Water, it's a phrase and siblings.

1. To get the hell out of here and go swimming. The computer is at home, and the phone is in a locker. It's just Alec and me bobbing about in warm, chlorinated water.

2. Overheard: "Sorry for disturbing you, but the till's gone Pete Tong."
"?"
"Pete Tong? It's a phrase. It means pear-shaped. It's gone Pete Tong. It's a phrase. I'm very disappointed in myself, but the till's gone Pete Tong."

2b. My brother carrying Alec in the sling.

3. ...and I turn to see Rosey dropping silent footed over the back wall. She picks up her nephew from the doormat and norgles him.

4. We are all sitting squashed up on the sofa watching Ceebeebies bedtime hour. Alec lolls and squirms and rolls and falls from me to Rosey to Robert and back again. I hear the gate, and Nick's key in the door. He comes in and says: "It's a family!"


PS: Speaking of Godfather Timothy, he passed me Moira Young's Blood Red Road -- it's a fantasy romance about a tough, lion-hearted girl searching for her twin brother across a post-apocolyptic landscape. I'm enjoying it very much, and would recommend it. It's written in dialect, which some people object to, but Moira Young has worked it very skilfully, and I think it brings the heroine to glorious, prickly, grumpy life.