BLONDIE

We had an evening walking up the hill to calm our nerves after Mum gave us a scare today. We were having a rather bizarre pub lunch - but that's another story - in Richmond, fortunately with mobile signals, when R was called by Mum's care line to say she'd pressed her alarm button twice but wasn't responding to their calls to her. We then all discovered that the number we had for her neighbour was out-of-date, and in the panic none of us could remember the surnames of her other neighbours. The care line were going to send a paramedic anyway, which they did, who found that she'd fallen in the kitchen and though not hurt - thank goodness - hadn't been able to get up because of her artificial non-kneelable knees. (The paramedic told sister K on the phone that a large proportion of their call-outs are to pick elderly people up who have fallen.) At least Mum has now seen the benefit of having her alarm button which she grumbled about when we all insisted she have one.

The last time anything like this happened was 14 years ago, again when all her daughters were on holiday together in Portugal, Dad was on a business trip to Jersey and there was no-one else about and she had to be rushed into hospital as a medical emergency. She insists she doesn't do it on purpose!

Anyway, here's a beautiful beast we passed on our walk, and the extra is a line of mole skins hanging on a gate (pour encourager les autres?) in a tiny, ancient hamlet we walked through. I didn't know they did that any more.