Life goes on

Beloved Daughter came: Beloved Daughter left; the usual thing with adult children: first joy then loss again. (Though, to be realistic, much as Granny loves her kids, she knows that like most people with grown-up young she would not want them around all the time. Once the nest flying time has come - and gone - the abandoned parent can enjoy independence too, and mostly does. It's an enjoyment Beloved Daughter had a whiff of, minus both husband and child for almost the first time since Beloved Eldest Granddaughter was born, so able to get on with her own activities, uninterrupted. She looked forward to being with them again, though, in the end. (She said she would be, anyway. Though not with the kind of enthusiasm that might have meant she'd also had enough of her mother - or the wind, come to that. She's tactful that way, Beloved Daughter.)

Good weather alas did not come; nor, by definition, did it go. It blew, it clouded, it rained a bit. Granny and the BD had a good time together just the same, walking, eating, appreciating the landscape, getting sun when they could. Though they did get some sun ( a little) most days, BD admitted wishing she had brought more sweaters and never once got to wear her shorts.

Granny who had still been melancholy when BD arrived felt a good deal better by the time she left, despite spending other parts of the happy week reading, with surprising pleasure Julian Barnes' semi-autobiographical dissertation "Nothing to be frightened Of". About a) his fear of dying and b), if incidentally, his irritation with his mother, it not only made her both laugh and think, she could also like most of us identify with both the fear and irritation. The more wryly perhaps because she is so much nearer to death at her age, and by the same definition much more likely to be the parent who causes the irritation than the offspring who feels it. All very commonplace as Beloved would say. But also all too real.

Currently she is waiting for a man to come and inspect their errant TV satellite dish. If he comes up with some solution she and Beloved will be denied the pleasure of watching a prolonged shot of, say Kevin McCloud's ankle, the picture having frozen there and stayed frozen for a long time. You can see Granny likes Kevin McCloud and Grand Designs. A lot. What she wasn't so so looking forward to last night was the prospect of wall to wall Henry VIII, not to mention the dread David Starkey - imagine a prolonged view of any part of his anatomy - so she was quite glad when the satellite did its disobliging thing and she and Beloved could settle down to the next episode of The Wire. Six episodes into that they are beginning to get the hang of it. Of such things are their windy Lanzarote evenings made. (Beloved doesn't do Darby and Joan evenings sitting by the fire reading... he thinks it's unsociable. A pity really. Joan would do them- but having picked, having got to love this Darby, she does go along with him, some of the time at least.)

And the dog fence? The hole has been fixed and all three canine horrors have spent the whole morning in their enclosure. "Maybe we've solved the problem," Beloved said over lunch on their most sheltered patio - the wind you see is still blowing even if the sun is out. 'That's what you said last time," Granny said. "We'll see."