8o'clock, not noticed, saxophone

For the Crow, who commented on yesterday's dandelion clock, here is the bald head of the flower after most of the seeds have flown.

Although I am always on the look out for things of interest and beauty, I sometimes miss curiosities, just in front of my eyes. "Did you the pair of knickers on that car door handle? " asks Heidi. In fact I haven't seen them. "I thought you always notice everything! " says Heidi. Is that a tone of irony in her voice? I tell myself that in noticing some things you don't notice others.

entrance to Grosvenor Precinct, I hear, the sound of a saxophone playing something slushy, brought to me by the wind. I think to myself that it sounds better where I am, than closer to the performer, who I can just see in the distance, and who is, almost certainly, helped by a superfluous amplifier. Sounds like that, when overhead, have melancholy associations, like the the zither in the streets of post-war Vienna in The Third Man. They are lost when you get too close.

clock, birdsong, age

Today's dandelion clock. It must be a sign of no longer being a child that I don't want to blow the seed off the stalk while counting the hours.

In the street I pass an old lady wearing an elegant white jacket and white trousers. She is one of those woman who retain their good looks even when frail and unsteady on their feet. She is supported on one side by a walking stick, and on the other, by the arm of a younger woman, who because of a similarity in their features, I suppose to be her daughter. "You can hear the birds, " says the younger woman, "It's lovely isn't it." "Yes", says the old lady, "I hear them in the morning when I wake up".

I walk towards the corner of Frant Road, where between the traffic lights and the zebra crossing, railings have been erected to stop impetuous pedestrians from running into danger. As I approach, one of those strange fantasies that assail me from time, makes me want to run towards the railings, vault them and cross the road dodging the traffic and even vaulting over the bonnets of cars. It looks so easy in the movies.

visitor, party, changes

Rhododendron bud with visitor.

Three years and few days ago I came across Clare Grant's blog Three Beautiful Things, which inspired my own, blog now nearing its third anniversary, and a number of other blogs all over the world, which have adopted the same formula.
Yesterday, Clare presided at a party in a pub in Tunbridge Wells to celebrate four years of Three Beautiful Things. Part of the pleasure of being at the party was to spot some of the characters, who feature in her daily notes, and to learn that a book, drawing on them, is to appear in the Autumn. As I have said here before, I still remember my surprise, when, having begun to visit Three Beautiful Things, and having encountered it entirely by chance, I realized that Clare lived, not as I had first supposed in San Francisco or New York or Sydney, but in Tunbridge Wells, where she turned out to be a virtually a neighbour.

How social behaviour has changed strikes me this morning when I finish reading an Inspector Maigret detective story by Georges Simenon. The novel interests me in particular because part of it is set in the Savoy Hotel in London, where my journalistic work often used to take me. It is clear that the author, in describing the French policeman's pursuit of wrong-doers, knew the Savoy well, its location, its atmosphere, its decor and its internal plan. Simenon wrote the book in 1952, which does not seem a long time ago to me, though it may to others. What especially interests me is the attitude to smoking, in the bedrooms, the bars and the dining rooms - including the Savoy Grill. It is in the Grill that the Maitre d' whispers in Maigret's ear to ask him not to smoke his pipe, but profers him a cigar instead, where all round people appear to enjoying post-prandial cigarettes. It is true. I remember people smoking all the time and everywhere in those days. Non-smokers were the exception. It's hard to believe nowadays, when the smell of public places has changed, for the better probably, for want of tobacco, but changed nevetheless.

smashed, slogans, light

The abandoned cinema site in the centre of Tunbridge Wells has been scheduled for redevelopment for about 10 years. It is a large corner block with two sides facing the street. On the street sides there are shops, now empty like the cinema. The town's gilded youth did not waste time, once the shops were empty, before breaking the windows. Fascinated by shattered panes and the light on jagged edges, I manage to get to them before they are boarded up. These are some of the results including two self-portraits in the top photograph.

