Hubris

Day 10.  Wednesday.

'So what did you buy in Lowestoft? Anything pretty?'

'What did you do with your day off, you little rascal. Larissa was indeed held up by a gate getting in the way, but you forgot to mention you were immediately on the spot, offering help.'

'Oriolus oriolus, Vera, sitting on her gate. Sonya, my little sister, eleven you know, said she heard one, very typical fluty, challenging ‘whoareyou-oo,’ call and we went to photograph it, very shy too, so without much hope, and there it was sitting on the Gormley-Stuart Gate. Just as Sonya swung the camera up, Larissa jumps in her car, fiddles with something and starts to drive at the gate like a thing possessed, still attending to her dash paying no attention to where she was going, oblivious of the fact that the gate hadn’t opened and had black smoke pouring out the motor end.'

I paused for breath. Vera