The grammar-school kid had to study for a Latin test (they have a test week every six weeks) and asked me to help. We went briefly through the gender rules, I explained what ‘congruence’ meant, and then we tackled the nearest text to see if it had any interesting grammatical features. “Why do I have to translate this again? We did it in class!” she protested with proper adolescent fury. I said, “Because I’m the boss right now, and that you’ve translated it already is a good and useful thing because then we can concentrate on the grammar instead of the meaning.”

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A fencing meet practically next door —12 minutes by train— so we could leave late and had most of the morning for housework and last-minute weekend shopping. At the entrance to the sports hall, one of the judges greeted us and asked “did it go all right by public transport?” I’m used to people at fencing meets thinking that getting there by public transport is by definition difficult and unpleasant and we’re heroic for suffering it, so I said, “why, yes, of course” without telling him about the roundabout bus route that the public-transport planner had made us take: bus 2 that goes all through the newish housing estate, when we could have taken bus 4 that goes straight, and a driver who told us that the stop I thought was our stop wasn’t, and later asked why we hadn’t got off there. (In fact going places by public transport is usually pleasant, though time-consuming, and easy once you’ve got the hang of it. I suppose it’s mostly a matter of competence, though; I can imagine people not used to it getting completely confused.) It wasn’t until later that I realised that he thought we came from Gouda, because that was the place where he’d first met us, and Gouda is on the other side of the country and happened to be completely isolated because of railway works and an accident.

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Every morning, we’re treated to a new and unique piece of snail art. Or perhaps slug art, I never see the critters as they do it in the night, but all the slithery things I see during the day carry their house on their back.