egg-painting
April 4th 2021
I love the spring!
The weather’s not cosy warm yet, but it’s so good to have longer days.
I can see the buds on the trees outside my window, and the birds wake me up with their racket every morning.
I’ve put on a springy shirt, and a hopeful badge.
Little Strawberry brought me a spring posy.
My friend Georgina would love it. I wish I could send it to her in Australia.
I showed it to Um.
I think she liked it.
The brownies that I baked the other day were a success.
Ruffy kindly delivered them to my friends.
Lopsy and Teddy enjoyed theirs.
Monkey said that Bunce and Snowy still have no appetite, but he did manage to coax them to eat some tiny morsels of brownie.
He checks their temperature and oxygen saturation regularly, and says the figures are hopeful.
At least the brownies will be useful for Monkey. He needs plenty of energy for his farming and caring duties.
He doesn’t even pause for meals, just eats his packed lunch out in the fields.
Didcot said my brownie was the best thing he’d tasted since Pancake Day.
Oh bother, I forgot about Pancake Day. That must be weeks ago now.
What a shame. The Baby would have enjoyed tossing pancakes.
We could have poured treacle on them. What a sticky mess the Baby would have made of that.
I can imagine it might have wrapped itself up in a pancake. Or wrapped me up.
Never mind, there’s always next year.
After the brownies’ positive reception, I felt encouraged to try some more baking.
It’s Easter weekend. Um might enjoy a simnel cake.
I may as well introduce her to some of the good bits of our culture, since I don’t know what her culture is.
I’ll do the baking while the Baby is out running with Lopsy. That will be quicker than letting it help.
I seem to have run out of dried fruit, so it’s not quite the usual sort of simnel cake.
Um can’t disapprove of marchpane. It’s full of almond protein. I do hope she likes it.
It is easier not to have the Baby helping, but I wish I had waited and let it join in the fun. What’s a little bit of mess, after all.
I’m getting quite excited about Easter.
I’ve got some Easter eggs. I’m going to hide them for the Baby to find. I’ve put one under my bicycle helmet.
The Baby will definitely find that one. It’s always throwing my helmet around.
We’re having a Zoom egg-painting party later on.
The Baby will enjoy that. It has quite a talent for painting.
Um came to wait at the front door with me, to welcome the Baby when it got back from its run.
I thought that was nice. She seems to be feeling ready to take on a more active parenting role.
Perhaps she’ll even join in with the egg painting.
She hustled the Baby away as soon as it got home. I think she could see that I needed a rest.
I had a good nap, and woke just in time for the Zoom meeting.
I got out my paints and brushes, and went to call Um and the Baby.
My friends are very kind.
But oh dear oh dear I couldn’t face telling them the news.
When I went to look for Um and the Baby, I found a message from the Stork.
He’d put it by my triangle, so I’d be sure to see it.
It’s clear that Um and the Baby and the Stork are waving goodbye. They’ve all gone away.
Then at the bottom there’s the Stork again, and at first I thought that was the Baby with him.
But no, the Baby doesn’t have any legs. That’s a bear with a triangle. It’s meant to be me.
This message means that the Stork will be coming back, but he’ll be coming back on his own.
It means that Um and the Baby have left for good.
The last time the Stork wrote me a message, the Baby was here. It ripped the message into shreds. It was such an active little Baby, full of ideas and mischief.
I think I’ll go to bed now.
getting Tom to get up
12th April 2021
Hello! Lopsy here!
I went round to Tom’s this morning, as usual, to pick up the Baby for our run in the park.
I enjoy taking the little thing out. Trying to keep up with it keeps me fit.
Nobody answered when I rang the doorbell.
I banged on the window. No answer.
So I jogged home and tried to phone Tom. Still no answer.
Teddy and I were worried.
I went back to Tom’s, and climbed in through the window.
Oops, I should have been wearing a mask, shouldn’t I? I completely forgot about face, paws, space. I hope the Prime Minister didn’t see me.
It was very quiet. No sign of that little rascal, the Baby. At least, I didn’t see the Baby itself, but there were definitely signs that it had been around.
The place was so quiet, it was quite uncanny.
