It's still summer here, or so we're persuading ourselves, and Mr L and I had a lovely walk in the Botanics the other day. We haven't been there for a while, what with being away and then having Littlest Granddaughter to stay. It's only ten minutes' drive away but she's not a great fan of car journeys, not being used to them.
Soon the view of the city skyline will be much less impeded by leaves.
But there's still plenty of colour in the gardens.
Mr L has been painting the garage doors. Biggest Granddaughter and Grandson were an interested audience - watching, as it were, paint dry.
They love their Lego at the moment.
At last, six years after my mother's death, I've forced myself to go through her archives. It's so hard to know what to keep - lots of albums with my parents' holiday snaps? hmm - but I probably won't keep this photo, inscribed by - whom? - Asqualina Taifa??? - to my father. Dad was in Egypt for much of the war, defusing bombs, so I imagine that this man was an Egyptian.
I know this young chap's name. He was a friend of my father's, and also one of the suitors for my mother's hand. He sent her quite a few studio photos of himself. He remained a friend of both my parents for some years, and did marry, though his wife was agaraphobic and wasn't able to visit much and I think they lost touch eventually.
And this chap - I only remember his first name - swore that if my mother wouldn't marry him, he'd enter a monastery.
She didn't. And he didn't. But I don't know what happened to him apart from that. Mum didn't keep in touch with him. But she didn't throw away his photo.
My dad kept annual albums in which he put lots of carefully jigsawed photos of the main family events of the year. He never got round to doing 2006 because he was in hospital by the end of that year, and he died in April 2007. There a lot of poignantly blank pages in this album.
Ah well. As my mum used to say, you can't live for ever. Which is one reason that I have to deal with these archives. And then there are mine... .
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