Grandad

My Grandad died at 7 am last Thursday. Don't really want to blog about it at this stage, but I do want to mark the event, so I'll just tell one story.

The last time I spent a significant time with my Grandad was a little over two years ago when, while we were living at Whitley, we took him to the zoo. I think it was the first time he'd been to the zoo. I pushed him around in his wheelchair, which meant we got to experience it all together.

We arrived at the otter enclosure, and as he looked at the little animals scampering around, he thought at first that they were stoats. He turned to me and said, "Do you know the difference between a weasel and a stoat?" I confessed I didn't know, but being well aware of how widely read he was I anticipated a lesson in the intricacies of the animal kingdom.

"Well," he said, "a weasel is weasily distinguished, because a stoat is stoatally different."