And so it goes on

I continue to labour beneath an extraordinarily sticky and prolonged virus. There really hasn't been a lot of spare energy for anything, though I hope it's breaking up at last. Meanwhile, life proceeds. Monday began with a phone call at ten to seven; a rough Aberdonian voice demanding. 'Faur are ye?' ('faur', being in local dialect, 'where'). I pulled myself together and established that The Aberdeen Shore Porters Association (est. 1497) had acquired thae modron Satnav which had duly taken them to the grain store on the Fraserburgh road and left them there. Satnavs aren’t much use for a postal area, comprising six places, of a square mile or more. Some minutes later, they turned up, overshot the drive (having I suppose lost the habit of navigating by applied intelligence) and ended up coming up to the back of the house, somewhat to their annoyance. I pointed out, reasonably patiently, that in order to get their mighty truck to the front door they would have to back the best part of 100 yards, as well as turning it through forty-five degrees, an enterprise perhaps best avoided in a vehicle that size. They conceded it was perhaps best to download from where they were, and did. The reason they were there was that they were bringing stuff from the Professor's good aunt in Edinburgh, an extremely nice woman who has sadly become a bit clouded in her intellectuals, like Miss Cat. She is now in a home for confused gentlewomen where she really seems as happy as she can be, because she is no longer anxious in the way  she was when living alone, and the staff are pleasant and helpful. Her daughters are moving into her flat, and were keen we should take some of the furnishings. I completely understand their point of view: on the one hand, not wanting stuff to go to waste and if possible staying in the family, on the other, wanting to get the decks clear enough that they could live in it in their own style.  We were keen too; the house (and even the garden) is full of stuff which we remember people by in one way or another, and there was one item surplus to the cousins’ rearrangement of the flat which was pretty much perfect as a remembrance: as most of readers will know, our dining table,an item to which the Professor is unreasonably attached because it belonged to his great-grandfather, is also a menace. Fine thing that it is, it’s a parlour table with legs in the middle and two wings, so if we have two guests they end up sitting down to find a table leg in their way, spill wine across the table, then there is mopping up and apologies. The Good Aunt’s table is a proper dining table with two legs, each on four feet. Great Grand-Papa’s table will become my worktable with the computer, printer, Miss Cat’s hot-spot and so forth, my current worktable, which is made of cedar and which I bought in the Dens Road in Dundee about 25 years ago, will get stashed in the attic till someone wants it, and so things move on. I like the idea of having the Good Aunt’s table and chairs.  We don’t use the dining room every day, so when we do, we can think, ‘this is the Good Aunt’s table’, and think kindly of her. And of course, the sacred great-grand-parental parlour table will remain with us, doing new duty.