The way we live now. It occurs to me today to put a wastepaper basket under the front door letter box to catch the flyers that come through with every post. Most of them at the moment are political and those that aren't are for fast food or restaurants. Today rather than put them straight into the paper recycling bin I collect them so as to see how they reflect the way we live now. From the Green Party comes a smiling photograph of Caroline Lucas, our member of the European Parliament, and leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. This is one leaflet, which I won't throw away because, although I can't share many of party's views, it seems to me to be better written. The UK Independence Party has a photograph of Winston Churchill, to which is linked the slogan: "Say no to European Union". The British National Party has a photograph of a spitfire and says "British Jobs for British Workers. The Liberal Democrats leaflet says "Britain and our neighbours - Stronger Together Poorer apart". The Royal Express offers:" Kebab - Chicken - Burgers". The National Health Service leaflet concers swine flu. It has a photograph of a man sneezing into his hand with the slogan "Catch it, Bin it, Kill it", recalling the Second World War advertisement "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Trap the germs in your handkerchief". So far nothing from the Conservatives or Labour.


Alone in the house in the basement kitchen this wet afternoon, I note that a light comes on in the adjoining dining room. Who could that be? It is the sun coming unexpectedly through the window.

tourists, toad-flax, shoes

In summer there is usually a group of tourists gathered round the spring of water, rich in iron (and therefore a disagreeable brown colour) which is the raison d'etre of Tunbridge Wells. Such springs are known as chalybeate springs. When I am a tourist and visiting an "attraction" I confess that I am usually thinking about my next meal. I ask myself what is going on in the heads of these people all strangers to me, and presumably to Tunbridge Wells.

Ivy leaved toad flax grows out of walls around here. It is a small trailing plant of unimposing but attractive appearance. I like this description of it from the often austere British Wild Flowers by John Hutchinson:
"This pretty little plant flowers from the late spring until the autumn. Growing on old dry walls and rocks it is remarkably resistant to drought. The flowers are adapted to the visits of bees who are able to press down the lower lip and gain access to the nectar which is secreted around the fleshy base of the ovary and stored in the spur at the bottom of the corolla. After fertilization takes place the flower stalks curve towards the dark crevices in the wall where the seeds are deposited when the fruit ripens and bursts.

There are at least two people in Tunbridge Wells who walk about the street singing or talking to no one in particular. One is called Naughty Boy because of the tuneless song he chants consisting of a repetition of the words "I'm a naughty boy". The other is more of a talker. He walks about briskly addressing any one he passes, who attracts his interest. Excellent shoes," he says pointing the the Kath Kidston shoes of a little girl who is hold the hand of her father, "Excellent shoes", and walks quickly on. The little girl smiles proudly. Her father looks sheepish.

peony, litter, sling

Four ways of looking at a peony.

The horse chestnut candles are extinguished. The pink and white petals of the individual flowers, blown down by the wind, litter the grass beneath the trees, where I am walking, like sweet wrappings.

In Calverley Ground, a man with a sort of sling - a handle with a cup at the end, which holds a ball. Different, I suppose, from the leather device which David used to dispatch Goliath, but the principle is the same. He puts the ball in place and the dog - a golden Labrador - hurtles off in anticipation. The ball soars a great distance, as he swings the handle, and falls ahead of the dog, who catches it on the bounce.

pose, name, nocebo

Do
you
suppose
a rose
can pose?

Names of previous owners on the inside of second hand books often add
a dimension to the pleasure of possessing the book experienced by the present owner. I am taking a break from Proust at the moment to read one of the Simenon paperbacks which I find from time to time in the Oxfam bookshop in Chapel Place. This one is inscribed Denis Keefe. France '74. There is a lot to be inferred from these words, and they somehow add to the melancholy pleasure of reading the pages of taut, unpretentious narrative, printed on paper, once white and now faded to a fog-like pale ochre.

A new word in the leader of this week's The Week magazine is nocebo. This is the opposite to placebo. It is used to describe the effect of health warnings. Just as placebos can make people better by boosting their natural self-healing abilities, nocebos raise negative expectations in the mind that can become self-fulfilling. I am someone, who cannnot see a health warning without believing that I have the symptoms described. I can spot a nocebo from a mile away and will run another mile when I meet one.

starling, life, handshake,

Today's starling. When you look at it closely, it turns out to be a prettier bird than you expect.

