So nice to see every one dressing up for dinner.
But, even nicer to see Cathy showing Simon how much he means to her.
I hate it when Mommie and Daddie fight !

Cefin

As my favourite Venusian Treen was fond of saying, "Truly I will never understand Humans!".

For those younger than me, which probably means at least 99 % of you all, there was once upon a time a comic, published in Britain, called The Eagle. The front page was about a group of humans who travelled to Venus to find out whether it would be suitable for colonisation by Mankind, since even back then it was becoming obvious that the planet Earth was becoming seriously overpopulated, and many people were not getting proper food but had to live on synthetic food concentrates. The Captain of the expedition to Venus was a typical all male hero type called Dan Dare. Fortunately, they also benefited from having a proper scientist with them, who was a Lady, Dr. Peabody. The same publishers produced a slightly similar comic for Girls, called "Girl". In those days it was thought that only boys liked science and space exploration and adventure, girls had to put up with staying at home and learning using make-up and helping mother to raise babies. And for oddities like me, who had some bits of both, we were quietly hidden away, disguised sometimes as one gender and sometimes as the other. The worst of it was feeling excluded from both and being rejected as something Alien in childhood. So like most other misfits, I studied the biological sciences and eventually got around to studying humans, and what made them do what they do, but still I feel that I will never truly understand humans !

My dear parents used to have the most awful rows. Usually about Money, or rather about the lack of it. Britain had ruined itself fighting and beating off those Germans in WW2 - I was in the middle of it, as at age 2, whilst I was in bed one night, a bomb fell on the house, and I had to be dug free of the rubble. My Parents were never wealthy, but in this disaster they lost all of their possessions, and we became "Evacuees" - homeless people who were shoved from one place to another to suit the government's whims. A bit like Refugees these days, but within the country they were born in.

I remember hiding in a wardrobe with my younger sister, we were both frightened that they were going to kill each other, as the shouting and screaming got worse and worse. On another occasion I was doing my homework in the kitchen whilst they were arguing in the living room of our 2 up and 2 down rented cottage that was a converted stables, and they got me so worked up that I ran into their room and shouted at them that I could not do my homework with that noise going on, and I smashed a plate on the floor to shock them. My wee Sister was crying quietly in the bedroom she shared with them. They stopped.

Yet my Parents stayed together till my Father died. When he lay in bed, doubly incontinent and terminally sick, it was our Mother who washed and dried him, spoon-fed him, shaved his face and combed his hair. We were both grown up and had left home by then, but we used to go to stay with them as often as we could. It was only then that I understood that there are many different kinds of love, and although we neither of us ever saw them kiss or hug each other in all that time, she loved him, in a way perhaps bigger than the love between a couple who hug and kiss all the time...

I had wonderful parents, who sacrificed their lives so that their children could have a good education, get degrees, and fulfil their duties to their own children, and further, to the strange species that they sort of still belonged to.

I have been through two marriages, and a number of relationships of less semi-permanence, in my life so far. With my physical and mental differences from the Norm, I never really expected to live a normal life like a real human at all, but I have been more fortunate than I ever deserved, and I now have 2 grown up, normal children and 3 grown up Grandchildren and soon a Great Grandchild will be there too, plus lots of cousins, nieces and nephews, scattered over three continents, who make a real drain on my finances when they all have to be presented and carded and given telephonic, internet and even sometimes personal visits and advice.

I really felt the fears the Children felt for our favourite married couple in Angharad's Universe. Please Angharad, don't let this sort of thing happen again for a few ages.... The trouble is, you are so good at writing that it is like it is all real.