Guddling and dandling.

We went to Bournemouth at the weekend and this was how we packed the car.

With a double layer of plants wedged into the back, ready for Wee One's front garden. They had seeded themselves freely about my plot, white foxgloves, bronze fennel and forget-me-nots, all surplus to my requirements. The primroses in particular have spread everywhere, popping up in beds, borders and across the lawn.

In Bournemouth we had a busy time. While Himself was inside the house sanding and undercoating Wee One and I set to work in the garden. On Sunday evening it rained. A leak from the old, cast-iron house guttering washed away the soil from my carefully planted white lupins, grown from last year's seed. How annoying! The rain had guddled away my planting. It was too wet on Monday to work outside and repair the damage. Far more fun to be had guddling about inside with my grandson!

He and I are both great guddlers. I think it's a wonderfully descriptive word, a Scottish term for fiddling about in water, catching fish with your hands in shallow streams by gently moving your fingers. (Not easy!) My grandson's enthusiastic guddling is so far confined to his bath and his drinking beaker, first a drink and then, watch out, in with his fingers!

Along with guddling I did a lot of dandling. Wee One's partner views her vocabulary and mine with amusement and some disbelief. "Is that really a word?" Yes, we insist, it really is. My mother was Scottish, and her mother of Irish decent. We don't always know the derivation of the words that we use, but we do know what we mean by them. To dandle is to jig a child gently up and down, in my case to the accompaniment of some rather tuneless singing. An appreciative audience at last.
I had a lovely time!