kind rain, contrast, thistledown

Congenial of the rain to fall last night. This morning the leaves are wet, the earth refreshed, and ready for sowing spinach in the sun.

In the park, the Royal Tunbridge Wells Croquet club is next door to a basket ball court. On the perfectly kept grass, old folk in straw hats, flannel trousers, long skirts are leaning over mallets and whacking coloured, wooden balls. On bare, grey tarmac, the young, in jeans and tee shirts dance in front of a pole where they try, not always successfully, to lob the ball into the net at the top of it.

Over a cup of tea I watch a piece of thistle down drift steadily across Calverley Grounds. It keeps a steady pace and the same height above the ground until it comes to the slope on the north side of the park, where it rises on a thermal or follows an upward movement of the breeze.