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If you go down to the woods today. Plus a short rant against "Finally!"

Half term passed, too long ago, in a sleepy, whispering sigh.

Half term for Littlest = shopping, treats, walks, curling up with a film, catching up with friends and family (you wait three years for an aunt to visit, then two turn up within four days of each other), singing-in-the-shower-because-I-can-and-no-one-is-telling-me-to-hurry-because-of-homework and if-I-look-busy-no-one-will-notice-that-I-haven't-done-my-music-practice*-and-no-I-don't-mind-putting-it-all-off-'til-Sunday (I can do it with the Maths prep that I've been keeping quiet about. On Sunday evening. Ten minutes after I should have gone to bed.)

Half term for Bertie Baggins and Four-legged-friend meant warm bottoms (long sleeps next to the Aga), walks, walks and more walks (way above their normal weekly average), visits from new friends, new smells, new excuses to interrupt conversations with wet nuzzling requests for a tummy rub, lots more crumbs dropped on the floor and fewer hours spent incarcerated in their outside run. Plus bones. Bones as distraction aka bribery when Littlest is wielding tools, trees are being felled and piles of branches are appearing all along the garden boundary. A boundary that is increasingly revealed as sadly lacking in the necessary tension to keep the fencing upright and with rotten fence post feet making it as effective as a canvas, beach wind-break in a gale.

Our path through the trees



Our wobbly fence



Physical exertion is one of the most effective treatments for tension (not the fencing type!) that I know. And I could have done with a quick laden-wheel-barrow-trundle up the garden when the tranquil bubble of my half term was popped briefly by a corrosive, mean, jabbing little word. Attempting to log on at work one morning, my card was not recognised (computers are clearly forgetful machines as the same one had recognised me the day before. Perhaps it was suffering from senile decay of its memory.) After many, many, many minutes tortured by Vivaldi stuttering badly in our ears, as first I and then the manager waited for telephone assistance, connection was re-established. Partially. It allowed me to perform some functions but not all - the equivalent perhaps of a vascular accident in the computer brain. Anyhow, the result of delayed recognition was a waiting room full of people whose appointments with me were now going to be (very) late. They had been informed that there was a problem several times and were quite possibly a trifle fed-up with my cheery face telling them "We'll get started as soon as possible." When it became possible, and I did start - still bouyed up by a British sense of coping in the face of an adversity that was not my fault - the first client stood up and announced to the waiting room "Finally!" Her rudeness flicked a switch inside my head from cheery determination to fury. I said nothing. I seethed. My normally chatty persona replaced by a perfunctory business-like emotionless extension of the defective computer. I only smiled again when I envisaged how it might have felt to slam the door behind her when she left. I didn't. But it brought my cheeriness back. I suspect she felt angry for the rest of her day - being angry increases your risk of heart attacks, apparently. Far better to let anger pass. Cheeriness it the best way ahead. Be generous and smile.

Thinking myself back to cheery requires picturing the things that make me smile -

Littlest's expostulations as she fights the undergrowth with a pair of loppers - part grunt, part song, part words that I didn't know she knew - would make (almost) anyone smile (unless, perhaps, they are of the disgruntled "Finally!" disposition)




* She did, in fact, do plenty of practice. In the end. And not all on Sunday night. The only competitive bones in her body are in her fingers - she has said that she wants to maintain her straight record of distinctions in music exams. Absolutely no pressure then ... and lots of sight reading practice this weekend!

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