clocking in

This fine figure of a woman, with greyhound - I imagine she's Diana, since she has a quiver on her back - sits on top of a clock in my parent's living room.   It's one of the very many pieces that they bought in the late 50s/very early 60s in the Cumberland/Scottish borders.   I rather think that this one came from Langholm - at least, I remember my mother and I leaving my father to go and bid in a sale room, whilst we went off to explore the local playground - one of those ones with bleak grey asphalt to match the bleak grey weather, and one of those solid ? hexagonal roundabouts that used to be ubiquitous play-furniture in such locations.   But here my memory starts to wobble - did I graze my knee coming off the slide?   Or was I - impressionably - overhearing my mother and another woman in conversation about how dangerous she - the other woman- thought the slide to be?

Clocking in, anyway, very late.   Suffice it to say that the plane should have left Newark at 9.20 p.m., and eventually heaved itself into the turbulent air at 4.30 a.m.   I need to sleep ...

And no - for those who follow the ritual - no flowers in my room to photograph, alas.   But Alice, who arrived at the right time (coming from NM) says that my mother intended them, but got distracted ... so don't read between any lines.