The atomic ingredients of life consist of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. So I read and imperfectly understand, but it is pleasing to find such a great subject wrapped up in so a simple statement.

In the street, I meet a woman who helps out in Hall's bookshop. She greets me and introduces her son, at a guess about 9 years old. To my surprise he proffers his hand to shake. I am as surprised as I am pleased by this traditional courtesy in one so young.

worm, arm, spray

Today's blackbird, with worm.
I looked for the blackbird in the blackbird's eye. The blackbird looked in mine, and saw itself.

I tell the man in the the Grove with the Jack Russell how much I enjoy watching the dog race after the ball which he throws for it. He hurls the ball as far as he can and even before it has left his hand, the dog is after it, anticipating its trajectory. It usually catches it on the bounce. When it returns it puts the ball down and dribbles it like a footballer avoiding a tackle, before stepping back to await the next throw. "It's good for my arm," says the dog's owner.

Today the rain is like a fine spray. It is warm, good growing weather.

rose, contrast, magic

Early rose.

When you step from the shade, where you feel the east wind that has been blowing for the last few days, into the sun, you remember that Summer is upon us, despite the wind.

This morning, I say to myself, as I water the seedlings in the garden where the wind has dried the soil as much as the sun, "if I water them now, it will rain before long". And that proves to be so because, as I write this, drops are falling outside the window.

hot air, survivor, herbs

This drifted past our house the other day not far above the roof tops. An unexpected intruder in the evening sky. A symbol of escape, perhaps.

This season's lettuces, sown a few weeks ago, are coming along nicely. But there was one surprise when we were preparing the vegetable beds - a lettuce from last year that had seeded itself. Today I cut it, an unexpected gift, with a plump, crisp heart.

Two herbs which we can't do without are parsley and basil. Because parsley is slow to germinate and basil on the tender side, I sow both in the greenhouse. Although the seeds are featureless, I fancy I smell the basil and taste the flat leafed-parsley, which we nowadays prefer to the curly kind.

Welsh onions, saw, swifts

As long as I have had a vegetable garden I have always grown Welsh onions. They form bunches at the root, and you simply harvest the shoots from the base. A shoot, apart from providing something like a large spring onion, will grow into a new bunch of onions, if set in the earth. They constantly renew themselves at the root. If you left them , they would form globular, blue flowers. To encourage them to form thicker bunches, I remove the buds, as I did here after taking the photograph.

I hear the panting breath of a saw and smell the dust fresh from its teeth.

First there are their distinctive shrill cries. Then I see them above the rooftops: the summer's first swifts.

ladies' smock, finding, real life

Also known as cuckoo flower. You can't see its basal leaves here, but they are similar to those of water cress, to which it related. It is similar, but has different leaves to Dames Violet.

There is a pleasure in finding something which you have lost, particularly when you happen upon it by chance. I put my hand into an oblong box of tissues, and there is the Parker roller ball pen, with its cool aluminium barrel, which I lost the other day and had momentarily forgotten about. I feel it on top of the tissues and recognise it before I bring it to light.

For the second time, I meet a friend from cyber space, whom I have not met before in person. I have long read Marja-Leena's blog and enjoyed, on the screen, her prints and photographs, which are so concerned with textures of rock and stone, cave paintings and inscriptions carved by nature. To meet her and her husband, Fred, during their visit to England, seems to make distance disappear, or at least lose importance - a wonder when you think of the distance between Vancouver and Tunbridge Wells.

conversations, walking, squirrels

Conversations on the South Bank.


I see that there is still a sport called distance walking. There are even walking events in the Olympics. I remember seeing people practicing it years ago, but it seems to have lost popularity. It is not the sort of walking, which I enjoy and if I had a preferred method of moving on foot at speed, it would be running. Walking, as a sport involved, keeping your arms bent and pushing one elbow back, with each step. A fixed and pained expression on the face seemed also to be important. It strikes me as ungainly and rather funny to watch. Today, I am reminded of distance walking, as I pass two women wearing trainers and apparently engaged in it. Their elbows are certainly moving like pistons, but the effect is spoilt because they seem to be enjoying a natter as they go.

