One of the two footballs stuck up the tree in the Grove has been retrieved. But the other remains immovable on a high branch. I shall watch it with interest until, unless it is rescued, it is hidden by leaves.
Going through a drawer of my desk, I come upon a minute Hohner harmonica. It is not quite four centimeters wide, but has four holes making an octave, (you blow in and out for successive notes). I am far from musical and sing out of tune. But I have always managed to get a tune of sorts from a harmonica. I like particularly its melancholy twang. This one was given to me by the great Larry Adler, whom I met and a lunch party, a good many years ago. It came in a little cardboard box with his name printed on it. Alas, I no longer have the box. It is amazing how much sound, to my ears, reasonably tuneful, such a small instrument can produce.
The way we talk about the weather rather like the way we drink tea has a quirky ceremony about it. I pass a neighbour pushing her shopping trolley in the sunshine. " I can't believe this," she says.
4 comments:
Back home, when I was still living with my parents, we used to keep track of kites that would get entangled on the huge neem tree we had in our backyard, during the kite-flying season... kids would try to rescue them by pulling at their dangling strings, but 99% of the kites would end up torn, and would stay on the branches of the tree till the rains washed them down... they would become as much part of the tree as the leaves and branches, 'coz sometimes it'd be months before it rained...
Thanks for the image of kite-fruit in a huge neem tree.
A new season's here.
Kite fruit hangs on the neem tree
Until the rain comes.
Larry Adler seemed to be around for ever and ever, didn't he? But he was a youthful prodigy I seem to recall. My uncle, the only vaguely musical member of our family, was a great admirer of his, and passed on to me a Hohner harmonica with two sides, one in the key of C, one G. I could pick out a tune on it, and still have it.
:-) :-) :-)
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