grandad kit

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have difficulty seeing your grandchildren, or have any views about my situation, I would welcome your messages by e-mail through this blog site. If you wish, just use a first name or a nickname and your identity will be protected, like mine – “Grandad Kit.”

Dear “Tom”

Great news about the baby geese

I am you other grandfather, the one you have never met. You are three years old, and although I have never met you, I love you dearly and always will. You are my flesh and blood, and always will be. We will meet one day, I am sure. I am writing this daily "blog" to you to make up for the fact that I can't speak to you right now. I hope that one day you will be able to read this.

Today Grandad went to Darlington to catch the train for London. I leave my car in the station car park where it will be safe, although it costs quite a lot. Then I had a meeting in London, while Nana Ann went to the Chelsea Flower Show after she finished work. Then we met up to go for a meal and then home to Nana Ann's house. I showed Nana Ann a photograph of our front garden at our house in the North (the "jungle") and she was horrified! So when she comes up next month she's going to have to get someone to do all the work and put the garden to rights - because Grandad won't do it! (and even if Grandad did do it, he would do it all wrong!).

Nana Ann had some great news about the baby geese - there are now five new babay geese. If you remember what happened last year when two geese made a nest on the island on the pond just outside Nana Ann's house, they had five babies then but four of their babaies were killed and eaten by the crows. Well, the same pair of Mummy and Daddy geese have again made a next and again had five babies - but this time they've been very, very clever about it. I Never thought geese could be so clever.

For a start, they have had their brood of goslings (that's what baby geese are called) much later in the year. Last year it was very early when it was still quite cold and there wasn't a lot of food around for the birds. That was the time the crows were having their babies and that's why the crows chased and killed the tiny babay goslings, because they wanted to feed their own little babies in the crow's nest.

And anothetr thing - this time the Mummy and Daddy geese have made their next right in the middle of the islend, instead of at the edge, so it has been hidden in the long grass that grows on the island - so the crows didn't know it was there! Nana Ann didn't know it was there either. Best of all, the parent geese have kept their babies hidden in the long grass until the babies had grown up enough to be too big to ve caught and eaten by the crows.

Also, instead of taking their babies out on the pond to learn to swim stright away, as soon as they came out of their eggs, they waited until now. And even then they let their babies go on the water for only a few minutes, before taking them back onto the island. So there's every chance that all five babies will grow up, instead of only one as happened last year.

Love from

Grandad Kit and Nana Ann