Summer composition. People arrange themselves beneath the trees in the Grove.
High pressure means that vapour trails remain like random lines scratched lightly with chalk across the sky
My neighbour, Denzil, tells me that he and his wife were sitting on a bench on the expanse of grass enclosed by the ancient walls of Tonbridge Castle. In front of them in the distance a large crowd of wedding guests was assembling for a photograph. As they watched, they saw a man approaching them holding in his hand a glass of Champagne. "Ah," says Denzil to his wife: "How generous". But when the wedding guess drew close, it was to ask Denzil and his wife, to move in order to leave the background of the photograph unencumbered. As the Spanish poet said "cuando pitas, flautas, cuando flautas, pitas." When you expect pipes, you get flutes, and when you expect flutes, you get pipes.
3 comments:
Whereas on an exchange holiday to Germany, in the early fifties when the country was still rehabilitating itself, a couple of friends and I (all Brits) sitting outside a pub on the banks of the Rhine were invited to join a wedding party. At the time I remember asking myself: would this have happened in Britain? I still haven't come up with the answer.
I like that last little bit of Spanish wisdom. Great, that!
BB: I suppose it depends on the party giver.
DK The poet is Luis de Gongora (1561 -1625). A better translation of this refrain might have been "When you expect flutes, you get whistles". Cheers.
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