Pre-birthday tea

Ida's birthday is not till tomorrow, but the celebrations are taking place in advance this year, for one reason or another. Agnes' Mamma Mia! cake set a triumphant seal on the children's party last Friday, and this afternoon Thomas, Caroline and I pitched up in time for tea in Bristol, and seeing the joy of a seven-year-old open presents.

Seven and a half candles

My brother-in-law celebrated his 75th birthday today, with a lunch and tea party, and sundry friends and relations - children, cousins etc. - in attendance. (I wonder when he last had a birthday party.)

Croft Farm Waterpark

Caroline booked the three grandchildren in for a kayaking session today, in a former gravel pit just North of Tewkesbury. Two hours was plenty. Having picniced at the waterside, and before our trio donned their wet suits, we were all entertained by ducks and swans on the look-out for food plus a gang of ice bucket challengers further down the bank.

I've been reading Alice in Wonderland to Ida. In view of current trends, too much "Off with their heads!" for my liking.

The invasion...

...has arrived. Edmund yesterday brought the three grandchildren to stay - on and off till the end of the holidays.

Caroline has set them tasks: William was on raspberry-picking this morning. "Have you been eating them?" I asked, as he presented the container half-filled. "I haven't had any out of the bowl," he replied.

Obviously destined for a career in diplomacy.

Hider

It's curious how a mask can alter one's appearance so completely. Here's our granddaughter, on our visit to the local museum this morning. I'm not sure which of us enjoyed it more.

I'm also enjoying "Mr. Tibbits's Catholic School", a memoir about the staff of St Philip's, the prep school where the late Roger Taylor worked for many years.

Written by Ysenda Maxtone Graham (a name that sounds as if it's the unlikely result of an anagram), it was published in 2011 by Slightly Foxed - three years before Roger's death: I hope it pleased him to read, "What was it about Roger Taylor that made him such a great man?" (despite the past tense). Five affectionate pages follow, answering the question.

The book made me laugh a lot. Here's an instance: St Philip's broke every prep school record for being beaten [at games]... Sports masters tried to be as upbeat as possible in their reports. "As 0-3 defeats go, it was one of the best I've known."

Toot commerces

Two of the grandchildren have been here for the weekend, and - as is par for the course for six-year-olds in our family - they fearlessly set up a stall at the gate yesterday, to sell buns and elderflower cordial in aid of the local vet's sick animal charity. Waving their arms at passing cars, £11 so raised.

Listen with mother

Though it's a pity to bin the borage when still in flower, the garden does look a bit like a hayfield: we are gradually working towards restoring some order. Meanwhile, it's a pleasure to have Agnes and Ida here for a quietish weekend. One of the Sadler's Wells stories is on the go.

Kindling

Friends have lent me a Kindle to take with me on my walk next month: we went round to collect it yesterday morning, and I had a lesson at the same time. As Ida was staying, she came too, and was given a look into the beehives at the bottom of the garden. (Our own bees have sadly died.)

This evening, I've been planting potatoes, Duke of York and Pink Fir Apple this year: it's too early for the latter to go in really, but the ground is right, and I don't want to leave them chitting till early May.

Visiting Bath

Reynolds may or may not have painted this portrait of the grandmother of the Bath Holburne Museum's founder, tucked away high on one of the Museum's walls. The Museum's website records a cleaning in 1992, which included the removal of "a rosebud which had been added to the sitter's décolletage at some point".

The sitter was born Frances Ball in 1719, and brought up in Barbados. Aged 12, she was married off to a man 17 years her senior, and bore him - esides four other children - two sons. On her husband's early death, she married Admiral Holburne by whom she had more children, before dying in her early forties.

The younger son of the first marriage, Francis had a granddaughter, Frances, who in turn had a son Francis: his posthumous daughter, another Frances, has a great-granddaughter Ida Frances, who was looking up at her ancestor's portrait with me yesterday afternoon.

Happy New Year!

...from a rainy Cheltenham: we are supposed to be on our way to watch Bristol Rovers v. Cheltenham Town at the ground which overlooks Agnes' house in Bristol; but for the second year running, it's been rained off. So, a lazy time at home is in prospect, with the grandchildren slow to get out of their pyjamas, and the youngest, Laurie (6) much enjoying his new camera.

Daisy's tea party

A full-blown birthday tea took place this afternoon in our kitchen: Ida's new bear was its focus, though assistance was needed to blow out the candle. I am (with Caroline) just about to abandon our domesticity for the first time in a week, donning black tie for a grown up dinner with friends near Tetbury. Often, we are happy at home, failing to see in the New Year, but for tonight we have had no less than three invitations.

Birmingham

I knew David Wood a little at Oxford, where he displayed a precocious talent in the OUDS and ETC. Starting as he meant to go on, he is now hailed by some as the children's theatre laureate. We turned our backs on panto for once in order to sample his adaptation of "Tom's Midnight Garden" this afternoon, the children scoring it 10 out of 10.

For this, the five of us sat at the back of the steeply-raked stalls at Birmingham Old Rep. It's celebrating 100 years as a theatre this year, and the space between the rows is an indication of how well we've all been eating our greens in the interim. I remember being taken to pantos there by my grandmother Gateley - probably in the 1940s, when my legs and trousers were shorter.

Before the play, we paid a visit to the crib at St Philip's (in fact two cribs - plus of course the Burne-Jones Nativity window); and then had lunch in the new Library café, explored its lifts and escalators and admired the view from the top floor. The children rolled merrily around on the carpet of the recreated Shakespeare Memorial Room, where they clearly felt at home. (Ida has been spouting Macbeth.)

Winter walking

In the sunshine (and through the mud), Caroline took us all up to a fallen oak tree on the side of Leckhampton Hill this morning. Sandwiches perched on top were the children's reward.

