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Sunday 23rd January 2011 It's Sunday afternoon, the children are out, and this is my regular writing time - but I don't feel very interesting. Had a lovely time talking with friends last night, have been married 20 years and still want to be, have to pack for early-start family holiday tomorrow, just know I'm going to spend too much time doing this and playing the piano then have to rush everything else. Don't want to go to bed too late as has become our habit. Inspired by friend's wit to take up the virtual pen once more, but this is not going to be one of those scintillating ones. Still haven't written about remembering that we remember from Kaddish, could do a whole spiel on the musical life of my recently-deceased mother-in-law, the last of the Fox Trio, and her father, Harry C. A. Fox of Hawera Music, and the amazing time my aunt-in-law, as an elderly lady, ran into a man, on a train, in the north of England, who admired him so much that since his youth in the North-England colliery band run by him, had carried his (HCA Fox's) photo in his pocket. Without knowing who Auntie Margaret was, he was extolling the virtues of this band leader extraordinaire, and showed her the photo - to their mutual amazement. What kind of coincidence is that, after growing up in New Zealand? My husband, the grandson of HCA, had forgotten this story, and it makes me realise once again how important just talking to people is - who else in the family has either heard or remembered this? I think I'll send it to Stuart Maclean's CBS radio show, Vinyl Café - home of Dave - for their Story Exchange. Also the story about Auntie Enid's favourite shoes and the rats at the Rainmaker Hotel in Pagopago, along with the cancer of the ceiling, the nibbled toes, the ever-decreasing biology experiment (courtesy of the same rats - observation of mouldy bread over a week - the drawings changing shape every day to record actual size and shape of bread both dry and wet), the hotel employees sent to deal with rat problem more interested in chatting up my then 20-year-old, blonde, tall and slim cousin, the friend from school who just happened to be staying in the same hotel at the same time. And the homing book (Kipling's poems), belonging to my other grandfather-in-law, owned in Egypt for more than a decade, somehow making its way to the very second-hand-book table at the annual fête in the little English village I was bringing up baby in, some 60 years later - he never returned to England to live; he emigrated straight to NZ from Egypt after the War; we grew up in NZ and only spent a few years in England, but his book somehow found us. So, plenty I could be writing about, time to write, but I think that today I won't. Good-bye! Oh, and did anyone follow Trefusis in his treasure hunt? I began, and was devastated when the trail ended abruptly. I hope that young man of self-described excellent brain but lesser mind will find the time to trawl through some more of the esteemed professor's papers - or rather, dongle.