Changes

I'm staggered at how quickly my fruit leather is drying in the sun-through-glass. I started another batch as we have a few more days of sun predicted.

I spent the morning walking round the area I'm staying and being reminded what a green and friendly neighbourhood I lived in for 28 years. I bumped into one of the family who bought 'my' house and learnt that there is now a Ukrainian family living in what was Firstborn's bedroom.

Then spent the afternoon with a friend, his family and his mother visiting from Algeria. Sadly, she and I do not have a spoken language in common but we manage on body language, translation, and her amusement at my attempts to pronounce the different Arabic versions of the sound I think of as 'h'. I thought I was doing quite well but they are all perfectionists.

Then the evening with the visiting children and grandchildren of the family whose attic I am renting. I've known the 'children' since they really were children 30 years ago and it was a treat to see them again. One is a taller version of her childhood self and the other I would not have recognised in the street.