My grandson’s birthday is approaching.
I know it is early in the year, and usually my mother rings me and reminds me. This year, however, rather to my smug satisfaction, I have remembered all by myself.
It is a week after his parents’ wedding anniversary, which added an extra spice of tension to their wedding. Obviously we were all speculating excitedly whether the excitement might bring on childbirth at the very altar, but rather disappointingly it didn’t, and he was born a week later weighing about a hundredweight and with no hurry at all to emerge.
That was ages ago, and I think, although am not exactly certain, that he will be ten. I like him being ten, he was a trial when he was at the speechless leaky stage, but conversational children are quite interesting.
Anyway I have been having something of a concern about what might be an appropriate birthday present. He wanted a pigeon, which I might have liked as well, we could both have had homing pigeons and exchanged them when we visited so that we could write to one another without needing to worry about the Government putting us into their Track And Trace App or secretly reading our emails..
Mark’s grandfather kept pigeons. Mark has still got a prize-winning medal that he won for something pigeon-related. I expect he had a flat cap as well, we will never make it to the middle classes.
Obviously I am not going to buy my grandson a pigeon, which left me with a dilemma. Lego and computer games are never quite as thrilling as something that will make a racket in the garden and poo on your washing. Also when I looked up pigeon prices they were sixty quid for a pair, and there would have been all of the fuss of birdseed and a pigeon loft. Two pigeon lofts actually, one here and one in Surrey where they live, so it is just as well.
In the end I have compromised with a Venus Fly Trap, which is a predatory plant that feeds on flies. I would quite like one of these myself as well, although they are always a bit disappointing. You can stick your finger in as much as you like but they don’t bite, not really. Also they are not interested in dead flies. It is the terrible fight for life and liberty that stimulates the plant to start digesting them, so you can’t catch flies and feed them to the plant when you are bored.
We have spent today rebuilding our moss arches, and I thought that perhaps I might stick a Venus Fly Trap in the top one of those. There are always a lot of flies in the roof of the conservatory, and I have never discouraged them because they help to pollinate the tomatoes, but they might as well come in useful instead of just dying on the windowsill or encouraging the spiders.
We are rebuilding the arches rather than building them, because the one that I started the other day has had to be taken to bits and moved, so that we could get other things in. It has gone to the far end of the conservatory, and two new ones have taken its place by the door.
They are still in the skeletal stages at the moment. Mark welded them out of the remains of the trampoline this afternoon. We have tried the new watering system as well, and I am pleased to announce that it made a mess absolutely everywhere, like torrential rain except indoors. I do not quite know what is the best thing to do about this, but suppose that as long as we keep it away from the electricity it will be all right.
It has been a good sort of day. I have run out of moss now and have got to go back to the farm for some more tomorrow.
Mark has got to go back to work.
Have a picture of the author, grinning stupidly.
PS> It was Number Two Daughter, the wine and Stilton, and jolly good it was as well.
