I really am cracking the problem of names, at last.  Again, I simply asked “what is your name?” And was told and used it as I said goodbye and I won’t forget it.  This has taken a reasonably long life – at least, I’ve outlived my father by more than four years – to learn.  Mostly, I was sunk in the gloom of knowing that I wouldn’t remember, so couldn’t ask again, but I was also afflicted by shyness.  Having been shy as a child and finally, with considerable effort, grown out of it (the personal growth, that is, not simply getting older), I rarely have acknowledged the final snippets of difficulty, but that’s certainly been one of them and I relied on Russell always to know names. I had to take the matter on the chin, or else have been unnecessarily in the dark.

Wink has left for home – and presumably arrived there – and we’re alone again.  it’s been a good weekend and there’s a busy tine to come.  Jonny the farmer is starting the new fencing tomorrow and we’re on to the next project in the garden.  The early potatoes have been earthed up twice, the newly seeded grass is up, vegetables are doing well.  And we’ve finally finished planting out the shrubs and herbaceous stuff that we bought a fortnight ago, which is remarkably speedy.  We’ve also – well, Tim has – put the hose on the new spool we bought.

I’d come up with a theory – Zain and Freddie barn cats have been turning up for meals regularly, but I haven’t seen any of the others for a week or two.  So I thought that they’d given their siblings their marching orders, this field not being big enough for all of them.  And then Betty and Barney arrived this morning, along with Zain, which put the kibosh on that.  So no more theories.  I just meekly go out twice a day and, if there are any cats, I feed them.  This afternoon, there were none, so I didn’t.

And so to bed, darlings.  I slept very well last night, which is always tiring, innit?