Quietly enjoying...

The mini grits are occupied. Quietly busy, they slide away to bury their noses in books, fasten them on computer screens, or worship fish.

This is a strange, translucent time, one state of them blending invisibly to another. Their plump baby cheeks are still there with their fat little tummies demanding pasta, but their shoes are size 7 and their opinions are delivered with withering insight.

They are no longer my little girls, and yet they are completely my little girls, occupying some sort of transitory form between digging up the garden and telling me of things they would like to do: the online maths games they want to boast about, the physics they want to learn about, the morning approach they are going to adopt for learning 20 Latin verbs.

This strange state is both satisfying and scary. As their too-long limbs fold into the postures of students, sat at desks for longer than they should, I can only hope I rise to the challenge to match it with ambitions, books, intentions.

For me, their sloping away to private study increasingly leaves me with whole gaps in the days when I too can creep away, relieved of responsibilities, apart from the usual household feeding, cleaning, and mucking out, to simply potter about.

Quietly daring to think of life post age-16, wrestling with fifty-summer-things-I-want-to-do spread impossibly from Edinburgh to Brighton, Hunstanton to Swansea, and filling the silence with my own quiet dancing; today with Steve Martin and Edie Brickell Love has Come for You.