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When we arrived home from Elizabeth’s late yesterday afternoon, the house was very smoky, and the garden full of ash, all emanating from a bonfire in the North Breeze garden, which had been almost razed to the ground. The jungle is no more.
Much rain in the night freshened up our garden,
but had not put out the fire which was added to today.
Some parts of our plot and its contents, like these dahlias, still saw the sun,
but mostly it remained befogged.
Elizabeth, Danni, and my great nephew Jasper, came to lunch, after which we drove in convoy to Hatchet Pond.
Jasper and his Gee-ma investigated the lapping wavelets at the edge of the water.
A woman handed the little lad a bag of prawn crackers with which to feed the water birds. As I said, you always receive too many of this freebies with a Chinese takeaway meal. Jasper wasn’t all that interested, so Danni decided to feed them to
the hastily arriving donkeys, one of which was really very young.
She began with a medium-sized one,
which was head-butted away by the largest creature.
This animal was so aggressive that the crackers were soon chucked on the ground.
Leaving Jackie on a bench, the rest of us walked to the far end of the pond, past the water lilies,
and others seated in the sun,
in search of ice cream.
Elizabeth clutched wipes for protection against her grandson’s drips,
occasionally licking her lips in anticipation.
Eventually she was handed the melting cone.
After this, the aggressive donkey rested its muzzle on my lap.
We dined on Mr Pinks’s fish and chips, gherkins, and pickled onions. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, while Elizabeth and I finished the Douro.
Danni has just e-mailed me our selfie on the bench.