The girl's grasp exceeds her reach

Dear Dave,

Thanks for the sympathy about all the sickness. Glad to hear that you and your family are well. It's weird Sam has another week or so of nursery to go before stopping for the summer. It's almost a fortnight since the holidays started up here. Then again, my kids will be back at school mid-August because it will be pretty much autumn already. If Scottish schools ran until the end of July, we'd miss most of the good weather (and the opportunity for two weeks of off-peak holiday deals while the travel agents wait for you lot to finish term).

Not that the weather is actually very nice at the moment. It's grey and miserable and the rain is bucketing down.

I'm feeling cosy, though, because our house is lit up like a Christmas tree. Marie has grown tall enough to turn on the lights by herself. She's not tall enough to switch them off again but she can happily bring a warm glow to every room she enters, smile at it for a few seconds and then skip off somewhere else.

It will only be a few months before she grows that extra centimetre and a half to be able to reach the top of the switch but, by then, she may not see the point. (Other than to flick the bulb on and off rapidly until it explodes.) After all, she'll have got by perfectly fine for quite a while just leaving the lights on and, besides, reaching up that high is an effort and, you never know, she might be back in a minute...

I suspect there's a metaphor for most of human history there...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.