Presents

Two little girls stood before me this morning, with faces alight with expectation. “We’ve got a present for you, Miss Holmes, to say thank you for the Cornwall Trip.” And out of the bag (they actually unwrapped it for me) came two items: a small spray bottle of pink liquid and a large jam jar of pink liquid marked “REFILL”.
“It’s perfume for you, made from only natural products and herbs and flowers and strawberries from our gardens.”

Yesterday, Ella gave me a gingerbread man with three legs, a sad mouth and hair flying backwards as though he was running away really, really fast.

And another little one gave me a big brown dollop of clay. Utterly bemused as to what it was, I prompted, “Gosh! Look at that! So then... tell me all about it.” And she went on to explain that it was a tortoise, but that the head and the four legs had fallen off.

They give me so much sunshine. I feel completely spoilt. And a bottle of Pink Taittinger Champagne would go down very nicely too.