I hope being confronted by photos of my lips isn’t too startling, darlings, but they illustrate what I mentioned the other day – the one on the right was first thing this morning, the other was this afternoon, some five hours later, by which time much of the swelling had gone down.  The different colour was just the natural light – I haven’t joined in with the makeup-free selfies on Facebook (in connection with awareness of breast cancer symptoms and charity fundraising, in case you don’t use fb) but this is the naked-faced me.

We seem to have tracked down the cause, though.  Dilly emailed me after I wrote about it the first time to say that Hadrian has the same thing and a rash as well, she’s taken him to the doctor and it’s a virus.  We’ve got away lightly – it can be acutely painful – though most adults have antibodies and don’t catch it at all.  Anyway, it’s improving but the very tip of my tongue is still over-sensitive (so I’m very careful not to say anything critical) and, as you see, I blow up overnight.

We had a lovely time when the family came to lunch.  We gave Squiffany the first part of her birthday present, promising part two on Tuesday and the rest during the Easter holidays, when we can all go to Norwich together.  I bought a nice little mini chest of drawers, about 8 inches high with three drawers, quite a dark wood (no, I don’t know what wood, I’m afraid) with little inlaid brass stars – I thought it was pretty and useful and not too childish, so she won’t outgrow it, and she liked it – an immediate pleased reaction, not a *polite* one.  So that was all right so far.

Tomorrow, Ro and Dora are coming to lunch.  What a good weekend this is turning out to be.