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Will this wind....?

Yesterday's view down the hill
As I write this piece, with the wind tearing strips off the trees around the house, a terrific shaking and howling on the balcony outside, visibility down to the other side of the glass, and the realization that all of the children's books that were sitting on the window-sill are now just that bit softer and wrinklier than they were yesterday, I know that Spring is over as suddenly as she came—at least on Rokko mountain—and has been superceded by a prolonged storm with son et lumière atmospherics of the kind that would not be out of place in a Kirk Douglas disaster movie. The sakura scenes of the last post belong to another country, entirely.


The good news, of course, is that just as in the afore-mentioned B-movie, nothing really bad will happen: "up here on the mountain, we shall be safe, safe as houses" as Peter Cook reassures us (!); even if we don't have a picnic basket, eventually, this storm will blow itself out. Most importantly, there is nothing figurative about it, no pathetic fallacy here, thank you very much. The children especially are thriving, barring minor infections (which kept Julian off school today, snoozing on the sofa). And Justin is doing particularly well: it was Ayumi's turn to take him off to Amagasaki yesterday for one of his monthly checkups, this time with the physiotherapy people: she returned with the excellent news that his physical development is at the level reached by typical DS babies—there's a nice phrase—at eight months, and he'll be six months old on Sunday next. I neither know nor greatly care how this measures up to non-DS babies: all that matters is that people who should are really pleased with his progress, and so are we. More reasons to be cheerful, even as the fire is dancing on the jeraboams...
'Great shall be the tumult thereof, I should think' (hoods purely coincidental)


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