A Happy Day

Ann and Grandad-John at The Mill

Yesterday we should have been in France. We had booked the hotel in Dover for Thursday and Friday nights, and the ferry for a day trip, but our plans were sent cock-eyed by the unexpected illness of Edwin. On Tuesday, he had high fever, swollen tonsils and tender glands the size of marbles, and couldn't swallow. He was started on antibiotics, but on Thursday was worse, with soaring temperature and his glands the size of golf balls. We had to take him back to the doctor, this time with a diagnosis of severe glandular fever. He will be highly infectious for some time and has had to cancel his appointments at university - though he is so ill, he has been confined to bed anyway.

So yesterday, with his temperature down a little and able to sip milk, we went to the Mill at Sudbury. It turned out to be a perfect day, although unexpectedly in England. The sun was warm, we had cream tea with G-and-T on the balcony (though just Coke in my case, as I cannot take spirits now), and walked leisurely in the meadow by the river.

A new otter at Clare

In the morning, I took the dogs for their regular walk in Clare Country Park, where they have installed a number of new visitor notices, including a huge carved wooden sculpture of an otter, much admired by the curious dogs.

Relaxing in the garden today over a bowl of soup and a refreshing Crabbies after cutting the lawn, I was reminded of a story my mother used to tell when we were little. The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle relates how she wished fervently for a slightly better place to live, but on being granted her wish, kept wishing for someplace even better. Finally she wished for a whole palace, but the granter of the wish was so fed up by this time, that they put her back in the vinegar bottle! I think my mother used the story to discourage over-ambition, but lying in the sun listening to the birds I am reminded of how I sometimes wish for elsewhere, and forget how much I already have.