Sweaty day.

Here I am running a temperature, sweaty and chilled in turn, hardly able to croak, and the shop has been really busy. Another example of Murphy's Law (or Sod's Law. Must check the difference.) The jolly men from England came in for the third time to say (several times, correcting each other, finishing other's sentences) that they had finally been succesful in catching Wilma's shop open, were pleased with what they found there and had made purchases, so good for Wilma. They bought yet another book from me and off they went with promises to return in September.

William came by to drop off some more 'Scottish interest' and today I found out he buys old farm machinery and does it up.

Someone asked me out to dinner in a circuitous sort of way in between talking about books. I ducked the question. Shame. He's really nice, good looking, the right age, intelligent, and I'm not attracted in the least. That's the way it goes. Undoubtedly he just wants some female company as his wife died last year, but much as I would enjoy some male company, even at my age I've noticed there has to be a certain edge to the connection before I'd be willing to get more friendly than the shopkeeper/customer sort of friendly. Daft really.

I have learned about the maneaters of Tsavo, a pair of maneless lions who got the taste for human flesh and were responsible for the deaths of about 130 construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway, from March through December 1898. They were hunted down by the man in charge of the works, spent some years as his rugs then went to a museum in Chicago to be reconstructed. They do look rather sleek.

Then I learned about the reasons for playing the banjo from a man who bought a tutor from me and is about to get going on it.

Then I exchanged thoughts on neurosis and Freud with a young man. Then I enthused about Sulamith Wolfing's paintings with a woman buying a mounted print of one for a birthday present. Then poetry and ... as I have said before, this is a great way for a butterfly mind to pass the day.

In between times I have been doing my grandson's homework. I don't approve of 9 year olds getting homework and this seemed particularly brutal; a project on Niagara Falls, and Angel Falls in Venezuela, to contain pictures, maps, facts interestingly presented with footnotes and a bibliography. Good grief. It took me 4 hours. if I hadn't done it his mother would have had to and she really doesn't have the time. It has to be typed out so he doesn't have to write it out himself - he can use what I have typed. All he has to do is remember the facts. The teacher didn't provide any source material at all. The only books I could find were encyclopaedia's which had about a paragraph on Niagara and a sentence on Angel Falls. There ws nothing to put in the 'bibliography' but web sites as sources.

When I was at teachers training college we were told to work from the particular to the general - the children would have been much better off doing a project on the local river, the Findhorn. It might have meant something to them.

I quie enjoyed doing it though.