Most of the party spent the first full day of the holiday drawing breath, and settling into the idea of a week of relaxation. We went for a late morning swim in the indoor pool, but it was too busy to be much fun for the grown-ups, and even the Boy Wonder and the Brother took a while to get into the swing of things. After that R and I invited the Boy to go on a nature walk with us, along the trail that runs round the outside of the estate, but B was already quite tired, and when the sun emerged unexpectedly and he remembered that he hadn’t brought a hat, he asked R to take him back to the holiday house.
I’d been hoping to see some Lesser Emperors, after finding one along this trail on the last day of last year’s Lower Mill holiday, so I carried on alone, and in the end I was rewarded by good views of two bickering males – though sadly no photographs. One my way back to the house I wandered down to the edge of Somerford Lagoon, just in time to see this Grey heron fly past, and then – luckily – turn in towards the bank and prepare for landing. This is my favourite of today’s photos, but I’ve also included a sunset shot of Howell’s Mere, taken from the top balcony of our three-storey holiday house. The reed bed where the Starlings roost is in the lower left corner of the image.
R and I have been talking a lot about our grandsons recently, and we’ve come to feel that calling Number Two the Brother is too referential, because at the age of two and a half he’s now very much his own man. He has a combination of extreme physicality and determination, coupled with a near-total absence of fear, which means that if you take your eyes off him for more than about ten seconds you’re likely to find him in the next county, or standing on top of something you’d very much rather he hadn’t climbed – and pretty much any time when he isn’t asleep, he’s on the move. After going through through all the superheroes we can remember, we’ve finally agreed on the Pocket Rocket – though he’s already a bit of a unit, and if he carries on growing at the current rate it won’t be long till Obelix is more appropriate. How two boys who visibly spring from the same stock can be quite this different – one slender and cerebral, and the other tough and sporty – is something of a mystery, but they share a love of words and of learning, and far more importantly they’re emotionally close. At least during the interludes when neither is knocking seven bells out of the other.
R: L2, C10, D72.
