station, cheering up, sandwort

By the railway station.

While in Hall's bookshop I am greeted by a neighbour reputed to be a serious bibliophile."We've just come in here to cheer ourselves up," he says. I look round to see if his wife is with him. She is sitting down and looking into the distance. Her expression suggests that bookshops are not places likely to make her cheerful.

In the long grass in the Grove are masses of tiny, white star-like flowers which I am tempted to call bedstraw, but which, I suspect, are fine-leaved sandwort, though only one of my books lists it as such.