I can distinguish the approach of Teenspy, like that of a police car from a long way off. Whistles instead of sirens warn me of her coming. She is accustomed to walk from the bus stop at the end of our street but today the wolves are silent. They are not dangerous wolves, I admit. The salute which begun about her thirteenth birthday is really one of respect. She has hair the colour of pale honey, dark eyebrows and exquisitely shaped lips. Silence would seem like an insult to her now were she present but the explanation for it today is Teenspy's absence: she has set off on her first solo foreign mission.
Teenspy has not an ounce, nor a milligram even, of malice in her soul, and is wholly unaware of the possibility of its dark residence in others. Her celeverness is academic, not practical. Her cynicism reserved for bad science (homeopathy and chiropractice ). I trust her duenna does not desert her on her trip and keeps her not only innocent, but also safe.
I love Teenspy when her duenna is there, and even more when she is not. I cannot afford the time not to love. It is as if I have come on a long journey with her that she must finish alone. The separating years approach us both like a station down the line, all gain for her and all loss for me.
Ho hum, I have told her no snogging, or at least - in recognition of the fact that she is her mother's daughter - not much snogging.
Meanwhile I am planning distractions.
On Monday, Minispy and I will visit the first day of the Fourth Plinth.
On Thursday, Minispy and I are cycling along the Thames Path and visiting the Hampton Court Flower Show, then in the evening I have a 5k race acting as cover for a secret drop.
On Friday, I have my fingers crossed for a glimpse of distant lands, of foreign places that shaped and moulded my true love's character - oh and Teenspy should be sending back a microfiche dot on the back of a stamp.
6 comments:
True Love? H or another?
And the greatest gift a parent can give a child is two-fold - wings and anchors....
I feel cheated - where's the book reivew
*frowns*
(without it I haven't a clue what's going on)
I realised how wrong my parents had got it when I first read The Prophet. . .
King is right, wings and anchors (now that would be a good book title)
ILTV - It's copyright old Queen Lear...
And the book is described as a comedy. From memory (read it over 40 years ago) the hero is a vacuum cleaner salesman, who stumbles into mistaken espionage - and ends up an OBE
'Her celeverness is academic'. It doesn't extend, one supposes, to showing her mother where the spellchecker is?
Your Highness is right, as always. Teenspy has just phoned in from her secret mission "I don't like it much here, Mummy" :-( Perhaps I have anchored her too firmly.
Dave, I refer you to Stuff-White-People-Like number 99: Grammar. It's great and sums up all my pedantry too :-)
Your Highness, H most certainly does NOT read my blog. He doesn't know I am a spy. If he did he might put it on Facebook by mistake like Lady Soares.
Dave, Teenspy also does not read my blog nor even know of its existence.
Someone kindly said they liked my writing in this post. To put the recod straight, I should point out, Dear ILTV, that most of it is Graham Greene's so you don't need a review :-) A lot of my blogposts are plagiarisms obliquely credited through the title :-) I do explain somewhere I have no imagination and cannot write (blush). Dammit, I shouldn't really write a blog, should I?
Ah - H not reading blog so we have a level playing field... except you have the inkling or the tell-tale signs. I would wager if I could get the tell-tales....
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