Caravan diaries

Remember this, anyone?  When I was his age, I fought my parents for the right to go swimming before the end of May.  Immersing oneself in icy water (and this was Bournemouth, tropical compared to Pembrokeshire) for hours on end was an essential desire.  I'm inclined to think, now, that I must have been mad (I put my feet in for about thirty seconds last Wednesday afternoon, on a scorching hot day at Wisemans Bridge, and they went white); but Cyrus would've stayed there, jumping waves, until the sun had set.  'Aren't you cold?' I asked him when he eventually deigned to come out; I can't express in words quite how his 'no' made me feel: 'old' is one of them, 'mad' perhaps another.  Are children madder than grown-ups?

The 50th birthday party on Saturday, in and around a caravan just up the field, was very Welsh.  Wales had just lost honourably to South Africa at the rugby, which lent an air of, how can I put it, celebratory desolation to the proceedings.   Ribaldry occurred (one lady, having selected a veggieburger and so accused of being a vegetarian, replies tartly 'I don't eat meat - ask my husband'), but the best part was the singing.  Three old guys (who all turned out to be younger than me) did three part harmonies, in beautiful tenor voices, to everything from maudlin welsh-language valley ballads through Tom-Jonesish slush to Buddy Holly and the Evs.  I joined in where I could, and was asked what I feel to be two highly complimentary questions: 'are you in a choir?' and 'are you Welsh?'

Main wildlife sightings: a little bird which I firmly believe to be a pied wagtail, though it doesn't wag as much ('incessantly') as the book says it should (perhaps it's reworking its image); and a baby rabbit, no bigger than your two hands, who bounced out from a hole onto the patio and then back, before I could grab it by the ears.