: Granny, as you know, speaks from experience. Beautiful Wimp's latest dead goat reek has still not quite disappeared.)

So: one dead goat - what's to upset you - or her -about that? Nothing really. All animals die, after much shorter lives than their owners. Except it was Granny's - or rather her and Beloved's goat and most days she would go down to the goat pen and have a conversation of little huffs and grunts with the unexpectedly dear animal - you remember how anti-goat Granny was to begin with - the animal who is now one more smell of rot in an ever more smelly place and not conversing sweetly any more. This time last week she and Beloved were expecting to be the owners of three goats, one big, two little: now they don't own one. Nor will they until Beloved gets another goat or two in the autumn. No goat milk ricotta for breakfast, not any more.

Strange, hot times here, generally. adding to Granny's sense of unease. Apart from one chilly day when the wind blew from the north and the cloud surrounded them all day, there has been a calima, dust haze and wind from the Sahara, for over a week; unheard of. Such things never usually last more than four days. Add a two headed-goat or two and the odd comet to this disjointed season and it could really be Apocalypse Now - Granny hopes not. She really does.

Still no twins and she is still all of a twitch - 40 weeks of pregnancy today; she cannot believe the womb that encloses them will be allowed to any longer. She is off to London anyway on Thursday and since the visit is on the twins' account they'd better have arrived. (She can't leave it any longer because the fares between her island and the UK will start tripling, the nasty way they do when school holidays are in the offing. Meaning that if her family isn't feeling flush they and the grandchildren don't manage to visit: probably the twins never will, in the family of six they're going to live in. What a shame.)