Love to mum and get well soon

What a saga, Pop. I do hope the abcess thing is past and that mum can back to some sense of normality. Sorry for posting my previous blog with no reference to all mum’s troubles and your stirling work. I’d already sent it before I read all the news because there were a few long posts to read and I decided to read them offline later. To me, it sounds like you need something stronger than brandy in the house. An abscess is one thing but cramp too. My heart bled reading your account. It ‘s so unfair when things like this happen on top of one another. I’ll phone before we set off for Portugal to see how you both are.

Congrats on the move Gemma and Clive. I didn’t manage to see that page yet Steve but am happier now about trying to get a place here. Still, four and a half thousand does seem a bit of a bargain!

On the culture front our town is in the throws of its annual Alfaz International Film Festival which is big on the European scene I’m told. We had the Bolshoi ballet through recently too, but we passed on that one. Loads of swans dying on lakes and stuff. Prefer living animals.

The lion at Whipsnade is the loudest one I have ever heard (because you can get close, I suppose). The one at Zimbabwe’s Chipengali roared from time to time but it is not in the same class. Mind you, they have a world famous peeing leopard that quirts at you as you go past. As for scares though, the lion in Ecuador’s Quito Zoo was ‘best’. As I walked past his cage he sprang for me and attached himself to the fence about 8 feet tall and 3 feet from my nose. I got lion spit on my face and human secretions everywhere else! Come to think of it, he was pretty loud too, but I was a long way away in about 10 seconds and couldn’t hear him anymore!!

While I’m on memory lane, do Nic and Julian remember that attack of cramp I had on the bridge at Port Meadow when I was about 10. I think Nic still thinks I was faking it! Since then I’ve been a victim regularly, the ‘funniest’ (viewed only retrospectively, I might add) being when Jan and I were both hit by a vomitting and trotting bug in the middle of the night. Add cramp to that, in mid-winter, when you’re sleeping on the floor downstairs because Jess has got the only bedroom (upstairs, where the toilet also can be found!!), with Jan being pregnant and never having had cramp before. Bowls and buckets everywhere!!! Ah, happy days. Poor mum, I can’t sympathise enough.

We love you and are thinking of you darling, praying all will come good in the next few days.

Pete, Jan and the girls.