…my father-in-law is beginning to look tired, thin and struggling to stay cheerful.
Fortunately, D was with him on the golfcourse Thursday afternoon and got him to hospital quickly where he satyed overnight.
Discharged Friday, and D advised us that we should visit as planned, which we did today.
Good to see him again of course, and introdcue him to Nora, but he was hopelssly confused, as deaf as a post and rather upset Stanley and Alice in particular with his lack of coherence and random coments.
Trx is very quiet now, its been a long day,a nd I think we are all getting concerned about his ability to keep looking after himself. The (admittedly very minor) stroke was the result of him forgetting his medication for two days in a row and then overdoing the exercise.
How much longer can he be trusted to take his own pills every day?

Otherwise though, wonderful to be at the farm again, which represents a very special place for all of us.'
The kids obviously love the space and the country 'things' associated with it. Like picking skwillions of blackberries, climbing up and harvesting three different kinds of apples, being stung by nettles and rubbing juicy dockleaves on the spots, fighting with sticks, nuzzling, patting and feeding the horses, watching the kestrel in the barn, listening to the throstles in the larches, laughing at the pheasants trying to run across the newly ploughed field.
Still a handful of swallows overhead, a "hepperplopper" or two from the nearby airbase and rapidly shape-shifting clouds.

Took us over 3 hours to get there tho.
The M1 widening between the M25 and Luton airport is ridiculously jam-making, and will apparently be so until Dec 2008?
And for what??

To cope with increasing numbers of air travellers.
Cheap flights cost the earth.
The economics of this really sucks...
Someone's paying for the £5 flights to Spain, but as long as it isn't the person actually flying, I suppose that makes it OK.

And then people complain about increased security and threats from terrorists?
It's not that hard to work it out...
You get what you pay for.
The cost is written in invisible ink behind the price tag.

More people need to think of money as a resource, like or water, or air, or the environment.
It flows around us all, sometimes in streams, sometimes in oceans.
It belongs to us all and we need to think of the cost to others of wanting things cheaper and cheaper.

The less things cost us, the less we value them.