Mike and Antonia returned from a 24 hour excursion to a high mountain refuge, followed by lunch at a friend’s on the way back. I had my reasons for not going, but the main one was that I wanted to get some work finished. Antonia returned full of vulgar jokes, barbaric markings (felt-tip pen), and tall traveler’s tales.

She had seen many things she half understood: a cannon at the top of a mountain with a man standing beside it… she saw this through binoculars, but nobody else saw it… her friend M. was to attend a ceremony where he was to give everyone bread and say something she couldn’t quite remember about bodies … (First communion. She was heartily shocked when I told her her friend was a Christian! It’s not as if we keep her in a box or anything, but she hadn’t put all the bits of information together)…

… She had the judgment of character and the temerity to ask the Master of the House what kind of child he liked least. He replied, “The kind that tears the House apart.” … She had enough experience of her nearest and dearest to drag her father through the door of the House before his parting remarks on WiFi were concluded, lest they miss lunch … She made some accurate observations on the behaviour of dogs, especially young partially trained ones … Her remarks on natural history were detailed, but astonishing: she saw foxgloves of every colour of the rainbow, or was it bluebells? She saw a multi-coloured spider, the size of my big toe, which shot liquid at them from its bottom (spinnarets?) She was able to assure everyone it was venomous, which she had on the authority of all of her grandparents. (One of these experts is more than usually ignorant of nature, and they all live 6000 miles apart, so I don’t know how they came to know the same kinds of spider) … Oh! and by the way, she saw a marmot from the window of the refuge in the morning. Now that does sound accurate, and even exciting, as they are shy.

I was completely fascinated. If a child’s willingness to tell you everything they have been doing and seeing is an indicator of a good relationship, then there is nothing wrong with ours. True, we fell out only ten minutes later, over the question of whether I would hang around acting as her lady-in-waiting while she teased me incessantly with names I dislike, or whether I would, instead, go and chat with my husband. But, she didn’t exactly clam up on me then either.

I went downstairs to chat with my husband. I told him it was lucky we had a dentist appointment for Monday, since the main part of my crown (of which I lost a chunk about 2 months ago) came out last night, and was now sitting in our house museum. He said, “I told you so! Didn’t I tell you so? Well it’s no good expecting me to do anything about it now!”. I replied that I hadn’t asked him to do any thing about it, and he said: “Of course you didn’t…. BUT, if you HAD, I wouldn’t have been able to.”

So there.