A Splendid Girls' Day Out

On Tuesday , YD and I had a Girls' Day Out . After a hideously early start ... when did you last voluntarily get up at five in the morning ? ... it included taxi rides , endless coffees and the latest glossy magazines , a special hat for me , small displays of beautifully arranged antiques and excellent , friendly personal service with a smile .  
Where did we go ? The local hospital's eye department and their cataract removal clinic . I'd been terrified ... scalpels ? stitches in my eyeball ?  what would I see ? ... so it was perhaps just as well that YD kept a firm grip on my elbow while we went in but , once we were there , everyone was so welcoming that it would have been churlish to turn and run back whimpering  into the dawn light .
And now it's done and I can see everything clearly again with my left eye , I only have one slight complaint . I've got to wait seven more weeks for the right eye to be done . Why can't I go back tomorrow ?

            Me in my nifty new eye cap ... fortunately only to be worn at night . It keeps on sliding
            down to my chin .

Before she left YD pointed out that I'd wrongly attributed the Henry VIII and his wives drawing to her . Apparently it was by Smitonius . "I couldn't have done anything so good . Besides I'd have given them mouse ears ".  And , it's true . She'd have made dancing mice of them all . My abject apologies , meanwhile , to my eldest daughter

Hoarder Or Archivist ?

 I've spent most of the last week rummaging , looking for an old photo for Middle Daughter . Elder Grandson is at the gappy stage , when teeth suddenly fall out , usually at inconvenient moments resulting in reverently wrapping tooth in a paper napkin and Not Losing It Till They Get Home . He's now keen to see how his parents looked when they were losing their front teeth ...
 "If he just waits a few more years , he can see for himself . We'll be doing it again  " , said his mother , obviously feeling her age .
 Meanwhile , I'm hunting for a snap of a seven year-old MD in a poncho and toothless . Needless to say , I've found everything but . He'll have to content himself with images of toothless aunts , great aunts , grandmother , second cousins once removed ... even a dentally challenged , much younger Opa .
 Which has made me wonder why I've still got all this stuff . How many generations of photos does one keep ? The one of a great uncle , aged one , propped in a chair playing a large drum is rather sweet , for instance and must be guarded . But a fuzzy-ish black and white shot of  great grandmother's anonymous cousin's small son in full Highland dress , while equally sweet , seems less necessary , somehow . But I religiously put them all back in boxes , which will eventually be left to my daughters to store in their turn .
In the same case , I was amused to find a stash of drawings which I'd kept from their early school years

 This one caught my eye , since I'm reading an historical novel , at the moment , about Henry II * . YD  must have been doing English History at the time . I'm particularly intrigued by her depiction of Anne Boleyn ... the eyes ! ... The sheer brazen tilt of the hussy's head ! . Still YD's  teacher was , after all , a Spanish nun so La Boleyna wasn't going to be kindly viewed , I suppose . One day I must organise it all and hand them on but I'm too fond of them to do it yet .

* Elizabeth Chadwick's "The Time Of Singing ."