How could a house be so still, with that little rapscallywag loose in it?
Then I found Tom. He seemed to be fast asleep.
He wasn’t wearing pyjamas. He’d gone to bed in his clothes.
He didn’t answer when I called him.
I panicked for a moment, but then I heard him breathing – you know that sort of in-in-in-in-in way that people breathe if they’ve been crying.
Perhaps he’s having a sad dream, poor Tom.
Tom showed me a message that the Stork had left for him.
It did look as though Um and the Baby and the Stork had left.
Just then Tom’s phone rang.
I used Tom’s best tea-set, but that was a mistake. It upset him.
To be perfectly honest, I think the Baby was quite often a hindrance and an obstacle, actually. But of course I didn’t say that to Tom.
I helped Tom to get out the ingredients for the brownies.
Of course it was against all the rules for me to be in his kitchen, but sometimes you have to weigh one risk against another.
I decided that the risk of Tom going back to bed and never getting up again was worse than the risk of one of us giving Covid to the other.
I believe that as I climbed back out of the window, I heard the sound of his triangle.
I’m all right
21st April 2021
It’s me again.
You see I’m wearing this very cosy anorak that my aunt crocheted for me.
That will have been back in the sixties, when anoraks were all the rage.
They say the weather’s not so cold now, but I’m still feeling a bit chilly, so I’m wrapping up warm.
I’m sorry I was out of touch for a few days.
I was feeling a bit miserable, but I’m better now.
No point moping.
There are plenty of things that I should be getting on with.
The first thing was to tidy away all the Baby’s toys. And its cot, and its sleeping-bag, and the blanket that Lopsy knitted, and all the equipment that my friends collected for it.
The Baby did look so snug tucked up in its little sleeping bag.
It used to do some ingenious things with those teething rings. I do hope that the environment it’s in now is sufficiently stimulating.
No no. The only crucial thing is for Um and the Baby to be safe and happy. Of course I’m very glad that the Stork has found a good place for them to be.
I’ll give Ellie back the toys that she borrowed for us from her nursery.
I was going to ask little Strawberry to take the rest down to the charity shop, which apparently is open again now.
But Strawberry says she thinks I should keep them in case the Baby comes back to visit.
I don’t have much hope of that happening. But I suppose it would be silly not to be prepared, just in case.
I’ll pack it all away in a box. Out of sight, out of mind.
Except for the playpen. I’ll give that back to Gibbs. It never really worked.
It is quiet here now, but the cuckoos are kindly cuckooing twice as often as usual: on the quarter as well as the hour and half past.
It’s very nice of them.
I played them a new cuckoo piece on my triangle. It’s by Delius, but I think it’s a bit derivative. It sounds like Billy the Kid to me.
I can’t practise my duet with Teddy yet. He hasn’t quite finished tuning his shampoo bottles. Lopsy says they’re sounding good.
I must be sure to make a very shiny clean sound when I play my triangle with him.
I hear that Gibbs and Seaford have been playing a little dance together on recorder and kazoo.
I can practise twice a day, now that there’s no one to interrupt.
The house does feel empty.
My friend Dorset Monkey sent me a parcel.
What a kind monkey! He saved half his chocolate easter egg for me, to cheer me up.
Tasty. It certainly did cheer me up, for quite a while.
I remembered the little chocolate easter eggs that I’d got ready for the Baby.
I was going to hide them for it to find, but we never got the chance.
So I ate those too.
Perhaps that wasn’t a very healthy breakfast.
I’ll have something plain for lunch. Rice and lentils, and maybe a bit of a carrot.
After that, I have to hunt for my great-grandfather’s pocket watch.
I have a hunch that it may be the thing that my key will wind. I’ve been trying for months to work out what that key is for.
But I don’t know where the watch is. I haven’t seen it for years.
I wanted to show it to the Baby. I believe babies like mechanical things.
Well, there’s no time for sitting around idly thinking of what might have been.
Things to be done.
I’ll look for the watch systematically. First, in all the places beginning with A.
Nothing in the airing cupboard. Or where I keep the apple juice. Or the Antiseptic Area.
I’ll keep on trying.