In the last few weeks, I seem to have been taking an additive with my normal diet. This additive is marketed under the brand name ‘My Words’, and here I am eating them again this week. You may remember that last week I cavalierly wrote (not having learnt my lesson from two weeks previously) “Incidentally, all being well, I plan to share with you next week details of one of [Micha’el and Tslil’s] projects”.

Well, I’m afraid that you’re going to have to take a rain check on that. Something much more urgent has come up. Not urgent as a topic for this week’s post; rather, a task for me to complete today. This week’s post will have to be a brief explanation of why you are being short-changed.

I mentioned last week that Ollie does not find our departure from Penamacor easy. In the couple of weeks after we left in the summer, every time he sensed an injustice being visited on him by his parents, he would call for his Nana to rescue him. Being a younger child, injustices were, he felt, being visited on him at fairly frequent intervals. (I can sense all the younger siblings among my readers nodding sympathetically, and all the older siblings wondering what I am talking about.)

This time it is my turn to feel guilty for having deserted him. I received a voice message from Tslil and Ollie yesterday, in which he initially would only say “Grandpa”, and left it to Tslil to explain his request, which was for me to record and send to them a rendition of all the songs that I regularly sang to Ollie over the month we were there this time. After Tslil had finished, Ollie burst in, with cries of “Grandpa. Sing songs with Ollie”, almost breaking down. It was a heart-rending message, and it took me some time to recover from hearing it, I can tell you.

As I mentioned last week, Bernice and I had fully intended to record such a recital, and, to that end, I photographed the contents pages of the nursery rhyme book Ollie insists on us singing from. However, since our return, life has rather intervened, and we haven’t yet got round to recording.

Looking through the list of songs after receiving the message yesterday, I realised there were several that I did not know by heart. (Do you know all four two-line verses of Mary Had a Little Lamb? I always thought it ended with ‘to see a lamb at school’.) I began to wish that I had focussed more on learning my lines and less on dramatizing my rendition over the month.

So, I shall have to devote considerable time today to locating and printing out the lyrics of sundry nursery rhymes. Bernice and I had never heard of the following, for example, before we encountered it in the book. I find it charming, with ample opportunity for varied characterisation, and a suitably violent, though unbloody, conclusion:

Mrs. Mason bought a basin,
Mrs. Tyson said, What a nice ’un,
What did it cost? said Mrs. Frost,
Half a crown, said Mrs. Brown,
Did it indeed, said Mrs. Reed,
It did for certain, said Mrs. Burton.
Then Mrs. Nix up to her tricks
Threw the basin on the bricks.

Then, Bernice and I will hope that we are able to live up to our reputation as ‘one-take’ recorders, and not repeat our performance while recording a video message for Esther’s birthday, when we managed to break down in uncontrollable laughter three times before finally managing to get all the way through ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

All of which is a long-winded way of explaining why you are being significantly short-changed this week. I truly value your interest and loyalty, dear readers, but I’m afraid you can’t compete with a two-year-old’s tearful request for his Grandpa. Normal service will, we hope, be resumed next week.