In the Grove, some men equipped with a long ladder are fixing what looks like a metal box in the branches of a horse chestnut tree. "Is that to do with birds or squirrels?" I ask the man in charge. " Squirrels", he says. I am surprised. "What are they for? Are they nesting boxes? "Yes," he says, with a cautious note in his voice. "But, "I say, "they build there own dreys, don't they? They don't need help." "Right," he says. "What's inside there?" I say. "Poison ," he says, deciding to come clean.
I like the grey squirrels, which swarm in the Grove but I don't love them, as I might love red squirrels, if they hadn't all died out in these parts, persecuted by their grey cousins. The fact is that grey squirrels are spilling out of the overcrowded park and invading people's lofts and gardens. So I suppose they have to be culled. Later, walking home, as I approach my front gate, I see a squirrel coming towards me on the pavement, and notice that, like a character in a childrens' story about to make a formal visit, he is turning into the gate ahead of me.

wisteria, drama, six degrees

The wisteria beside the front door only a day or two ago was in bud; now it is in flower. Visitors arrive talking of the scent.


Drama in the garden. A baby blackbird, fallen from its nest, finds its way into a flexible, green plastic bucket. In the bucket are some empty flower pots. When the nestling sees me, it hides in one of the flower pots. The Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds says that you shouldn't handle birds, which have fallen from their nests because their parents are liable to reject them if they sense human intercession. We manage to transfer the little one into the hedge, which divides our house from the next door house, without touching it, and it sits there twittering. We look out for its parents. And within a few minutes a female blackbird arrives, its beak loaded with worms. We realize that we are in between the baby and its mother, and make ourselves scarce. A few minutes later sitting, in a chair beside the study window, I see a female blackbird on the window sill looking at me through the glass. I am not sure what, if anything, is on its mind.


I was familiar with the term "six degrees of separation", but had forgotten to what it referred. A tv programme, which I caught the end of yesterday and saw in its entirety to day on BBC iPlayer, brings me up to date. It is the idea that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else in the world by a chain of no more than six acquaintances. Originally the subject of a play, and later of a film, it used to be considered an urban myth, but apparently not any more. Scientists are discovering that, in any distribution of people, animals or objects, there are hubs, which facilitate, as part of a general law, surprising speed and ease of communication between points unfamiliar to, and remote from one another. They call it network science, and are beginning to apply it to such various topics as epidemiology, the function of the human cell and transport routes. I find this idea appealing because, apart from demonstrations in the programme that it works, and how it works, it appeals to me, at a purely idealistic level. It shrinks the world and brings us all closer together.

South Bank, courage, tethered

Passing. The South Bank of the Thames.

It strikes me that it takes courage to stand alone in Grosvenor Precinct and talk about redemption as though addressing a congregation, when no one, but no one, stops to listen. The modest looking man with a wad of leaflets in his hand, is no orator, but he believes in trying to get a message across, and is not going to be defeated.
Two bicycles are tethered and padlocked to steel hoops set into the pavement for that purpose. There is a plaintive, almost animal look about their handlebars pointing in different directions as though looking for a means of escape.

Lucy's reply to What's for lunch? is on Compasses. One commentator has remarked that the dialogue, as it is evolving, is like people having a conversation over water. My own feeling is that it is taking place between two people in a beautiful world where cruel and threatening shadows darken the horizon.

water, snooker, crow

I lean over the parapet of a bridge and watch the surface of the stream. What better way of watching time pass? I think why not? I point the camera and click. Now, I see the patterns frozen in time and fancy shadows where perhaps there were no shadows.

