Rain, Eventually.

Woke up this morning to sun streaming through the curtains. However it wasn't long before the cloud front began moving in from the west. Fortunately the rain itself held off until late in the afternoon.

My reward for being out the cold terrace this morning was to see another dolphin. This time it was on its way away from us and too small to make a decent photo.

As I sat there my thoughts turned to the way things were very different when I was a child. Aged 5 or possibly 4 (I was a summer baby) I would travel by bus from St Ives to the Catholic school in Penzance. But this wasn't a school bus, just the regular local bus calling in at villages along the 8 mile route. Travelling with a small group of other children there was no adult with us, just a 'big girl' who would have been 10 or 11 at the most to keep an eye on us. When we arrived at Penzance bus station we then had to walk up the road from the harbour and cross the main road on the way to the school. Can you imagine sending young children off to school like that nowadays? I can also remember being put on the bus alone at a similar or even younger age in the care of the bus conductor to go from St Ives a few miles up the road to Cripplesease where I would be met by my mother's friend. But then things were very different in those days. For example from a toddler I played out on the lanes of Downalong or on the beaches or piers, sometimes with other children sometimes alone. These days children are probably under the constant supervision of an adult right up to early teens. It's a shame that it's necessary for safety's sake but children get little opportunity to learn, create and explore independently. That was one of the reasons that we moved to the country when the boys were still quite young. Though now I wonder if I encouraged them to be a bit too independent as to my sorrow we don't see them or hear from them that often.

I had a good digging session in the morning followed by a break sitting outside and brushing up the pile on a fleece top that had been washed. Before getting back to the garden I baked Peter a Bara Brith, I'm not sure if I can still call it that as the mixed nuts Peter requested make it more of a fruit and nut cake. Afterwards I only managed an hour outside before getting drenched by the heavy rain. With my thoughts ranging far and wide, as they do I likened my task to knitting. Knit one stitch and it seems like such a tiny insignificant amount just like the merest pinch of roots being put in the bucket. Knit a whole row and you have done something that you can count but just like completing a section of trench it still isn't very much. So you keep on, day after day and then, almost without noticing, the job is done.