I've been trying to remember whether a story my father told happened to him or to a man he worked with. I've repeated it often enough that I can hear my own version more clearly than his, which troubles me. The funny part is sound, the place is right, but whose boots were actually full of water? That matters if I'm putting a name on a recording. Made a note to ask instead of quietly deciding on the version that tells best. People trust a guide who doesn't hesitate. Sometimes I think I ought to hesitate a little more. Not for every date and measurement, just where a good story has become more certain than its source.

One of the teenagers asked to bring a friend on my tour, then added that I wasn't to make a big thing of it. Naturally I spent the morning worrying what counted as a big thing. They listened, both of them, even at the part with Taid's lamp where I thought mine would stare at the floor. Afterwards I got a quite good, Dad, delivered while looking for a phone. Not a speech, not one for the family history, but it pleased me all afternoon. Told my wife and she said I was grinning exactly as I had been warned not to. I kept it to the kitchen. That ought to count as respecting the terms.

At choir practice I couldn't get comfortable with the first hymn, kept taking too much breath and running out of it in the wrong places. Nothing wrong with my throat, just standing as if I were waiting to take a group down the steps. Loosened my knees a little and let the man beside me set the pace. The next verse felt better, sound coming without my having to shove it along. There's a good tiredness after singing, not the same as after tours. Warm in the chest, shoulders lower, hungry enough to eat again. My wife said she could tell practice had gone well because I was still humming while I looked in the fridge.