The World Snooker Championship is nearly over. This is a game which I have played only once and then in a state of postprandial well-being, which precluded my learning the rules let alone the techniques. But recently, thanks to the game's watchability on tv, I have been greatly attracted to it. I don't know the language of the game, but there are certain shots - the equivalent of a perfect cover drive in cricket or, in tennis, a backhand, low over the net into the corner of the base line - which make the heart beat faster, touch a nerve of admiration. In particular, in snooker, there is the shot where the cue ball is made to hit a red or colour ball hard and pot it, while itself, thanks to back spin, remains almost statationary after impact. The other is when only a gentle but sharply angled hit is required from the cue ball in order to pot a red or colour ball, and when this is achieved with the gentlest of kisses, and, at the same time, the cue ball is positioned perfectly for the next cue-shot.

Mr Crow is about quite a lot in the Grove these days. As fate would have it, this afternoon, when I might have taken a photograph of him, I do not have my zoom camera with me. I watch as he settles on a flowering cherry just in front of me, and then flies lazily, as crows do, across the playground and lands on another tree, where he poses on a bare branch. I watch him for a while, longing for the Olympus. He doesn't move and I walk on, to turn round after a few steps. Is he still there? At first I think that he is, but what I am looking at is a black space against a leafy background, a crow-shaped hole.

forget-me-nots, gas, curiosity

An early bee among mysotis.

A neighbour tells us that while, planting a crab apple tree, she punctured a gas main. Apparently there was a sinister hissing from beneath the ground, which she quickly covered with earth, before calling British Gas.

The curiosity, which I have always possessed, and which I cannot throw off, and wouldn't if I could, becomes a nag as I grow older. In the same way as the late Clement Freud recorded, some time ago, that he had reached an age when there was no longer an incentive to lay down new vintages of claret, so I feel a pang of regret, when I read that in the next 2o years the new form of power generation called fusion reaction will at last be possible. When it is, it will , by the fusion rather than the fission of nuclei, recreate the heat of the sun in a manageable form, and use no fuel-source other than sea water. Impossible? I'll never know.

colour, asparagus, sonnets

The colour of trees. This copper beech in Groombridge, rising like an umbrella against the skyline, suggests Autumn, just as Spring appears.


Asparagus is just coming into season. This curious and delightful vegetable, a lot of which is grown in these parts, brings with it at least in my memory, a whiff of snobbery. The senior history teacher at my school was man whose native kindness and enthusiasm for his subject, was marred by a strand of bitterness. I seldom think of asparagus without remembering how he claimed to have failed to obtain a fellowship at his Oxford college. "It's because I didn't know how to eat asparagus" he would say. And how do you eat asparagus? With your fingers, the old books of etiquette used to say. You hold the stem by the stalk and raising it above your lips, allow it to enter your mouth, the succulent head, glistening with melted butter. What did he do? He ate it, as any sensible man might do, with his knife and fork. I was reminded of him and the chip on his shoulder, the other day when Heidi and I treated ourselves to asparagus at the Black Pig in Grosvenor Road. The vegetable arrived with hollandaise sauce dribbled over it, stalks and all. You couldn't have picked it up by the bottom of the stalk even if you had wanted to. Poor old Charles Keeley. He might have ended up as an Oxford don, after all, if he had lived today, when such niceties presumably no longer apply at the high tables of Oxford colleges, any more than they do at the Black Pig.

Sonnets are on my mind. Inspired by Barrett Bonden's skillful use of it, I have been thinking with pleasure about this most adaptable and elegant of verse forms, which runs through European poetry encompassing, as they come to my mind, Dante and Petrarch, Shakespeare and Milton, Keats and Wordsworth, Mallarmé and Rilke, to the present day. I have just been reading a contemporary version of Rilke' s Orpheus sonnets adapted (rather than translated) in English by the Scottish poet, Don Patterson. They have a powerful sense of the present about them despite their classical form and associations with an early 20th century poet. Long live the sonnet.

wagtail, shadows, weekend

Pied wagtails (this one posed at Groombridge Place) are the prettiest of birds, which please, not least, by their swooping flight.

As I sit on a bench outside the chemist in Mount Pleasant, the shadows of the plane tree leaves above my head are waving and quivering on the pavement at my feet.

