23 May (Sat)

I woke up to a fire in the tent last night, which was a little alarming. In the morning assessed the damage and found that there was a large hole in the carpet with lots of greasy wax and melted plastic over it. Got too busy to examine it further and it was only later in the day when Frannette casually sidled up to me and mentioned that there was a column on ants moving in that I steeled myself for a peek. Indeed the candle had burned through the carpet and through our only-3-week-old tent floor. We had purchased the tent because the floor of the old one had holes and we had an ant issue, so this was truly horrible news. R7000 down the tubes.

I set about fixing it as best I could with a bit of canvass and contact adhesive, all the time muttering about how, if it wasn’t for me, Brad and the kids would probably be dead as he can sleep through a hurricane. Poor attempt to vindicate myself from having a lit candle in the tent in the first place.

I feel like I haven’t seen Rio at all. He never comes into the office anymore and if I make a special effort I get to watch him talking to his friends at meal times. He is largely absent because he is very busy playing all day every day. He never stops. Even William and Edward make time in their days to play alone, but not Rio. He takes this opportunity to play with whoever is around, and as there are two of them, there is always somebody. Keita is one of the boys, and makes for a 4^th person so the dynamic is better than if there were only 3. She is invariably the “baddie” or the monster which they need to run away from, or slay, but she takes it all in her stride.