The house is thick with the smell of a Full English: sausage, bacon, mushrooms. tomatoes and -chips by special request. Once every three weeks g’son stays overnight when he’s visiting his father. This started because his poor mother found it difficult to deal with the grumps before and after the visit and it worked better to have him leave from my house. Happily he doesn’t get the grumps with me. Mothers always bear the brunt of the troubled emotions - I remember! Things are better now but there is always some tension in him, though his visits have been pared down by Saturday morning school and the grumps have faded a little as he gets better at dealing with his father’s probing questions and bitterness. Still, he needs building up for the experience.

He also needs, more cheerfully, building up for the front line in the scrum. As above, second from the left next to the green gumguard, and invisible in the front line of pre-scrumdown. He is, we are told, a useful rugby player, has won his full colours and when the star player dislocated a shoulder and broke a collar bone he was promoted to prop forward (I think) in which place he gets the full force of the collapse if there is one, so his mother has checked the insurance. The bruises he comes home with are appalling but he tells the tale of each one with relish. Apart from the real and present danger we have much to thank rugby for. It’s been instrumental in a breakthrough at school. He now has respect from the girls (some of them, probably not the academics) as a jock and glory in the eyes of the ankle-biters. The team are going On Tour before the end of term; also a good thing as he gets used to being away from home. I don’t think they are playing the All Blacks.

Now I have time to review my week. It’s been a long one. Daughter went to London to do one of the stages of her cranial osteopathy trainings and happily was able to stay with her sister. She came back tired and , having had time to see her life from a distance for a few days, reluctant to take up the reins of four jobs, in variable order depending on the times: osteopathy, the shop, her son, and her partner who still has terrible back pain (waiting for a scan, probably facing another operation) and depression. I don’t know how she does it and am full of admiration. She is like her father, able to put her head down and get on with things, determined and very, very able They are both Aries. Don’t know if that explains anything.

All three of the offspring are working really hard and it does rather put me to shame. Still, I take heart in having got a few things right. Not sure what...

On a personal level not much to report. I bought two nice stone rubbings of Pictish carvings, an eagle and a deer. The chap uses beeswax crayons on cotton for the rubbing and then prints the results again onto cotton. They are a reasonable price but when I went to ask about getting them framed found I would have to spend rather more on one frame than I paid for both rubbings so I’m a bit stumped. Good ready-made frames aren’t easy to get up here and they are an awkward shape - square. Didn’t see anything helpful in Tesco!

I do most of my shopping on line or from catalogues these days. We don’t have much choice of clothing for instance. Daughter came back with ecstatic reports of a girly afternoon spent with her sister trying on dresses in Chiswick. She scored two little numbers from the sales, £20 each and looking amazing. One skimpy bit of nothing I never would have been able to wear but she takes after her father’s mother there too - that flat-chested lady must have looked very good in flapper styles in her day.

Reading has been taking a back burner but I’ve been enjoying re-reading Reginald Hill, especially ‘Arms and the Woman’ which book I read parts of the first time through, wanting to follow the main story. Now I have been back to read Ellie Pascoe’s ‘Comfort Blanket’ which might have been, at a guess an enjoyable exercise for RH as well as Ellie. I like his style and I like that he obviously enjoys himself when he writes, enjoys using his erudition, putting lots of quotes into the mouths of his characters, (never gratuitously) using the characters to toy with themes that interest or amuse him, experimenting with form. He’s always surprising. Long may his ink last.

Which was my ultimate frustration this week. Buying ink for an Epsom printer. I did get Tescos versions in the end but they are still pricey. The real ones - well I might as well have bought a new printer. I just hope the damn thing works now and I can get on with my project.

Update: It printed out 120 pages without hesitation, repetion or whatever the third thing is they have to avoid on 'Just a Minute.' Result!