Ahem
Jessie and Jurrat came back from their stay in Luxembourg with Uncle Tank and Auntie Susie, and retook ownership of Jaxon, whom we delivered safe and sound after his five-day stay with us. Jaxon was an entertaining guest. His self-absorption is highly amusing whereas in humans it might become irritating. Alli had been urgently trying to think of good reasons to keep him with us. Our old dog Max tolerated him wearily (having moved on from warily), but he does keep a weather eye on the interplay of relationships between humans and dogs. Sometimes his calculations are far too laid back, as when a hyperactive Jaxon suddenly jumped into his face by mistake as he lay calmly dozing on the sofa. Only the sudden shock made him growl briefly. But Jaxon noticed the change of mood and didn’t do it again. He has also given up trying to hump Max and permits himself only a quick haunch-sniff or two on his repetitive hurried trot towards encouraging noises from the kitchen.
The first cold snap slowed everyone and everything down. Alli went to Burgess Hill for a few days to stay with Kay, during which she took a great picture of the full moon from the garden (see above). I hunkered in Uckfield doing some writing, office re-arranging, and a few small jobs and errands. Our garden has a new fence on both sides as our neighbours bowed to the persuasive power of the storm and replaced it as we replaced ours on the other side last month. It was long overdue. Their fence was stopped from smacking flat on our lush garden and pond by the solid trunk of our tropical palm, on which it had been resting since the storm like a drunken mid-afternoon tramp. We had our other neighbours Gary and Amy for drinks one evening with their small children. Then was when we realised that our plant- and dog-friendly house was child-unfriendly. Ah well, nobody’s perfect, as the French Ambassador in Indonesia once murmured when I revealed that I was British.
Jessie’s childhood friend Becky came to England from New Zealand with her husband and will be staying several months in England, partly in Brighton with Jessie and Jurrat. Ella and Sam went off on their proper honeymoon, long planned, in the USA and Caribbean. Snow, slush and freezing temperatures welcomed them. They took a rental car, and it was a voyage east of shock and awe as an angry God decided to show MAGA blockheads what climate change looked like in the good ol’ southern states of Texas and Louisiana. They were in Austin, Houston and New Orleans before moving on to warmer shores in Florida and the Caribbean St Lucia. Alli and I tracked their journey while sharing the resulting Maisie-sitting duties.
We had Mary and Brian, our friends from Burgess Hill, over for lunch one Saturday; Alli cooked an esculent vegan chickpea curry which was much appreciated together with plenty of Crémant d’Alsace and a good red wine. The table conversation was lively, although I might have talked too much about sexual activity in Versailles in the late eighteenth century. This line of discussion is becoming my chosen substitute over talking about Traitors, Strictly, or the Masked Singer. Or, for that matter, Trump, Musk, and Starmer. Mary and Brian contributed insightful remarks throughout and left in the evening. After washing the dishes, I promptly fell asleep in the chair. I am fairly certain that neither Louis XV nor the Duc de Choiseul ever washed a dish or plate in their lives.
Alli has been unwell recently, which meant that we could not attend her aunt Barbara’s funeral in Poole. Barbara, sister of Alli’s father Lawrie, was one of the first people I met from Alli’s wider family before we were married, and I liked her enormously. For reasons I don’t remember, we stayed in her house in Tunbridge Wells in 1988 for a night or two some weeks before we were married, and her spontaneous approval of a worried me felt like an early social success. I joined Jessie and old friend Nigel to see the excellent and happy Magic Numbers at the Concorde 2 in Brighton. Nigel kindly picked me up on his way from Tunbridge Wells to Brighton, where we all had dinner at Nanimo in Kemp Town before the gig, then he drove me back afterwards. Earlier, Gwen had taken me to an imaginative concert in the South Bank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Unclassified Live, to see an unusual choice of modern music by Nwando Ebizie, Takiaya Reed, and Bill Ryder-Jones with the BBC Concert Orchestra. We had previously gone to see the remarkable film A Complete Unknown. It was a wonderful film that moved me greatly. I enjoyed the variety and the overall adventure day in London enormously.
Poor Max tore his cruciate ligament while on a morning walk. The vet did not recommend surgery but prescribed a period of several weeks without any major exercise, about which he seems not too concerned. He has marginally improved since he suffered the injury, but the paracetamol and codeine are also playing their painkilling parts. A second cold snap later in the month found Alli again Nanny-sitting and me hugging a desk in my loftice. I finished January as I invariably do – panicking about finishing my tax return. Why on earth didn’t I do it last April when all the numbers were in? I just thought I would repeat this annual insight,
Yours before someone asks…
Lionel
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