Summer crazies.

I think the heat has flipped a switch in Okaasan's brain.
She seems more animated/manic.

In the past 48 hours we've had stuff about a nephew in Tokyo getting married and I-must-go-to-the-wedding, we've had I-ordered-a-T-shirt-from-a-shop-but-I-can't-remember-which-one...we've had all sorts of little strangenesses......I think we should buy her an electric fan quick and get some  air under that mop of wild hair.

Poor Yujiro. He has to check with Okaasan's brother to see if there IS a wedding (there IS a nephew, so maybe it's true, the brother called last week about temple payments) and he had to phone round some shops seeing if they knew anything about an order. Of course they knew nothing.

I guess the good thing is that Okaasan isn't keeping all of this stuff in, but sharing it, endlessly with Yujiro!

And. My witching powers are also -sadly - switched on.
Yesterday morning in class - amid a discussion about health/cancer/the importance of everyone getting regular checks etc - I told students about Flemming, my first eikaiwa boss in Saitama, Japan. A wonderful, strange, off-the-wall Danish man. Two or three years ago he discovered he had breast cancer. He had treatment for it. Got ok etc.

Last night a friend in Saitama called.
Flemming died yesterday morning, from the breast cancer.
He was 53 years old. A crazy, wonderful, creative spirit. A brilliant carpenter and husband and dad. He was my first boss in Japan. He offered me - a complete novice teacher - a job, and let me live with his family when I started work for him.
Everything that has happened to me in Japan came because Flemming and his wife Yukie gave me a chance at this lark called English teaching. My life changed completly because of that chance.

I haven't seen them for a few years, they came camping with the children in Hokkaido a few years ago. He used to come vodka drinking and ice carving in the Sapporo Snow Festival too.

But he died. Yesterday.
I have some kind of Sixth Sense of whatever, I think or dream about people and within 12-24 hours they contact me, or I hear something about them. Twice it was the happy news of friends being surprised pregnant, sometimes it is contact after a long time...this is the first time it is because someone has died.

Summer Madness all round.