Barely a ripple

Dad sneaks a birthday through with barely a ripple - a couple of cards and a text from Neice Madeleine, plus (of course) some prezzies from Mum. He had left a few unsubtle hints on the "Birthday Present Ideas" board just in case she was feeling uninspired; these were mainly barge-book flavoured; he needn't have worried.

Mum is constantly appalled by the big gaps in Dad's "education" born out of growing up in a house which didn't have a TV (it still hasn't), he has whole chunks of "culture" missing. The original old St Trinians films, for example. Dad was watching the new one, bought recently by Mum (Russell Brand, Rupert Everett etc) and professing ignorance of any previous incarnations. This ends up as a rich vein of Birthday Present ideas for Mum to mine, as you can imagine!

The evening is also a dead loss as Dad has to be at a Hort Soc speaker's night (subject greenhouses - think the earlier scenes in "Calendar Girls" where they are yawning to talks on broccoli) to take money off all the little old ladies who are going on a coach outing. So there's no chance of a special meal, and that gets postponed to Friday Night when there is a chance of the obligatory Calvados.

And today he's busy, too, bound for the Hilton Hotel (no less) in Bristol, for a meeting. He reports enjoying the sight of buzzards and red kites soaring above the M4 in the clear sunny blue skies, while the volcanic ash from Iceland sneaks in at even higher level and closes down all the airspace. The kites and buzzards are not listening. On one Radio 4 programme the presenter is taken out into the back garden of a lady who lives under Heathrow's flight path to record and transmit the silence (!). M4 and M25 Matrix boards all proclaim Heathrow Closed, or Gatwick Closed.

Deefski