Very misty on my early morning walk today and fruitful too as I picked some nice ripe blackberries to eat with my breakfast yogurt. But the sun is coming out now and I love these autumn days.
I went to Winchester at the weekend (for yet another Memorial Service) and had a walk with son T and B.Wiggins along the water meadows where Keats wrote the famous Ode. On the path by the river Itchen, I met someone whom I hadn`t seen for well over forty years and we recognised each other! He used to come to the Quaker Meeting with me as he did not like going to the Chapel services at Winchester College where he was a pupil, so he got some sort of dispensation. He would push baby daughter J there in her pram.
Son T has now gone to India for three months to teach English to Tibetan refugees. What with grand daughter G teaching English in a remote village in China, and grandson C doing the same in Thailand I wonder where the Darlings will go next? I am full of admiration for them all for being so fearless and adventurous and doing something useful too. One of the difficulties about being old is not feeling very useful most of the time.
Anyway I am off to look after ten year old Tiger while her parents are both at work today (she goes back to school tomorrow) so I suppose that is a bit useful. I thought I would check that she knows her twelve times table as that was one of the crackpot notions I heard on the news yesterday. All four year olds should understand fractions and year sixes their twelve times. I shall give her a test and a prize.