46 and 47

I couldn't post yesterday because we were in the back of beyond, a beautiful little place called Milford-on-sea, on the south coast of England, looking out over the English channel.

I arrived on Saturday morning at Heathrow.  The aspects of flying that I particularly love are takeoff and landing, seen from my window-seat.  (I also love banking turns, when you feel the plane tip and your side bends towards the earth and the angle of your view is strangely changed.)  This time I couldn't get a window-seat, which was very disappointing, and the only seat I could get was right in the middle of the middle seats, in the middle of the plane, with a toilet opening directly on to that row on either side.  I began to feel sick taking off, I think because my eyes need to see what it happening and then they can reassure the rest of me, but without a view, my body starts panicking.

After the six hours or so that it takes to travel over the wide Atlantic Ocean, the captain informed us that we would be flying in a holding pattern for a while because the there were so many delays due to gale-force wind in London.  We bumped around for nearly 30 minutes, passing through teasing pockets of air which jostled to play with us.  Eventually when we came into land I could see out of a window at an oblique angle because the girl on the aisle diagonally opposite me was scared and kept putting her head down in an attitude of abject misery, and even though I felt sorry for her I was also glad because it gave me a view.  I kept my eye on that patch of grey sky, as the plane dipped down and flew in very fast, as though the wind was giving it a push to spur it on, and for many minutes it seemed as if we were on a spaceship re-entering the atmosphere, every piece of the aircraft shuddering, every rivet about to burst its seams, and finally there were the houses rushing, and the ground came swiftly up to meet us, and then we were like a cormorant coming in to land, we were speed-waddling, arriving on first one wheel then the other, and finally settling to coast in on an even keel.  It was very exciting.

And then another long sit in a car, going down to Milford with my son-in-law to spend the weekend there for my ex-sister-in-law's 60th birthday.  Stuart is almost as famous for taking "the scenic route" as Tim is.  So we went through the New Forest, which must have been very new, because there were no trees, just moors.  There were signs up to warn motorists to avoid the wild horses, featuring a silhouette of a bright energetic little horse.

Sign warning motorists in the New Forest.

We saw many ponies, but none of them looked like that at all.  There had been a massive storm with torrential rains and flooding just the day before, and so the little ponies stood forlornly about in small groups, wet and sodden, looking utterly miserable, like so many moulting penguins.

The New Forest is actually very beautiful and full of trees, as we saw today when we came home the usual way, a completely different road from the one Stuart and I had taken the day before through the desolate heath.  This one went winding through dense forests all with a slight reddish coloration at the tips of the branches, where the next season is just waiting for a few warms days to spring forth.  The New Forest is a huge area of land which was designated in the 11th century as a hunting ground by William the Conquerer. Wild horses have lived here since before the last Ice Age, apparently, but all horses there now are semi-feral and are owned by people.

The New Forest is run by a group of Verderers, whose court building we drove past in Lyndhurst today.  This tradition has been carried on since 1070, with major changes to the laws in 1877.  I enjoyed the word, because my brain with its Afrikaans section, saw the word "verder" which means further, which had meaning for me because I had gone so far in the plane, and then even further in the car, and then the French part of my brain claimed it away from the Afrikaans, and I loved that part too because it meant green, as in verdant, or maybe the greeners, the people who keep things green, which is of course a very important job.  Long ago the Verderers were probably those awful people who dealt out terrible punishments to starving poachers, but today I'm sure they do much good.

The little artist with my pencil crayons.

The little spotted charmer.

And yes, my gorgeous little Luna did recognise me, and smiled and came to my happy arms, and even though she has chickenpox and has been rather miserable with all the bumps and temperatures, this morning she was happy to be strapped on to me with a mysteriously wonderful baby-sling which is basically a very long piece of stretchy material.  And so we went for a walk to the beach to air the two youngest members of our little celebratory group, me carrying my granddaughter, thus giving her parents a break, and my niece-in-law (ex-niece-in-law? too complicated) Paula being dragged along by the very energetic young dog Toffee, to give the others a chance to pack up without the interruption of chasing the dog who had stolen another item.

Toffee imitating a sleeping cow.

And it was lovely, such an honour, to have this little girl fall asleep to my singing and my stride, her soft cheek against my chest, and even though it was quite a long walk and she a solid sleeping weight,  it felt like floating.