Three seater

Caroline looked after the grandchildren again today (they were generally in high spirits), while Agnes and I were once more at Medicine Unboxed.

I found myself flagging by mid-afternoon, after a heavily political hour dominated by discussion of the "Semtex suppository inserted in the NHS by the Coalition." Ray Tallis, author of NHS SOS, came up with this and several other pithy phrases to sum up his view that the Health Service wasn't broke when the Tories took over, "and they tried to fix it by blowing it up."

He was supported by Professor Allyson Pollock, laying in to the BBC for its failure to alert the public to what was going on, and the vocal majority of the audience.

Earlier, Jocelyn Pook had talked about her strange compositions, inspired by ansafone messages. I could just about take these on board, but not the pieces consisting of voices running backwards: as with Eduardo Miranda's robotic music (he was on yesterday's programme), I kept thinking of those who use Photoshop to rob representational photographs of all meaning: you may as well set chimpanzees loose in the artist's studio.

This was the session when we came nearest to a consideration of the role God plays in people's lives: ecstatic singing was compared to prayer - without anyone "confessing" that it could indeed be prayer. I hid my light under a bushel. Shame.

I found myself surprisingly comfortable with psychoanalyst (and author of The Examined Life) Stephen Grosz talking to Sam Guglani: Grosz's conclusion about a bore was simply that "he didn't let the present matter." And the question put to him by his own (distinguished) analyst was, "When are you going to come in here by yourself?"

The other star of today's sessions was for me Eleanor Longden, reprising her TED talk about the voices in her head. "Don't ask what's wrong with you: ask what's happened to you," she urged.

What's happened to the England cricket team? One could certainly ask that.

Adult content

For the recent sixth birthdays of our two younger grandchildren, I put together a book of weather vanes. This has now evolved into something a bit more grown up, with others' poems to complement my photographs.

It was interesting, finding out something about the subject. A wind or weather vane pivots, as I say in my brief introduction, so the pointer can move freely, the surface area being unequally divided: the side with the larger surface area is blown away from the wind direction, so that the smaller side, with the pointer, faces into the wind. For example, in a 'Nor-Easter' (a wind that blows FROM the North-East), the pointer points TOWARDS the North-East.

The word "vane" derives from the Anglo-Saxon word "fane”, meaning "flag". Originally, fabric pennants would show archers the direction of the wind: the cloth flags came to be replaced by metal ones, decorated with the overlord’s insignia, and balanced to turn in the wind.

Sometimes they are called weathercocks. St Gregory the Great having described the cock emblem as a suitable Christian identifier, churches often displayed (as many do to this day) the rooster symbol. It serves as a reminder of the Maundy Thursday prophecy, recorded by all four Evangelists, that before the next cock crow, Peter would three times deny knowing Jesus. A weathercock still describes someone changeable or fickle, tending to go whichever way the wind blows.

In April 2010, when walking in Spain on the Via de la Plata through the Province of Salamanca, I noticed a rash of varied scenes portrayed on weather vanes. It made me pay more attention to examples of our domestic tradition: it seems no less rich and varied. However, of the weather vanes I have photographed so far, only the Spanish ones incorporate an anemometer, to indicate wind speed.

As with most of my books, "The Weather Vane" is available print-on-demand. This is the link to the paperback version: it's also available in hardback.

birthday, ppp

The birthday girl was feeling well below par today, alas. It's not the first time that her temperature, rather than Ida herself, seems to have risen to the occasion. Here she is wearing a smart new (birthday) pair of shoes, her first lace-ups, and opening the Simon Brett engraving I gave her for her bedroom wall.

Cake time

A day late, we celebrated Agnes' birthday yesterday. Nine of us, at lunchtime (Ida had a tea party to attend). Mini made a beautiful cake, adorned with blackberries, and raspberries from the garden. It was warm enough to drink our coffee outside afterwards, but this long Indian Summer must tail off soon surely.

This evening, we have been to a play reading: No, I just don't believe it! (a two-hander by Jean-Claude Grumberg) has been performed in its original French, but not in its English translation. It's about Alzheimer's creeping up - a bit near the knuckle, both for me and (perhaps) the cast. Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour's presence on stage ensured the big tent was packed. The hour-long reading preceded a discussion between the translator, Jonathan Kent and critic Agnès Poirier - a little drawn out, but more thought-provoking in some ways than the play.

Lapping it up

As Ogden Nash wrote, "The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild. You only have to live until your child has a child." Well worth the wait, I say!

It was 16 years ago that Sophie Ryder's Minotaur and the Hare was purchased for permanent display in a prominent position in Cheltenham's Promenade. There were the predictable howls of protest, but now I guess they would be easily drowned out by a chorus of approval - if it was to be mooted that the sculpture be removed. The chorus would be led by grandparents deprived of a most beautiful climbing frame.

Worbey and Farrell

Perhaps Ida is a bit young for concert-going, but she seemed enthusiastic, so off we went this morning to the Parabola Arts Centre. Worbey and Farrell play piano four hands, with a camera to display their dexterity on a big screen above: when eventually they came on stage - a ten-minute delay must seem an age for a 5-year-old - they quickly showed how clever they are, and the wide range of styles they can deploy. The trouble was, the novelty soon wore thin, and I sensed a restlessness beside me. So we didn't stick it to the end of the 75 minutes.

Coming out into the bright sunlight that filled the Parabola's Gallery we bumped into Mary Paterson. Despite her years, she had, she told us, much enjoyed The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, performed the previous weekend, with illustrations. I wish we had been at that, rather than the rather too blokey "comedy piano duo".

Dressmaking

Ida is coming at the weekend, so Caroline has been rushing to finish a dress for her. The material was originally bought for a dress for Agnes! Useful to have a good supply of buttons, but decisions, decisions...