bones and stones

LG and I have recently returned from a couple of days visiting my parents.
Our activities included:

Thursday: after lunch, a tour of local charity shops in Uckfield (6). Purchased some curtains (for the fabric) some books, some more books and found a nice GAP shirt for mother. Quick nip into Crowborough before getting back home - 3 charity shops (another 2 closed early). No purchases.

Mum is always glad that I provide her with a good excuse for CS visiting. My father tolerates the habit, but with a slight air of weariness and gentle mockery which means she can never totally relax and take the time she really wants to.

I remember as a child going down to the end of the road with my mum, on a Saturday morning clutching my pocket money, to the junk shop locally known as Fred's (who knows whether or not that was his name?). He only opened on Saturday mornings, and there would be a queue there by 8 am. So you can see, the habit was cultivated in me from an early age. A proper upbringing, I had.

Thursday evening : fairly early bed after a lovely meal. Mum & Dad are of the age now where they are likely to doze off whenever seated for more than about 15 mins. They love watching films, but often nod off intermittently throughout. (Me too these days, which is worrying.) Managed to sleep fairly well, despite the sonorous buzzsaw of my father's snoring vibrating its way through the wall by my head. How my mother sleeps at all I can't imagine. Maybe this is why they doze off during the day so often.

Friday, a bright and blustery day in Eastbourne.











Lovely lunch in a gracious and genteel hotel full of elderly people, I kept expecting Poirot to appear around the corner.
Lunch was followed by a satisifying amount of windswept walking, wave-chasing, scrunching, running, climbing and combing on the beach with LG.





Here are some of the things we found and brought home.

LG was particularly pleased with the fish jaw-bone on the left of the photo, but disappointed to find it was the wrong size for her to be able to wear it. Not that that prevened her from trying. Of course.

I hope she never grows out of our shared delight in finding interesting, smooth, ugly, lovely, odd pebbles and driftwood on the beach. I think not picking up anything on a stony beach is as impossible for me as passing a charity shop without looking inside.

However there are things which take priority, which was proved on Friday afternoon, when I had to forgo about 8 charity shops in Eastbourne when I lost my mother and spent the time searching for her instead. After a brief panic when an ambulance arrived with flashing lights and a crew rushing into Boots (I did run in to check it wasn't her) we met up again, but had no time/will left for charity shopping.

And unfortunately had used up too much time.... we managed to locate a shop LG was keen to visit- "Battle Orders", purveyors of all things pugilistic - swords, armour, all manner of battle equipment and regalia - but by the time we found it (out of town - not a high street shop, this!) it was closed. LG has a passion for medieval weapons and a small but growing collection of swords, axes and other medieval/fantasy weaponry. If only this would motivate her to keep her room sufficiently tidy for them to be displayed, rather than in their usual habitat of lurking hazardously on the floor and/or under the bed.

She coped well with the disappointment. We wandered around the back and peered through the gap between the blind and window ledge - the front windows and door were tantalisingly whitewashed. No doubt we will be returning there in the future. During Opening Hours, that is.

LG then went to bed reading Paddington Bear. She's such a hybrid creature at the moment, part stroppy almost-teenager, part clingy cuddly little girl - anxious, silent, bright, rowdy, morose, chatty, defensive, self-doubting, confident, distant, passionate, lethargic, affectionate, manic, self-possessed, exuberant, unselfconscious. (Her room is still full of cuddly animals, amidst the weaponry and goth accessories). After some bouts of truly adolescent angst and sulkiness, she left her more grown up books to one side last night and took great pleasure in the simple child-like delights of Michael Bond's Paddington.

May she never be too grown up.