Family

I really did mean to write something about our family camping trip – then my best beloved Badger wrote a piece for the Association of Christian Writers blog More Than Writers that covered it perfectly: The Call of the Relatively Wild.

The wild, in the particular instance of our short camp, was not so much the back-to-nature as our grandchildren. Oh yes. Little Sardine and The Blur.

Little Sardine particularly enjoys the Badger’s company. She does call him Badger some of the time, but having rumbled that his name is in fact Tony, that’s what she mostly says. “Tony,” she announces, “is my best friend.”

Recently she came with her brother to our place for an Emergency Morning when one of her mother’s teeth unexpectedly fell to bits. I drove her mama to the dentist while the Badger stayed home with the Lego, dinosaurs and (crucially) i-Pad. “Take care of Badger,” I said to her as I left. “I will!” she assured me.

On our return she was there to greet us at the front door. Even before she confessed to her mother “I missed you at the dentist” (the words “while you were” should have been in there somewhere, but no matter), she made sure to let me know, “I took care of Badger.” She certainly did. He had to have a quiet half hour with a book after she went home.

Here they are at camp.

Sometimes people ask me why I call them Little Sardine and The Blur. Sardine got her name before she was hatched – but not long before. Her mother, in the last few days of pregnancy, began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and said the child was packed in there like a sardine. The tinned variety, she meant, in case you are bewildered. They wodge ’em in close.

And why The Blur? Well, here he is on our camping holiday.

That’s why.