Good Morning Starshine!

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I don't really think there is much more to say. I moved in with Ursula... well that day really, and we quietly got married a couple of weeks later. I can't even say there were any hiccups, that I can remember either. Well nothing serious that was worth writing home about anyway.

The children very soon started to behave as if I'd always been there. Although they did try to play Ursula and I off against one another after a little while when the novelty of having a father around had worn off. But we headed that one off at the pass because they had trouble catching either of us alone. Ursula and I do just about everything possible together and some things that aren't; but we do try.

There was a bit of gossip and I got a few strange looks from people in the office for a while; when they were trying to work out where my loving wife and two children suddenly sprang from. I think Arthur put pay to them in the end, but I have no idea how.

We've been together again for over thirty years now. Life has been good to us, my company prospered and I did well out of it. I'd bought a few shares on the quiet when I first joined the firm.

The twins grew into two young people we could be proud of. James went to university where he studied geology amongst other things. He now spends his time travelling all over the world for the oil industry. James is kind-of involved with a Canadian geologist, she's a nice girl, well woman now. They gave us our first grandchild. Ursula reckons that they will get married, one day. Strange that, some of the conventions we were rebelling against back in the sixties, appear to be falling by the wayside without a fanfare nowadays.

Ottilie, well she's the arty one. Elvira took her under her wing as soon as she showed any real interest in painting. She turned all-bohemian on us during her teenage years. Ursula worried, I laughed it off.

Whatever, before she passed away, Elvira had made sure that our Ottilie had been noticed by all the right people in the art world. Her paintings command a respectable price in the galleries nowadays.

Ottilie eventually married Susan's eldest boy. Grif is a born sculptor, so they seemed to gravitate towards each other right from when they first met. I think Grif got his talent from his mother; Moonbeam always was playing around with bits of clay and the like, in the old days. Grif's not as well known as Ottilie, but he does all right for himself on the quiet.

Yeah well, as I said, in the long term I did all right for myself financially. Eventually we heard that this place was up for sale, so we bought it. It had been abandoned for years and needed a hell of a lot work done on it. The old coach house we had converted into a home for Ottilie, Grif and their brood. They had been looking to get out of the city for years anyway.

The barn where we had partied so many times all those years ago, became a studio and gallery for the pair of them to work in. I think all of their children have an artistic bent as well; they spend a lot of time in the studio with their parents. That's when they are not in the big house with Ursula and me.

I find it surprising that so many folks, even some of the so-called art connoisseurs, don't quite get the sign Ottilie has had made for the gallery. Oh they spot the name alright "Starshine Gallery", and they of course they see the picture of the star itself, with its five little rays emanating from between those points.

What they don't seem to see is that the star is inside a very faint outline of a woman's breast. Ottilie actually copied it from that sketch of mine, it's her private joke at her mother's expense I think. But I kind of find it quite flattering that she chose to copy, one of my only two good works of art.

Oh shit, look I'd better get going. I've got some... plants that need attending to in the greenhouse. Now that I've retired, I spend a lot of my time gardening.

Sorry? No of-course they're not, when we bought the place they were growing wild here in the walled garden. I thought they looked a little different so I've nurtured them along little.

It's illegal to grow that kind of thing you know!

Life goes on.