So here we are...
Aug. 15th, 2013 12:46 pmSWMBO, Kay, our nanny, and Henry and Milly went by train. I drove, with the luggage. This is the first time we have travelled with Kay, as it is somehow undemocratic to be travelling with expert assistance in this modern age; and Madame has rather balked at being thought of as that sort of person: one that travels with staff. Thankfully both Fra and Cressy regard their daughter's nanny as family too: so when not sharing duties, Kay is part of the fun. As an aside, agonising over whether one is treating ones' employees properly and not exploiting them is the core of any decent domestic employer's thought processes. Anyway, it's not as if I have a valet, or Fra keeps a butler. Also, I'm too bourgeois to be aristocratically disdainful of other folk's opinions about my lifestyle or actions. SWMBO employs a nanny to care for Henry (and now Æmilia too) because she knows how useless I can sometimes be in practical matters: I'm better when under the jurisdiction of a technical advisor. Which is, I suppose, why sergeants run most of the army, and the posh version of which, the adjutants, run everything else their wives allow them to.
As that deep political thinker, Jeremy Clarkson has opined: there you go, then.
Hackness is beautiful at this time of year. Summer clads the Forge Valley in thousands of shades of green: each distinct, and transformed by sunlight.
Fifteen or so years ago I was in a band with Cressy. Twenty years ago I was in a band with her brother. When Fra wasn't flying thither and yon upon business, he'd help us load and unload the band's kit.
Fra's house is a deeply happy place. Fortune favour him and his house.