On the really bright side.
I don't have an inkling what that really means (lacked the background and the nous ever to qualify for uni) but I gather a first anywhere along the line is a very good mark indeed.
We are delighted with - and for - her.
Bonchurch Pond no longer beckons, lovely girl.
And on Shrove Tuesday our favourite grandson, Ellis (above right), came here with his mum, our Roz (nowhere above), for the annual pancake fest.
He took one look at Mo cooking the first of the batch and asked: "Can I do that?"
Maureen has never in her life turned down a willing volunteer. "Why not," she said and prepared him with one more example prior to handing over the ladle and skillet.
He then turned out nigh on a score of perfect pancakes.
Any television chef would have been proud of him.
We certainly were.
We ate very well that evening.
AND NOW THE SAD.
RIP two more old friends.
The older you get the more it happens. Stands to reason, doesn't it?
A week ago last Tuesday: our friend, and a former work colleague of Mo, Joan Keep, died in a nursing home at Sandown.
Joan was highly competent at whatever she undertook. A first class social services administrator, a devoted carer to her parents throughout their later years, and a splendid gardener all her life, it was a particularly sad irony that this nice lady, eventually stricken with dementia, was forced to leave her pet dog, together with her lovely home and garden at Ryde, and go into care.
We were told that she died peacefully, in her sleep. No surprise there. Joan never made a fuss about anything.
Then, last Sunday evening one of the straightest coppers I have ever known, longtime acquaintance John Tree, died at his home on the mainland following a long illness.
John was a born policeman. I think he first went into the police as a cadet, followed that with national service in the Royal Military Police and then joined the Portsmouth and Hampshire force to serve out the rest of a solid police career, quickly reaching the rank of sergeant.
By the time he retired from police work I believe he had become something of a security expert.
For a while he was the highly respected security chief of the largest company here on the Island, eventually leaving when his health started to deteriorate and the commute from the mainland became too much.
I'm afraid I then lost touch - only hearing on the grape vine of his ventures into local radio and 'oldie' choir singing - but I continued to like him and everything I heard about him.
He once said to me, apropos the security world: "There's no such thing as complete security. You can never cover all the angles."
John Tree was a man to whom you listened. He had no time for bullshit.
Go carefully, friends, you're a dwindling race.
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