"Have a good weekend," people still say to me sometimes. And it is with a mixture of regret and pleasure, when, as someone says it to me this morning, I realize that "weekend" means very little to a person, who does not occupy himself during the week with anything that he does not do at the weekend. Those 14 hour-days of commuting and meetings, correspondence and telephone calls, had the merit , I suppose, of giving a meaning to "weekend", just as walking easily, gives a meaning to recovery after suffering from a broken ankle.

seagulls, minder, copying

Gulls over the Thames.


In the pantiles, a black, long-haired retriever, drags a metal chair behind it by the leash with which it is tethered. The chair makes a grating sound, which the dog ignores as it proceeds towards the open door of the delicatessen, where its owner is shopping. As dog and chair get nearer to the shop, a man, with a demeanour similar to that of a retriever, but of a different build, approaches and begins to stroke and scratch the back of the retriever's neck. The dog ceases to pull at the chair, but keeps its eyes fixed on the interior of the shop. Eventually the owner emerges and the retriever man, politely removes the leash from the chair leg, and hands it to the owner - a middle aged woman who seems to take the rescue for granted, with only a little more acknowledgement- a polite thank you - than her dog is able to offer. The retriever man wanders off in the opposite direction.


As I walk over what appears to be a mass of worms on the pavement, I realize what I am seeing is nature imitating nature and that the worms are soaked silver-birch catkins which a recent squall has blown to the ground.

wool, lady's smock, animate

Portrait of a sheep. I have always liked the knowing expression round the mouths of these animals. I wonder what they know.

The area of the Grove, which they left unmowed for the first time last year, has again been spared the whirring blades. The restraint is already showing dividends. Today I find, among the usual dandelions and daisies, several of those pretty Spring flowers called lady's smock or cuckoo flower. Four mauve petals pale and lightly veined.

My attention is caught by a black drinking straw, angled three quarters of the way up with a flexible corrugated section like the links between railway carriages. It stands in an empty tumbler and, its bent section leaning over like a beak, swings round in the wind. It is always fascinating when an inanimate object appears to become animate as a result of such natural impulses. And it is now. The beak swings round and nuzzles for a moment the rim of a neighbouring glass. Then moves on round the rim of its own glass shaking and nodding as though in conversation.

pigeons, thrift, studio

Flying is easy, if you are properly equipped and have the experience.

For some time now I have a block about two words - frugal and thrift. When I try to remember them, though I am drawn to the modest virtues which they represent, they tend to vanish from my mind. On the spectrum extending from extravagance and prodigality at one end to parsimony and avarice at the other, they fit neatly into the middle, where you would expect to find moderation, common sense and a balanced way of life.
I wake this morning full of resolutions to roll up loose pieces of string and store them in a drawer, to collect the rubber bands, which the postman drops on the garden path, to save paper clips, to reuse envelopes (no, I stop short at that); and to write the book of recipes which I have longed planned on the creative use of left-overs, above all on how to make left-overs look as though they are prepared for the first time, the remains of mashed potatoes, for example, transformed into potato cakes.

At the entrance to the park called Calverley Ground, there is a former gatehouse where a group of dentists have been nesting for some time. I am struck this afternoon for the first time by the way these dentists have substituted the word "surgery" with "studio" on the notice outside. If dentists can have studios, I walk home wondering, will artists and broadcasters, for example, want to complete the swap? But it is an open question whether the word "studio" is, somehow, more sophisticated (a better way of selling their services) , than "surgery", which is presumably the dentists' reason for adopting it. Then it strikes me that if you have an operation, you have it in a theatre. Deep water, this.

reading, passing, Satan

Readers in the sun on the South Bank of the Thames.

Looking up for a moment towards the sun I catch sight of tiny seeds floating beneath their downy parachutes, metallic, like silver flies.

It took me a few days to realize that Lucy Kempton's poem in response to the question,Who will police the policemen? contained a quotation from the Book of Job. " ... he goes
'to and fro upon the earth
and up and down in it.'" In this way, she associates Mr Punch with Satan, before introducing the question put by God to Satan , And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou?' It is that question, which a new poem in the series, published today in Compasses sets out to answer (see link on right). Although it is a mere man, not Satan to whom the question is addressed and who answers it.