It is cool now, in the morning, and will be hot today, but for some reason I can put up with the heat better now - maybe because I realize that it won't always be there, and the light! It is pure and yet not harsh, it really seems to be illuminating everything and at 7am the sunlight reaches directly across the land as if it were there to make everything not just visible but noticable and admirable, the light so vivid you could almost hallucinate that the light is coming from the objects (a bus shelter, a tree, a building) and not the sun itself...

Yesterday I was with Standing Man, who is now learning the alphabet, running, playing in or with water/trains whenever possible, and becoming much more definite about his likes and dislikes. While at Indigo yesterday his grandmother found a new dinosaurs book (How Does A Dinosaur Play With His Friends?) and I showed it to him and began reading it and he got interested and came over, then was drawn back to the train set; I kept reading it anyway. When I was done, he stopped and walked over and I sat him on my lap and read it to him properly. Then, back to the trains...for another half hour, at least...

So, the trip: I still have to pack, to look for clothes, to go to the bank; but otherwise, I am not worried about it. I may even sleep on the flight; I am going to try to sleep in on the day itself as even at the best of times, I need to rest up on the weekends. My subconscious is restless though, and I dreamt this morning that my mom was telling me how my father died - not the actual death he had, but this dream one, where he was killed accidentally in a chain of events that was rather hard to follow. (In my dream, he died when I was too young to understand very much.) Why would I be having this kind of dream now? I can only figure that it's happening because the last time I went to London, it was only a few months after my father's death and looking at the A-Z and Rough Guide to England is dredging up some feelings, confusions I had at the time; when they operated on him, their actions hastened his death, they did not prolong his life at all. In fact, he went into a coma and never came out. (This, after hearing that the operation would be successful but that he would have to give up teaching and so on...)

Like an exam, I am wary but confident of what will happen; knowing he feels about the same gives me some reassurance that we are good, balanced, whole, obviously meant for each other...there isn't that frenzied gaily blithe arrogance I had in '99; far from it...when I got on one train and then another and everything seemed to go so well at first, then due to things I didn't know (plus his extreme nervousness) all went to hell in a handbasket the next day. No, that's not going to happen, it can't; not this time.