She’s not a puppy puppy this Daisy, more an obstreperous teenager, foisted on unsuspecting grandparents. Her weapon of choice is the bark and her preferred game is ‘can’t catch me.’ She also refuses to mount the stairs. Now I know plenty of people who would think this an excellent quality in a dog if it stopped them parading through the bedrooms and bathrooms and so it would be in Daisy, but the trouble is she doesn’t like being left and so when you go upstairs she stands at the foot of the staircase and barks until you come down again. As a result I am writing this on the kitchen table where Daisy can keep an eye on me rather than in my study upstairs. Peace is anyway reigning, but I suspect she will come and nuzzle me soon enough demanding a game of chase in the garden where she has found that I don’t like her chewing the young Medlar tree; she knows this will make me chase her away, which is why she does it. No doubt she will grow up into something sage and docile as most teenagers do, but such maturity cannot come soon enough. At half-past six on a cold morning with an icy wind lifting the corners of your dressing gown, the dog undoubtedly gets rather more pleasure from the game than you do.
Apart from the dog Easter otherwise threatens to be peaceful, and as a bonus the sun is shining. That means I shall give the grass both here and at the theatre its first cut of the year. I went yesterday to buy petrol which cost me almost £6. I reflected that when I learned to drive petrol in France was 7/6 a gallon - 37.5p in new money - and that that had seemed outrageous. In Britain the cost was still only five shillings a gallon (25p) and everyone then thought that prohibitive. I can’t remember the price of oil but it would be served by a garageman from a little pump into a sort of jug labelled 'Castrol' and then he would pour a pint or a quart of it into the engine - an elaborate business now lost in the mists of time.
Yesterday I went to two parties: a children’s Easter Egg hunt in a neighbour's garden took place in the afternoon. Usually when my kind neighbour puts on a children’s event I am accompanied by Theo, my grandson, who is four, but while Elder Daughter is living the high life in Amsterdam this Easter (and we are living the low life with the dog) Younger Daughter has whisked the grandchildren off to West Wales. Most inconsiderate! It feels quite odd to be attending a children’s party sans child, though there are always plenty of adults and suitably adult refreshments to while away the afternoon. With a glass of cold Cava I heard an explanation - something else from the mists of time - of why Easter should be populated by Rabbits and Eggs, rabbits not laying eggs ,obviously. My fellow guest said that the origin lay in the hares that disputed their territories by boxing around Easter time. These territories tended to be fields in which plovers had laid their eggs. By some process of zoological metamorphosis the hares became rabbits and the plovers’ eggs, the exorbitantly priced chocolate confections we know so well.
The second party was a friend's 70th and was a most jolly affair marred only by our wondering continually in what state our home might be after two or three hours of depredation by the dog. This didn't prevent us meeting some old and some new friends and from eating what must be the best birthday cake I have ever tasted. It was a fruit cake, rich and moist and baked to perfection, wonderfully marzipanned - which triggered an incidental conversation with an Indian doctor about almond trees in central India - and with a plaster-perfect thick layer of white icing. For adornment the cake boasted not candles but a marzipan blackboard on which had been written e = mc2, along with a figure wearing long shorts (Ilian had been a physics teacher, in Bermuda).
Sadly there has been no word from Ken whose rest I shall have to disturb again after the break. We shall shortly be having an Estonian visitor who is coming to improve her English. The idea is that in return for such instruction and her board, lodging and modest entertainment she will help us paint the house. I do feel that to keep our end up with the Estonians we shall need a bath with working taps. It isn't just something to keep the coal in.
