To suddenly have such a lot of time on my hands was to say the least very disconcerting, and I missed the little Emil terribly. But at least I could get into my garden again, and only now realized how neglected it had became. But I soon got back into doing all the things that had to be done, but the bally grass that had taken over completely, made my guts drop into my shoes.
Emil still slept with me at this stage, as Jan had to take Andreas to the bus before seven, and as Berty only came in at eight, it would have been cruel to get the baby up and out at that ungodly hour, the temperatures still very low, even though summer was in full swing. Haarlem is a strange place, with the day and night temperatures differing about twenty degree celcius, as during the day the temperature could easily rise to forty, and then by six it could be about ten.
During this time a horde of spiders had hatched, and they were quite a nuisance, as Emile was very restless, and I could not blame him, as the little critters were crawling all over one, and boy, they could already give a decent bite at that young age. So, after spending half the night soothing the baby, and spraying my green insect repellent, and that not working at all, it was a bleary eyed, quite cross me that sat outside with my coffee the next morning, thinking up plans for the culling of the baby spiders!
As I could not use any chemicals with the baby, I was at my wits end, not able to spend another sleepless night. I took off all the bedding from my bed, and the cot, and washed it on hot, then vacuum cleaned the mattresses, the floor, the draped ceiling, and hoped for the best.
Came night time, I was happy when after about half an hour there was nothing yet crawling on me, but then Emil started rolling around and moaning, and soon after I felt the little mites trying to get even with me for murdering their brother and sisters! It was not rain spiders, but these were pitch black, and although small, quite nasty looking.
I then remembered someone telling me that lavender is a good insect repellent, so out of desperation I left the safety of my house, and looking around fearfully in case a burglar was scouting around, I picked a whole bunch of lavender. I exhaled thankfully when I made it back to the house without mishap, then arranged some branches of the lavender around the baby, before getting into my own bed, arranging the rest of the lavender all around me, from my head down to my toes!
I really believed that it worked, as after a while I fell asleep, but woke up some time later from my lovely sleep, and I was sneezing at about ten sneezes per minute, and my eyes itched like the devil. It took a while before the mists of my lovely sleep lifted, and I realized that I had forgotten how allergic I was for pollen!
But the baby was sleeping peacefully, and I decided to leave his lavender, but chucked mine out the door, and after seeing my eyes that was swollen and red like two overripe

tomatoes, I took an anti histamin, and went to sleep in the other room, where I was once again bombarded with a fresh batch of newly hatched baby spiders!

I am running around like a chicken without it's head, as there was just so many chores and other things to do, and baby Emil, who was now crawling, was like bally speedy conzales, and it was just amazing the speed that he could ref up! I was quite exhausted by night time, but he was the most amazing baby when it came to sleeping. Never a tear, or a moan, or any playing up. He just lied down when I put him in the cot, grabs his bottle as if he never had a single drink the whole day, and he never stirred till the next morning at six. At least I got a good night's sleep in.
We have decided that Emil would kind of stay with me still, but that Jan would take him more and more during night time. It was difficult during the day, as he was doing a lot of phone consultations and trying to talk to bussiness people with a baby babbling in the background was just a bitty unproffesional.
I was busy cooking jams and chutneys, and also some canning, as the peaches were ripening so fast.
I got an oven from Jan, as my gas oven just did not bake well, and drying rusks was just impossible, as it burned, the gas just could not go low enough. In South Africa we do a lot of different rusks, as we have some in the morning with coffee, and usually when visiting friends or family, you get coffee in bed, accompanied by a rusk or two. It is the only food that South Africans dip in their coffee or tea!
 I here give a recipe for all-bran rusks, and it is really amazing to have with coffee or tea.
Ingredients: 500 gr butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 eggs, 500 ml buttermilk,500 gr self raising flower, 500 gr nutty wheat,3 tble s baking powder,2ts salt,{flat}5 cups allbran. Recipe can be halved, as this makes a lot of rusks, but it can be kept in tins for quite some time.
Method: Smelt butter and add sugar, mix well. Mix together egg, milk and then sift in flower and baking powder, then all the other ingredients, plus butter and sugar mixture.Put in bread pans and  bake for 63 min in moderate oven. Cut into slices of about 1 cm thick, and dry in cool oven on cooling rack for about 4 hrs, or until dried completely.
I have made myself also some boere beskuit (farmer's rusks}, which is made without sugar, but is lovely if you don't like sugar, or you can't use sugar, but the taste is given by anice seed. I just love the rusks Trienkie's mother in law makes, really super.
As the year ran on, it seemed that Jan had to go to Johannesburg a lot, and as I had to go into hospital again for tests, and told that all was not well still, I had to be more careful, so we decided to get a nanny to look after Emil. So we put the word out, and within a day's time a whole army of aspirant nannies started to arrive, most of them quite insuitable, as they reek strongly of drink.
Then Berty arrived, full of the fact that she used to be nanny to one of our popular singers and entertainers, and lived in capetown until the family moved to Brittain. Berty was also very modish, and her short pepper curl hair was dyed the most brilliant red on the market, maybe she got some from a batch of dye gone wrong, and she had a kind of brightly purple sweatband with a pink flower to finish the look!
But she was sober, and very well spoken, and all in all the best of the bunch, and in due course she arrived, and then I had so much time on my hands, I did not know what to do with it!

After a struggle to drive the gods crazy, I am able to blog again. Just before Xmas, I switched on the computer, and the bally thing told me shortly and sweetly that it was going to crash, and it did. And there sat self, without any links to the outside world, with only the company of my much loved, but grieve stricken son and kids, and it was indeed hard slog to pull even a smile from any of them. They were all kind of okay, but now that Xmas is drawing nearer, they started missing Nina again terribly, as she was very punctilious with putting up the tree and the whole family joined in to decorate it, and it was heartbreaking to see them so lost.
Jan packed Rene off to his grandparents in Denmark, as he was becoming a problem with his addiction to the internet games. Of course it was also a way to escape his sorrow. We all hoped that being back in Denmark, where he of course grew up, would help him to find some balance in his life again.
The 24th dawned bright and clear, and it was a very small heap of presents under the tree. As I couldn't really get to a place to buy decent presents, I had bought Jan and Andreas each an assortment of chocolates, and this chocolates melted on my way back from the shop in Uniondale, and ended up looking very very mangled, but it would just have to do. It was only Jan, the two kids, and me that Xmas eve, and the atmosphere was heavy with their sorrow, and for me it was I think the saddest feeling that I did not even get one present. Jan had just never thought of buying something for me, and although I knew how stressed he was, I still felt very lonely. I knew that Trienkie and Stephan had bought me something which I would get later, but it wasn't the present so much as the hopelesness that hung around us that night, and the excitement of opening presents did lighten things for them a bit. Maria, Nina's sister had sent some presents for them, and Andreas got a cap gun, with which he managed to drive us demented, but at least he managed to forgot his heartache for a few hours.
Trienkie had given me an old computer. This thing was about twenty years old, and huge, and after struggling for days to get it going, I gave up, and Jan lent me this one, and as it is quite new, I hope to blog away happily for the next few years! But this monstrosity is now standing in my sitting room, and as my house is like a doll's house, it looked menacing and fills up the whole room. Well, just about! Will have to give it to one of the villagers, as it does come on, but can't do internet, although I doubt if most of them will know what to do with it! But maybe somebody can have it fixed, and if not, they can just dump it somewhere. Jan gave this thing one look, and almost pull out his hair, announcing in a cold voice that the thing is just fit for the scrap heap!